Mike Evans

Leading Authority on Change, Disruption/Future Work, Corporate Culture, Leadership and Accountability/Resilience - 34 of Fortune 50 are clients
Mike Evans Speaker
  • Top rated keynote speaker for 17 consecutive years
  • Media commentator to national business publications, radio, and television
  • Leading authority on how to thrive in the Age of Disruption
  • 34 of Fortune 50 Companies are clients

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Mike has developed a unique perspective from 20+ years of working alongside a star studded list of world-renowned thought leaders, including: John Kotter, Stephen Covey, Tom Peters, Jim Kouzes, Hyrum Smith, Steve Farber and Chris McChesney. Mike served in executive leadership and consulting roles with Kotter International, FranklinCovey, and Tom Peters Company.

In addition to being a leading authority on Unleashing Personal and Organizational Accountability, clients rely upon Mike’s solutions to; Accelerate Change, Shape Their Optimal Culture, Flawlessly Execute Key Strategies, Ignite Leadership Capacity at all Levels, Amplify Employee Engagement, Thrive and Excel in the Age of Disruption, Embrace The Role of CEO of Your Life, Career and Destiny, and Cultivate Peak Performance.

34 of Fortune 50 are clients. Mike works with organizations around the globe and in virtually every arena, from the tech sector to financial services, manufacturing, health care, hospitality, entertainment, retail, and the US Government. Clients include: Intel, Capital One, Apple, Caterpillar, PNC Bank, Cargill, Pfizer, General Mills, H&R Block, The United States Navy, John Deere, Fidelity Investments, Monsanto, Google, US Steel, Rite Aid, Agilent Technologies, Johnson & Johnson, Symantec, Cigna Corporation, ITPA, US Department of Commerce, BNY Mellon, Oracle, Astra Zeneca, Baxter International Inc., Shell Oil, UPMC, Citrus Valley Health, McAfee, American Airlines, Masonite, Novartis, Ernst & Young, ACE Hardware, DuPont USA, Quest Diagnostics, State Farm, BP Oil, Heinz USA, NAFCU, and NASA

Mike consults with senior teams, facilitates custom workshops, delivers keynote speeches and provides coaching and consulting on all of these subject areas. He uses his unique insights, passion, experience, and humor to positively affect individuals, teams and organizations around the world. He is experienced with executive leadership teams and groups at all organizational levels. His style is engaging, upbeat, entertaining, thought-provoking, compelling, and most importantly educational, relevant and impactful. Individuals, teams and organizations yield immediate results by applying what they learn.

His personal mission is to help individuals, teams and organizations accelerate their ability to achieve more than they ever believed possible. Clients describe him as inspiring, motivating and a ball of energy with an unequal focus and passion for helping them achieve their desired results – both professional and personal.

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Mike Evans: Speaking Reel

How Many of Your Employees are Aligned with You on What Matters Most?

Mike Evans - Introduction and Focus Areas

FUTURE WORK: Thrive Through Artificial Intelligence Impact, Disruption & Change, and Today’s Sea of Sameness 

Seven powerful forces have joined together and are gunning for your job, to displace your department and to reinvent and disrupt your industry.  Leveraging talent, ideas, speed, distinction and leadership are the keys to thrive in the new world of work.  

We are in a brawl with few rules, where the fast, flexible, and agile will eat and spit out the slow, over-thinking, and complacent. Individuals and organizations that fail to adapt will find themselves vulnerable, and at the mercy of other people, events, or the competition. In this New World of Work, leveraging ideas, speed, talent, distinction and leadership at all levels will separate top performing individuals and organizations from the laggards. 

Individuals, teams, and organizations that fail to develop a distinct ‘brand’ and separate themselves from the pack and develop the requisite skills and competencies that will prevail in this New World of Work will find themselves vulnerable, uncomfortable, and at the mercy of other people, events, or the competition. The white waters of change are unnerving for many. But the fact is they will only become more turbulent. For organizations and employees who are unprepared, the future will be devastating.  

Adapting to and embracing change – igniting engagement, passion, ownership and creativity that is often lacking during times of disruption, is the preeminent competency individuals and teams must cultivate. Learn what it will take to thrive and excel in the New World of Work -  Future Work. 

KEY LEARNINGS AND TAKEAWAYS: 

  • Learn and internalize the skills and competencies will be essential to stay relevant in Future Work/The New World of Work, and the skills and competencies that are on the decline. Demonstrate the essential tools in the ‘New Work/Future Work Survival Kit’ that include pragmatic, memorable ideas, skills and principles that will equip you and your team with the ability to thrive and excel in the new world of work. 

