Speaking

Current Topics of Research, Executive Education, and Professional Writing

Dr. John Boudreau is an award-winning and globally sought-after speaker, who gets top reviews for stimulating, rigorous, important, mind-stretching and timely topics, delivered with humor, humility and engagement.  He speaks to the timely topics listed below, and more generally about the future of work, teams, organizations, society and human resource management.

If you would like to invite John to deliver a keynote or contribute to a writing project, please review his speaking topics below to identify the topic your interest best fits. Then contact John to discuss your request.

Browse Topics

Achieving Excellence in Strategic HR

Data from a unique survey conducted every three years (the next wave to be published in 2018) reveals the trends in HR’s strategic role, effectiveness, structure, strategy, roles, measures and decision support systems can be determined. Key messages include what HR elements are related to HR and organizational effectiveness, what has and has not changed over time in the HR function, and what contributes to HR’s strategic role.

Investing in People

This topic is based on my book which contains practical and precise ways to calculate the costs and benefits of investments in human capital, covering areas such as health and wellness, absence, turnover, staffing and engagement. It provides a framework to make metrics and analytics catalysts for improved decisions. Software available at the Society for HR Management web site provides tools to use actual organizational data to conduct the calculations, and report the results in any global currency they choose.

Beyond HR

This topic is based on my book which introduces the idea that the vital future frontier for HR lies not within the HR profession, but “Beyond HR” in the thousands of decisions made by leaders and employees about their own human capital and the human capital under their stewardship. It introduced the concept of pivotal roles, Efficiency-Effectiveness-Impact, and the lessons from the professions of finance and marketing, for the evolution and future of HR. Examples include PepsiCo, Starbucks, Boeing, and Disney.

Strategic Partnership with Impact

This long-running workshop, taught now both in-house and at the Center for Effective Organizations, provides HR business partners with tools to analyze organizational strategy and identify strategic pivot-points, and the talent and organizational pivot-points where improvement will most advance sustainable strategic success. It reflects the principles and examples in Beyond HR as well as the evidence and frameworks that describe the future HR, and specific implications for measurement and analytics developed in Transformative HR and Investing in People.

Risk-Optimization in Human Capital Strategy

This topic, based on my book, Short Introduction to Strategic Human Resource Management, describes the elements and principles of human capital strategy. It uniquely connects those elements to a framework of risk-optimization that approaches risk beyond the typical idea of something to be prevented, and instead draws on actuarial and other disciplines that emphasize optimizing risk: taking the risks that are prudent and avoiding those that are not. Examples include Disney, SYSCO, Boeing, and PepsiCo.