DisruptHR Kansas City
Your Best Hire Already Works for You — Twenty slides, fifteen seconds each, five minutes total, and one uncomfortable question: how many of the roles you went outside to fill could have been filled by someone already badged in?
Five minutes.
No hiding.
DisruptHR is a global event series built to shake up the way people talk about talent, culture, and leadership. The Kansas City chapter brings HR leaders, executives, and people-first practitioners together for an evening of rapid-fire talks and real conversation at Rock Island Bridge, the venue suspended over the Kaw River between Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas.
The format is deliberately unforgiving. Every speaker gets twenty slides, fifteen seconds per slide, five minutes total, and the slides advance whether you are ready or not. DisruptHR Kansas City 6.0 was organized by Matt Filing and Zach Brown of Lockton Companies.
Your Best Hire Already Works for You
Exclusive to this stage.
Every open role starts the same way. Write the job description, post it, screen the pile, pay the fee, wait ninety days for someone to learn what half your team already knows. Meanwhile the person who could have done the job walks past your office twice a day.
We have been trained to believe talent is something you go get. Chris makes the case that most of the capability you are shopping for is already on your payroll, unused, and that the reason you cannot see it is that you have only ever evaluated people against the job they currently hold. Potential does not announce itself. It waits to be asked.
The Search You Keep Restarting
What going outside actually costs, once you count the ramp and not just the fee.
Potential Is Quiet
Your strongest internal candidate is usually the one not lobbying for the job.
Nobody Is Ever Ready
The external hire you settled for was not ready either. You just could not see it.
Promote the Trajectory
Hire the slope, not the snapshot. Bet on who someone is becoming.
See It Live.
The full five minutes of Your Best Hire Already Works for You, recorded on the DisruptHR Kansas City 6.0 stage.
What Attendees Took Away
An honest count of the roles filled outside that could have been filled inside.
How to spot capability that never shows up on a résumé.
The question to ask your team before you approve the next req.
One name to develop on purpose, starting this week.
Feedback from leaders in the room.
His topics are well researched, and he weaves in practical tips and real-life examples that make every session realistic and relatable.
Chris consistently brings knowledge, insight, and practical advice to every presentation, elevating the value he brings to every engagement.
I always have takeaways to put into action after Chris’ sessions. He cares deeply about uplifting the entire profession.
You Are Capable of More.
The five minutes on the DisruptHR stage are a compressed version of something longer. You Are Capable of More is the bestselling book behind the talk — ten principles for closing the gap between what you are doing and what you are actually capable of.
It is built for leaders who keep hitting the same ceiling with their people and cannot work out whether the problem is the talent, the system, or themselves. Most of the time it is none of the three. It is what nobody has asked of them yet.
You Are Capable of More.
Chris is the author of the bestselling You Are Capable of More. Copies can be bundled for attendees, and Chris can run a signing table in the exhibit hall — which drives traffic for your sponsors.
Winner, How-To Category2026 Paris Book FestivalAbout the Book →Official Book Site →DisruptHR Kansas City.
DisruptHR is a global information exchange built to energize, inform and empower people in HR, running in more than 200 cities worldwide. The format is deliberately unforgiving: twenty slides, fifteen seconds each, auto-advancing. Five minutes, no hiding behind a deck.
The Kansas City chapter held its sixth event at the Rock Island Bridge, the 35,000 square foot entertainment space built on a 1905 railroad bridge spanning the Kansas River. Chris has also spoken at DisruptHR Omaha.
Bring This to Your EventBook Chris for your event.
Chris’s talks on leadership, growth, and the talent already sitting inside your building are among his most requested sessions. Check availability and receive a customized proposal.