  • Embrace an understating of what it will take to become ‘distinctive’ in a world where AI and the progression toward the ‘singularity’ are predicted to allow those that choose to, the ability to ‘know all there is to know about everything.’ Practice the keys to build, enhance and grow your desired 'brand' – Organizational and Individual – to become distinctive in today’s commoditized ‘sea of sameness’ 

  • Recognize what it will take for individuals, departments and organizations to thrive, excel, and ward off the unforgiving forces of the ‘7-sided pincer movement.’ 

  • Develop tenacity, resolve and agility to secure your spot in the New World of Work. 

  • Learn how to create a ‘Want-To’ versus a ‘Have-To’ culture. A culture where change is embraced and resiliency and accountability are commonplace. 

  • Assemble a workforce that is connected, committed, aligned and that delivers your 'brand promise.' Become distinctive in today’s sea of sameness 

LEADING CHANGE: Accelerate Achievement of What Matters Most and Thrive in the Age of Disruption

In the past, change was episodic, transient, and gradual; now, change is constant as business, technology, and society itself continue to evolve at an ever more rapid pace.  Accelerating Change – igniting engagement, passion, ownership and creativity that is often lacking during times of change, can be accomplished using proven memorable and pragmatic principles. Learn why some organizations achieve and exceed desired results.

Driving a strategy that requires change in human behavior may be the most difficult challenge a leader can face. What do top leaders do to gain voluntary contributions of discretionary performance from those they lead? How do they create alignment, ownership and accountability for desired results at every level of an organization? How do they ensure that key strategies are not slowly suffocated, but instead produce extraordinary results?

Leading change has become a critical competency in today’s economy. But there is a significant and crucial difference between leading and managing change – not only in the approach, but also more importantly in the results. The success, or lack thereof, with transformational change efforts hinges on a few key principles that have been identified, studied and validated.

Leveraging talent, ideas, speed, distinction and leadership are keys to accelerating change.  Accelerated achievement of desired results can be accomplished through consistent focused attention over time on a few practical, pragmatic and memorable principles. Discover the practices demonstrated by exemplary leaders that result in others voluntarily choosing to follow them.

Intentional focus on these principles will ignite extraordinary results within your organization.  Decades of research have identified five principles and practices that propel organizations forward to blast through the common barriers, obstacles, challenges and inertia that derail most change efforts.

KEY LEARNINGS AND TAKEAWAYS:

  • Embrace the key change principles that are common among successful change efforts. heighten and refine your untapped leadership potential.
  • Understand the critical difference between leading and managing change and the appropriate ratio required to accelerate change.
  • Discover what it takes to move employees from compliance to commitment – jettison resistance.
  • Learn how to create a ‘Want-To’ versus a ‘Have-To’ culture. A culture where change is embraced.
  • Avoid the primary pitfalls and traps that sabotage most change efforts.
  • Learn the five best practices demonstrated by exemplary leaders and how you can apply them.
  • Discover the key elements of communicating a vision that lead to increased levels of commitment, engagement and accountability.
  • Understand what it takes to cultivate a culture where employees ‘bring more of themselves’ to the workplace – where they are engaged, energized and flourish.
  • Learn how to lead, develop and cultivate a culture/team that is equipped to overcome the new 'forces that are coalescing' to dramatically alter the corporate and economic landscape.
  • Discover what it takes to lead a culture/team that is aligned, resolute, engaged, agile and takes accountability and ownership to achieve what matters most.
  • Arouse a sense of purpose, distinction and passion among your employees.

IGNITE ACCOUNTABILITY: Cultivate Resilience, Commitment, Ownership and Perseverance in the New World of Work

Accountability is the Catalyst to: Accelerated Change, Robust Employee Engagement, Intensified Ownership, Relentless Perseverance, Impeccable Alignment, and propels individuals, teams and organizations to intoxicating heights of achievement and success. Learn what it takes to awaken the whatever it takes attitude, belief, resolve, perseverance, confidence, determination, drive and creativity to achieve what matters most to individuals, teams and organizations.

Accountability crumbles silos, boosts teamwork and collaboration, strengthens camaraderie, creativity, resiliency, agility, trust, and communication. Accountability is a current that feeds into the slipstream of success. Your performance, your decisions, and your results are all within your control; when you operate from that premise, magic happens. You deliver like never before because you are personally invested in the outcome. Achieve with Accountability shows you how to nourish that can-do mindset, so you can begin to achieve what matters most.

Discover how to transform accountability into a positive, engaging and forward-looking experience that will secure your position in the new world of work. Learn how to kick-start a revolution that will blast your team or organization to new heights of success.  With the world coming at us fast and furious every day, it's easy to feel like you've lost control of your own life, your team or your organization. By choosing to take and lead accountability you reclaim control and are able to direct your own destiny.

