About Pat

Pat Cormier is an executive coach and management consultant who founded his own practice about five years ago, focused on change and transformation. He spent 15-plus years with Kotter International — the firm started by change-management thought leader John Kotter — and remains a Kotter affiliate. Pat works with leaders across healthcare, pharma, government, and nonprofits worldwide, helping organizations move faster through uncertainty, AI adoption, and generational workforce shifts.

What we talked about

Reframing as a superpower — Pat argues the ability to help people reframe fear and anxiety — not just push new tools — is what lets organizations move through change they cannot fully embrace yet.

People skills are the hardest skills — Leaders treat human dynamics as "soft," but Pat believes they are the most important — especially as technology and productivity metrics pushed people to the back burner.

Hierarchy is too slow — Traditional top-down structures cannot match today's communication speed; collaborative, networked leadership with less control and more trust is the alternative.

AI and the middle manager — AI may threaten task-based management, but Pat sees a near-term need for leadership behaviors — creativity, holistic thinking — cultivated at every level, not just in the C-suite.

Four generations on one team — Boomers through Gen Z share offices but want different things from work; peer-to-peer communication beats top-down memos for building urgency.

Leading AI adoption without firing everyone — Pat cites Roger's Law of Diffusion: focus on innovators and early adopters, show tangible proof points, and invest time in the people side so execution actually accelerates.

Sharpest moments

On reframing:

the ability to reframe in this world today is the new superpower

On people skills:

they're the hardest skills of all

On a CEO who fired 80% of staff for AI readiness:

I look at that as a failure of leadership and a detriment to society.

On where to invest in change:

if you spend more time on the people aspect of it, the execution actually goes faster.

On why change initiatives fail:

70 to 75 % of the change efforts that corporations were taking on failed

Key takeaways

• Leaders come to Pat asking how to move faster — the answer starts with clarity, urgency, and why each generation should care, not more systems.
• Hierarchical information hoarding blocks speed; collaborative leadership with distributed trust is the structural fix.
• AI can stunt creative thinking if people over-rely on it — organizations need leadership behaviors everywhere, not just positional titles.
• Burnout often comes from always tapping the same high performers while training everyone else to wait for instructions.
• Cultural change can build meaningful alignment in six months for large organizations — if you invest in people before execution.
• Kotter's decades-old stat still holds: most corporate change efforts fail because profits trump employee trust.
• Reframing AI as augmentation — humans with AI replacing humans without — is how Pat helps resistant teams move forward.