Mike Evans
AI is the most visible of several forces reshaping how work gets done, and most organisations are defending against only one of them. Roles lose their value before anyone redesigns them, and the people doing that work feel it first. The real question is which human capabilities stay scarce once the tools are everywhere.
Mike Evans gives organisations a defence plan for AI-driven disruption, built on frameworks he has tested inside 34 of the Fortune 50.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Mike Evans
- He gives an audience a defence plan for AI disruption, not a forecast. The 7-Sided Pincer Movement maps the forces reshaping work, and the 5-Ingredient Kryptonite Defence sets out the capabilities that keep people and teams hard to replace.
- He has worked these forces since the 1990s, inside Kotter International, FranklinCovey, and Tom Peters Company, which puts three decades of change practice behind a topic most speakers picked up after 2023.
- He built and tested the frameworks inside 34 of the Fortune 50, with named results such as shorter decision cycles at Intel and a rebuilt pilot training pipeline at the US Army Aviation Center.
- He builds each keynote backward from a structured discovery call with the client, so the room gets its own challenges addressed rather than a stock talk.
- His Kryptonite Scorecard, a 30-behaviour diagnostic, and the distributed ownership thesis in Achieve with Accountability give a leadership team a way to keep working the plan after the session.
Biography highlights
- Author of two books: Distinct or Extinct: Future-Proofing People and Organizations in the Age of AI (Pincer Press, 2026) and Achieve with Accountability (Wiley).
- Founder of Pincer Press; works full-time as a keynote speaker and author.
- Former senior consultant at Kotter International, FranklinCovey, and Tom Peters Company, working alongside John Kotter, Stephen Covey, and Tom Peters.
- Clients include 34 of the Fortune 50, among them Intel, Apple, PepsiCo, Caterpillar, Cargill, Capital One, and Pfizer.
- Developer of the 7-Sided Pincer Movement and the 5-Ingredient Kryptonite Defence, with the Kryptonite Scorecard diagnostic.
Biography
Seven forces are reshaping how organisations work at the same time: software, robotics, globalisation, outsourcing, digital transformation, disruptive competition, and AI as the accelerant that multiplies the rest. Most organisations defend one flank while the other six go unguarded.
Mike Evans has worked these forces since the 1990s, well before AI made them urgent. He built his frameworks inside Kotter International, FranklinCovey, and Tom Peters Company. He worked directly with John Kotter on change acceleration, with Stephen Covey on personal effectiveness, and with Tom Peters on operational excellence.
His 2026 book, Distinct or Extinct, turns that history into a method. It argues that people and organisations survive disruption by becoming hard to replace, through five capabilities: ideas, speed, talent, distinction, and leadership at all levels. Evans founded Pincer Press to publish it, choosing speed to market over a traditional deal so it reached leaders inside the 2026 disruption window.
The frameworks were tested inside 34 of the Fortune 50, including Intel, Apple, PepsiCo, and the US Army Aviation Center. His Wiley book, Achieve with Accountability, supplies the execution layer beneath them, the distributed ownership that lets a workforce act on a plan rather than receive one. At Intel the work shortened decision cycles; at the US Army Aviation Center it rebuilt a pilot training pipeline under a constrained budget.
Key speaking topics
- AI disruption and the future of work
- Future-proofing people and organisations
- The 7-Sided Pincer Movement and converging disruptive forces
- Distributed accountability and execution discipline
- Change leadership under permanent disruption
- Personal and organisational distinctiveness
- Resilience under repeated disruption
Ideal for
- Boards and executive teams deciding how AI changes their workforce and operating model
- Chief People Officers and Chief Transformation Officers redesigning roles and accountability for an AI-shaped workforce
- Leadership conferences, annual meetings, and sales kickoffs in sectors under pressure from AI, such as financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, pharma, and technology
- Associations running “future of the industry” programmes where members are anxious about staying relevant
Audience outcomes
- A map of the seven forces hitting their organisation at once, and which ones they are currently leaving unguarded
- The five capabilities that keep people and teams hard to replace as AI absorbs routine work
- A working model for distributing accountability so a workforce can act on the plan rather than receive it
- Specific changes leaders can put in motion within the week, beyond general AI awareness
- Shared language senior teams can use after the session to hold momentum
Talks
A working frame for the forces reshaping work, the capabilities that keep people and organisations hard to replace, and the decisions leaders need to make before the next cycle.
Key takeaways:
- The seven converging forces hitting work at once, and where each one commoditises existing capability
- The five capabilities of the Kryptonite Defence that keep people and teams distinct
- A way to measure organisational exposure and the changes to make first
A practitioner view of change leadership drawn from working alongside John Kotter, applied to organisations now running permanent rather than episodic change.
Key takeaways:
- Why traditional change management frameworks under-perform in permanent-change environments
- The seven converging forces, the 7-Sided Pincer Movement, that senior teams now manage simultaneously
- Specific leadership behaviours that hold under sustained disruption
A keynote built on the Achieve with Accountability thesis, focused on distributed ownership as the binding constraint on execution.
Key takeaways:
- Why hierarchy-based accountability fails when change cycles compress
- The behaviours that signal genuine ownership at the operating level
- A sequence for embedding accountability without diluting leadership authority
A culture session for senior teams trying to move from compliance culture to execution culture under disruptive pressure.
Key takeaways:
- The operating signals that distinguish peak-performing cultures from defensive ones
- Where culture work fails inside large organisations and why
- Specific interventions senior leaders can sponsor in the next quarter