In today’s constant changing competitive environment individuals, teams and organizations must be prepared to convincingly answer these critically important questions:

  1. Who are you? What makes you distinctive in today’s ‘sea of sameness?’
  2. How are you dramatically unique or different?
  3. How do you make a significant difference, or create an astonishing overt benefit?
  4. What is/are your reason/s why anyone should believe in you? Convince me!

KEY LEARNINGS AND TAKEAWAYS:

  • Discover the 4 keys to accountability, along with the observable best practices.
  • Cultivate the agility, flexibility and resiliency to adapt and thrive during constant change.
  • Foster collaboration, camaraderie and teamwork – Establish unshakable trust and credibility.
  • Intensify ownership, engagement and alignment – Crumble silos and abolish territorialism.
  • Instill a can-do, steely resolve, solutions focused mindset in the face of difficult challenges, obstacles and barriers.
  • Eradicate the blame-game and vanquish excuse-making that stifle peak performance.
  • Shed feelings of disarray, discomfort, apathy, entitlement, indifference and despair.
  • Unleash voluntary contributions of discretionary performance that is often left untapped in individuals, teams and organizations.
  • Discover how to develop and enhance your ‘desired brand’ to secure your position now and in the future.
  • Grasp what it takes to unleash your true potential.
  • Develop a team or organization that is connected, aligned and manifests your organizations brand.
  • Break through self-imposed barriers and mediocrity.

BRAND YOU! You are CEO of Your Career, Life, and Destiny

Welcome to the age of self-determination. The era of ‘entitlement’ is history. It’s up to you to take charge of your career and life. You must become CEO of Me, Inc. It’s about maintaining a competitive edge amidst chaos. It’s about achieving success when the stakes are high and ever-changing. Do you know what it will take? Are you ready for the dramatic changes taking place in the New World of Work?

It is incredibly important in today’s economy for everybody to think of himself or herself as a ‘brand.’  Over the past 10-15 years hundreds of thousands of jobs have been expunged, teams eliminated, and firms driven to extinction due to ERP, SAP, the Internet, Globalization, White-Collar Robots (EX: Cash Machines) and other factors. Blue-collar robots came and triumphed. The new target – White-Collar World. Are you prepared?

Those who will thrive and endure in the future will embrace the notion of continually developing skills, abilities and competencies that will set them apart and vividly demonstrate their value to whoever is signing their paycheck. What are you doing to stand out in today’s sea of sameness?

Individuals must be prepared to convincingly answer these critically important questions:

  1. Who are you? What makes you distinctive in this ‘sea of sameness?’
  2. How are you dramatically unique or different?
  3. How do you make a significant difference, or create an astonishing overt benefit?
  4. What is/are your reason/s why anyone should believe in you? Convince me!

KEY LEARNINGS AND TAKEAWAYS:

  • Arouse your understanding and commitment of what it will take to find success in the New World of Work.
  • Discover how to develop and enhance your ‘desired brand’ to secure your position now and in the future.
  • Learn what it will take to gain a reputation as a ‘valued’ employee.
  • Understand how to find more meaning and fulfillment in your work.
  • Grasp what it takes to unleash your true potential.
  • Develop a team or organization that is connected, aligned and manifests your organizations brand.
  • Create internal champions of transformation.
  • Break through self-imposed barriers and mediocrity.

CULTURE SHAPING: Create Your Optimal Peak-Performing Culture

Culture, simply put, is the convergence of the way your employees think and act. That culture is producing your organization’s every result (financial, operational, customer, employee, etc.). If your future desired results are loftier, more difficult, of just different than those you are achieving today, will your current culture be able to deliver?  Most often, the results teams and organizations must achieve in the future will require employees to think and act differently. Creating those ‘shifts’ in how employees think and act is what will propel your team or organization toward those desired results.

Your culture is your ‘brand.’  The experiences your culture creates (the manner in which your employees think and act) will either reinforce that current ‘brand’ or evoke a new one. You can either lead your culture, or it will lead you. An organization’s (or team’s) culture is either an engine propelling it toward its desired results, or an anchor impeding and hindering it’s progress. You can define, lead and shape your optimal culture.

Embrace memorable principles that can be put into practice immediately. Whatever the desired results you wish to achieve or challenges within your organization – employee engagement, culture change, breaking down silos, improving collaboration, raising employee morale, merging cultures, doing more with less – it is through your people that you will either succeed or fail. The manner in which your people behave is a reflection of leadership.

Learn to cultivate an environment where employees at all levels are engaged, energized and flourish. How do you effectively tap into the enormous wealth of creativity, innovation, passion, energy and commitment of employees that is often left idle? Much different than ‘job satisfaction’ (there are a lot of highly paid miserable people who are satisfied with their job) – engagement is about passionate, focused and committed employees contributing daily to help achieve what matters most.

