August 19 and 20^th. Chicago, Illinois. ILSHRM13. BOOM!

This is the event I’ve been looking forward to all summer. The folks at Illinois SHRM have put together a tremendous line up of speakers and I’m really excited about attending. Daniel Crosby’s keynote has the fantastic title: “You’re Not That Great: A Motivational Speech”. Dwane Lay is doing both a keynote and a concurrent session – I’ve seen him a couple of times and he’s always entertainingly thought provoking (or is that thought provokingly entertaining?). Kris Dunn and Laurie Ruettimann were two of the first bloggers I followed and inspired me to start blogging myself. For me it’ll be worth the trip to Chicago just to see them present.

In the concurrent sessions, there’s Doug Shaw, Paul Hebert, Susan Avello, and so many more. All folks with strong reputations for thinking differently and bringing new perspectives to the issues we all face. I haven’t seen Paul or Susan present (yet) but I’m a big fan of Doug’s take on HR and business and his down to earth presentation style. Attend his session if you can.

I’ll be there too. This year, my boss and co-conspirator Cheryl Gochis and I have been on a world tour*, speaking at several different conferences. I don’t want to brag too much about our skills, but I’m confident we are the only speakers who have used a life-size cardboard cutout of Chewbacca to make a point about employee engagement.

In Chicago, we’re presenting two concurrent sessions: “Creating Culture Change on Cruise Control” and “HR: Simplifier or Complicator”. No Chewbacca this time around but we’re ready to bring our energy, passion, and perhaps a different take on HR.  I like to believe that the company I work for does HR different than many companies and it’s fantastic fun to share what’s worked for us (and what hasn’t), learn from all the participants, and meet people who are trying to move the field forward. No matter how good I think we’re doing, there is always so much to discover and so many ways to raise our own game even more.

So What Are Our Presentations About?

Changing cultures is difficult – really difficult – so the “Creating Culture Change on Cruise Control” session looks at ways we can leverage existing HR processes to make that change easier. Cruise control isn’t autopilot and it’s doesn’t make the journey instantaneous. We still have to steer, but cruise control lets us make steady progress uphill, downhill, around corners, while allowing us to focus on more important aspects of the drive.

The “HR: Simplifier or Complicator” session is based on the idea that people are either simplifiers who make it easier to get work done and accelerate results or are barriers who complicate and slow things down with drama, politics, and “War and Peace” sized policy books. Laws, regulations, and human nature are complicated enough so we look at some ways that HR can help cut through all that and be a simplifier. A little bit of fair warning for you: it’s at 7:30am on Tuesday, we’ll be ready to rock full force, and we like plenty of interaction, so this will not be a session to ease you into the morning. Get up, get your coffee, and get excited.

Say “Hi”.

If you are attending the conference, please find me and say “hi”. One of the best parts about conferences is meeting new people and kicking around ideas.

See you there!

 

 

 

*World tour in the sense that we’ve spoken at different places on the world, not necessarily around the world. A subtle difference to be sure.