Pinaki Kathiari presenting on the Transform 2026 stage
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Keynote

Unseen Levers of Change

Leading people through change when nobody has a map.

35 minutes
For internal comms, HR & digital workplace leads
The Speaker

Who's on stage.

Pinaki Kathiari
Pinaki Kathiari
CEO, Local Wisdom
Keynote SpeakerView profile →
About This Talk

Change is not a logistics problem. It's a feeling problem.

Organizations announce restructures, office moves and new platforms as though the work is in the rollout plan, when the actual work is in what the announcement triggers — fear, loss of control, pain with no sense of when it ends.

From there, five levers that decide whether people move with a change or dig in. Why change begins as a feeling rather than a plan. Why the worst part feels permanent, and what changes when someone shows you it isn't. Why everyone in the building sits at a different point on the same curve. And why leadership, weeks ahead, mistakes that gap for resistance. How change actually travels, person to person, rather than down a cascade. And why the frame you choose measurably changes whether people support it.

You do not leave with a rollout template. You leave able to locate where different groups actually are, and to pace what you say to where they're standing.

Format
Keynote
Length
35 minutes
Presenter
Pinaki Kathiari
Built for
Internal communicators, HR and digital workplace leads carrying a change somebody else decided on. Enterprise scale, distributed workforces.
Tailored to
The change your people are facing — AI, a restructure, a platform migration, a merger
Presented at
Transform 2026, Las Vegas
Takeaways Photos
What Attendees Leave With

A feeling problem, not a logistics one.

You'll learn to

01
Locate where each group sits on the change curve
Rather than assuming a single audience.
02
Pace communication to where people are
Match each group's position instead of the announcement date.
03
Use Nancy Duarte's four tools
Speeches, stories, ceremonies, and symbols, to move people through the stages of a change.
04
Invest in first followers
Rather than relying on the communication cascade.
05
Choose a forward-facing frame
Over a return-to-normal one, and know why it matters.
Pinaki Kathiari at Transform 2026
Book This Talk

Bring it to your stage.

Unseen Levers of Change is a 35-minute keynote for teams carrying a change they didn't choose. Tell us what your audience is going through and we'll tailor it to fit.