Through intentional focus on a few proven principles, you can ignite extraordinary results within your team or organization. Decades of research have pinpointed principles and practices that accelerate desired shifts in culture. These straightforward, practical and memorable tips can transform your culture to support and deliver your ‘must-achieve desired results.’  The results that will ensure you thrive and excel in the new world of work.

KEY LEARNINGS AND TAKEAWAYS:

  • Learn how to create shifts in the way employees think and act so that your desired culture will flourish and heighten organizational performance.
  • Foster increased levels of trust, collaboration and teamwork
  • Ignite a heightened sense of urgency, accountability, and ownership at all levels of your organization
  • Intensify ownership, engagement and alignment – Crumble silos and abolish territorialism.
  • Understand how to identify the root cause of undesired cultural beliefs and actions that impede progress, and how to infuse desired beliefs and actions to accelerate achievement of desired results.
  • Discover how to gain voluntary commitments from colleagues so they self-select desired actions - Stop wasting time enforcing compliance around policies and procedures.
  • Develop a culture where employees ‘bring more of themselves’ to the workplace – trigger innovation, creativity and passion.
  • Create organizational laser-like focus on what matters most – eliminate confusion, misunderstanding, miscommunication, mistrust, frustration and indifference.
  • Acquire principles and tools to help you clearly define and then establish your optimal culture.
  • Discover what it takes to influence and inspire others – with or without positional authority.

Leveraging Diversity of Thought to Cultivate Collaborative, Peak-Performing, Innovative and Engaged Teams

Leaders of peak performing teams and cultures understand that leveraging diversity of thought, being open to perspectives of others, open and candid communication, talking about the difficult things to see reality and offering and seeking feedback in a positive forward-looking manner are essential. No one person, no matter how well-educated, insightful or tenured, can ‘see all there is to see.’ Every human being sees the world differently. When we tap into and engage this diversity of thought it allows an organization to see more than one leader or individual can see on their own. It opens the door to more opportunities and possibilities. It allows us to better identify potential obstacles, barriers and challenges that may impede our ability to achieve what matter most.

What do top leaders do to gain these voluntary contributions of discretionary performance, thought and creativity? How do they create alignment, ownership and accountability for desired results at every level of an organization? How do they ensure that key strategies are not slowly suffocated, but instead produce extraordinary results? They embrace the abundance of ideas, talent, leadership and differentiation that exists in all organizations.

All individuals have natural strengths that they can bring to a team. When we embrace this fundamental, teams become stronger, more creative, and perform at higher levels. It is crucial to bring out the best of what every team member has to offer. The most current research on the skills and competencies that will prevail in the New World of Work embrace all of what we have shared to this point. Teams that are aware of this and integrate these ideas into their culture will thrive and excel in the New World or Work.

Key One: FOCUS – Create a keen awareness of the most crucial results the team must deliver. These are the 2-3 results in addition to keeping the operation humming. The 2-3 results that when achieved will place the team in a better position for ongoing success.

Key Two: LEVERAGE – Leaders must draw out the diversity of thought, experiences and knowledge that exists in every organization.

Key Three: ENGAGEMENT – Employees are most engaged in their work and contribute above and beyond when they believe they are playing a game they can win. This is accomplished with clarity on your most critical desired results (Key 1). Cultivating a culture where diversity of thought, experiences, education and knowledge is embedded into the culture’s DNA leads to elevated levels of engagement, collaboration, teamwork, accountability and ownership.

Key Four: ACCOUNTABILITY – By establishing processes and systems that integrate these key principles into the DNA of the organization, creates heightened levels or both personal and organizational accountability. 

KEY LEARNINGS AND TAKEAWAYS:

  • Ignite a heightened sense of urgency, accountability, and ownership at all levels of your organization.
  • Discover what it takes to move employees from compliance to commitment – jettison resistance.
  • Learn how to create a ‘Want-To’ versus a ‘Have-To’ culture. A culture where change is embraced.
  • Avoid the primary pitfalls and traps that sabotage most change efforts.
  • Intensify agility, resilience and perseverance.
  • Foster collaboration, camaraderie and teamwork – Establish unshakable trust and credibility.
  • Intensify ownership, engagement and alignment – Crumble silos and abolish territorialism.
  • Instill a can-do, steely resolve, solutions focused mindset in the face of difficult challenges, obstacles and barriers.
  • Arouse a sense of purpose and passion among your employees.
  • Foster innovation and creativity to build and sustain a competitive advantage. 
  • Discover how to craft a culture where employees go above and beyond what is ‘required.’ 
  • Develop a culture where employees ‘bring more of themselves’ to the workplace – trigger innovation, creativity and passion.
  • Create organizational laser-like focus on what matters most – eliminate confusion, misunderstanding, miscommunication, mistrust, frustration and indifference.
  • Discover how to gain voluntary commitments from colleagues so they self-select desired actions - Stop wasting time enforcing compliance around policies and procedures.

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