Ignite HR: Bringing a Greater Understanding to Diversity and Inclusion

Say what you will about the Ignite HR presentation format, but if nothing else, it guarantees that you’ll get in and out of an issue quickly.

More importantly, it challenges you to invest just about 5 minutes of your time in an HR or talent management topic that you probably would be well served knowing a lot more about.

All this week, TLNT has been featuring Ignite HR presentations from October’s 2nd annual HR Reinvention “Experiment” in Omaha, Nebraska, and the subjects have been diverse, insightful, and always engaging. The first four, in case you missed them, were:

David Allen and Kelly Sickmeir talking about How You Can Turn Potential Into Productivity;
Maren Hogan on Why It’s Important to Build Talent Communities;
William Tincup on Getting to No, or What If We Really Could Reinvent HR?, and
Stuart Chittenden talking about Your Employer Brand Has Power — That’s Why HR Should Own It

Diversity, inclusion, and “The Sweetness”

Ignite HR is a unique format that gives presenters a tight structure of 5 minutes, 20 slides and exactly 15 seconds per slide. This makes it hard for presenters or conference attendees to linger on any one slide, any one point, and any single issue.

These presentations were originally given at the HR Reinvention conference put on by Jason Lauritsen and Joe Gerstandt, the two guys behind Talent Anarchy, in October in Omaha, and since TLNT was the media sponsor of the event, I agreed to possibly using the Ignite HR presentations here at TLNT if they seemed good. They were, and I am.

Today’s final Ignite HR video is from Joe Gerstandt himself, and he brought new clarity to diversity in his presentation “The Sweetness.” If we have lost our way, or at least lost our mojo for real diversity and inclusion work, this presentation might help us find our way back. As Joes says, “Clarity is our friend after all.”

As a long-time conference-goer who has seen just about any and every kind of presentation possible, the Ignite HR format is a welcome relief from all of that.

But as I have said before, you should watch these videos and make up your mind for yourself. The Ignite HR experience in Omaha was related to the theme of “putting the human back in human resources,” so if you are interested in that — and that’s why you’re here at TLNT, I would think — then these video are clearly for you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meC1qmJfMSc

Jason Lauritsen and Joe Gerstandt will be presenting at the TLNT Transform conference in Austin, Texas Feb. 26-28, 2012. Their topic will be When Talent Isn’t Enough: Social Capital and the Future of HR. If you haven’t signed up to attend, you should, and you can do it here.