KEYNOTE:
IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK:
The Neuroscience of Change
This science-backed keynote helps your leaders understand the science of what change does to human performance, teaches them how to recognize what their teams are experiencing, and gives them the tools to lead people through change more effectively.
Audience: Executives |  Leaders |  Managers Â
BOOK THIS KEYNOTEThe Problem:
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Your organization isn't dealing with one change. It's dealing with a multitude of them, stacked on top of each other, all at once, with no recovery in between.
- 69% of change initiatives fail - a number that hasn't moved in 30 years.
- Change-fatigued employees cost organizations up to 18% of salary in lost productivity.
- Only 43% of highly change-fatigued employees intend to stay, compared to 74% with low fatigue.
The result: decision fatigue, decision paralysis, cognitive overload, and uncertainty hijacking judgment exactly when it matters most. Leadership sees the disengagement, the stalled adoption, the rising attrition - calls it resistance or apathy - and sends more communication. The needle still doesn't move.
The Promise:
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That's because it's not what people think. It's how they react.
You're not solving a communication problem, a mindset problem, or a "people just need to get on board" problem. It's a performance physiology problem.
Change triggers a measurable, predictable stress response - not a personality flaw or attitude problem. This response reroutes the exact brain functions your people are being paid to use to adopt the latest initiative: judgment, memory, impulse control, decision-making under uncertainty.
In It's Not What You Think, Jenny Evans helps your leaders understand the neuroscience of change and gives them the practical, science-backed tools to successfully lead their teams through disruption - instead of just pushing more communication at it.
Keynote Overview
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This isn't a change management refresher, and it's not another appeal to "get on board." Jenny combines organizational research - built from measuring resilience and change capacity across real Fortune 500 populations - with the specific, replicated science of how stress moves through people and teams during disruption.
Leaders will discover:
- Why their communication keeps missing its mark, no matter how well it's written
- How stress spreads through a team faster than any announcement can
- Why organizations run out of change capacity long before they run out of initiatives
- How to tell the difference between resistance and a depleted biological system
- A four-part practice, deployable in a single meeting, a 1:1, or a hallway conversation that will help their people adapt to change
Planner ROI: Your leaders don't just understand why change is hard - they leave with a repeatable practice they can apply to every future initiative. This means faster adoption, lower attrition risk, and a leadership team that stops mistaking overload for resistance.
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BOOK JENNY TO SPEAKKey Takeaways
After this keynote, your leaders will be able to:
- Spot the early signs of change overload in their teams before it shows up as a performance dip or an attrition spike
- Understand how and why change affects decision-making, focus, and performance - and why that's biology, not character
- Build change resilience and mental fitness in their people, countering the cognitive overload that quietly erodes focus and output
- Understand what has to happen biologically before rational communication - the FAQ, the town hall, the well-crafted memo - can actually be absorbed
- Bring credible, science-backed strategies into leadership conversations for helping their teams and people adapt quickly
Who Is This For?
- CHROs and senior leaders responsible for driving organizational change
- Leaders navigating a restructure, M&A, AI rollout, or leadership transition
- Organizations whose change initiatives keep stalling despite heavy investment in comms and training
- Conferences on change management, leadership, or organizational performance
What Clients Are Saying
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"Over the course of 6 months, Jenny stood in front of more than 3,500 executives at AT&T for four hours at a time. Her obvious passion around the material and her genuine concern for the participants in the room created a tidal wave of action at this great company. This response was consistent from coast to coast in the United States and didn't skip a beat when we took the program to London and Hong Kong. We could not be more proud to call Jenny Evans our friend and our trusted partner. She has changed our culture for the better and we are forever grateful.”
– Alyson Woodard, Director of Executive Development, AT&T University
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“On behalf of the Women in Leadership networking group I would like to thank you again for an energizing and actionable session today! We heard several wonderful comments on the way out about how perfect your messages were for us. We so appreciate the power of your presentation and it is up to each of us to take action. Not to mention you are just a ton of fun!”
– Becky Locke, Director of Talent Development, Blue Cross and Blue Shield
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“I selected Jenny Evans to work with the entire Clinique North American Sales and Education Executives. Though we were fortunate to work with a number of outstanding outside consultants, Jenny was one of the special few who made a lasting impression and directly contributed to the health and productivity of our team."
– Heidi Guest, Vice President Education, North America, Clinique
Planner Resources
Everything you need to book Jenny seamlessly:
- Jenny Bios
- Headshots
- Jenny Introduction
- AV Requirements
Change failure is costing you more than you think.
Sixty nine percent of change initiatives fail - it's not apathy or a “get on board” problem, it's biology.
This keynote pays for itself if it saves just one stalled initiative.
BOOK THIS SESSION FOR YOUR LEADERSNavigation
FOR ORGANIZATIONSÂ |Â Â FOR INDIVIDUALSÂ Â |Â Â SPEAKINGÂ Â |Â MEET JENNY Â |Â Â SHOPÂ |Â Â CONTACT
