I Told HR To Have More (Idea) Sex, And It Was All Because of DisruptHR!

One of my professional highlights in 2015 was speaking at DisruptHR Denver.  

DisruptHR is creating the rebellious future of HR by inviting people to share new HR ideas in a fun, innovative format.  

Speakers have 5 minutes to deliver an entertaining, thought-provoking talk on any idea related to human resources.

As an HR professional in Denver, I had attended two DisruptHR events in the past and enjoyed the format.  

Each speaker had 20 slides, auto-advancing every 15 seconds.  

The format keeps the speaker moving along, the points are made quickly, there is usually humor involved, and sometimes there is profanity.

I appreciated the speakers who were edgy without going over the line.

In my mind, I told myself I would be a DisruptHR speaker, someday.

Last summer, I received an email from the organizers about an upcoming event in August.  

I racked my brain for ideas, and one morning on my commute to work, I came up with one.  

When I arrived at my office, I filled out the form explaining my idea and hit submit.

A few weeks later, I got an email saying I had been selected. I think my first reaction was a mixture of "Yes!" and "Oh, $#!t."

On August 27, 2015, I stood on stage in front of 300 HR professionals and said the following:

"HR needs more sex."

More specifically, Idea Sex.

I went on to explain the concept of Idea Sex, which I stole from James Altucher.

Go watch the video.  It's only 5 minutes long. 

If you don't have that kind of time, I've summarized my talk under the video.

Idea sex is taking two ideas, mating them, and seeing what kind of weird offspring they produce.

I used the example of combining performance reviews with Yelp to innovate employee evaluations.

(Note: At the time of the talk, I had not heard about the controversial Peeple app, which launched this week.) 

I also talked about approaching talent reviews like a fantasy football draft.

I explained idea sex is one way HR pros can innovate.

I gave 5 guidelines so the audience could start having idea sex.

• Guideline #1 for Idea Sex: Have lots of ideas. The more you start with, the more you end up with.
• Guideline #2 for Idea Sex: Don’t go solo. Get out of your house. Your ideas need to meet other ideas.
• Guideline #3 for Idea Sex: Avoid incest. Find other groups of people outside of HR to share your ideas with.
• Guideline #4 for Idea Sex: Be promiscuous. Have as many idea sex partners as possible.
• Guideline #5 for Idea Sex: Don’t use protection. You can't create new ideas if you say "That won't work," or "Legal won't sign off on it."  Just have lots of ideas and figure out who will adopt them later.

The audience came looking for the future of HR.

I told them, "Go have idea sex and conceive it!"

What happened next?

After my talk, I had HR pros around Denver reach out to me and tell me how much they liked the concept of idea sex, and they were going to use it with their HR teams.

When the video of the talk was posted on the DisruptHR website, people around the country contacted me through LinkedIn and Twitter.

Only good things happened because I got on stage and shared an idea.

The world needs your ideas.

You don't have to be in human resources.

You don't have to be a professional speaker.

You don't have to be on stage for more than 5 minutes.

All you need is the desire to share your ideas about HR with an audience of like-minded people.

If that interests you, check out DisruptHR.com to see when the next event is being held in a city near you.  

The next one in Denver will be April 14th.  

Go to DisruptHR.com/Denver to submit your idea by March 18th.

I could have kept my idea sex idea to myself.  

I could have said, "I have too much work to do."

I could have let the deadline pass and kept thinking someday I would be a DisruptHR speaker.

Fortunately, I took action one day last summer.

I'm not saying my talk changed HR, but I made a few people think, and maybe their new ideas will change the way we think about HR.

If you have an idea, it needs to be shared.

DisruptHR is the perfect place to do it.

I'm looking forward to the next DisruptHR in Denver, CO on April 14th.

I hope you will be there, on stage, sharing your ideas with the world.

Greg Roche is a multipotentialite husband and father with a day job and a couple of side businesses. He likes corporate wellness, behavior design, data science, flying drones, and working out. He's just trying to find time to fit it all in. See his projects at gregsroche.com and 15minutesofchange.com