Against a backdrop of business successes such as Intel and Apple, and casualties such as Twinkies’ bankruptcy and Blockbuster’s inability to withstand what he called the “disruptive innovation” of Netflix, Jackson warned that “businesses that don’t see change coming will be gobbled up and taken over.”

The speed and growth of change in the business world, said Jackson, “has changed the way we live and work,” and HR, and SHRM, “will help drive that growth and new direction.”

After listing many of SHRM’s recently launched and ambitious initiatives — including its introduction of HR competencies and standards, established in partnership with the American National Standards Institute, and its even-more-recently announced commitment to immigration as a future-workforce promise — Jackson called on the thousands of HR professionals in the audience to join with his group and help lead the nation’s businesses to a new age.

“We as HR professionals now own our seat at the table,” he said. “Now we have to take that next step and take our place at the head of the table.”

Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was also positive in her opening keynote. Despite the nation’s crisis in education threatening to become “our No. 1 national-security threat,” she said, “I’m still optimistic — like our country [which has endured powerful hardships in its past] and like me, a girl from a black neighborhood in Birmingham, Alabama, who goes on to become the country’s secretary of state.

“We will emerge,” said Rice, “this exceptional country called the United States of America.”

Earlier that day, however, in a press conference called by the SHRM Members for Transparency, a different kind of change was being called for — one intended to right a SHRM ship that the group’s members say has drifted far off course.

Some of the SMFT’s key concerns about the current SHRM leaders center around what it considers non-transparent decision-making, salaries adopted for SHRM board members that fly in the face of today’s still-sputtering economy (and SHRM traditions) and board members being appointed without being certified by the Human Resource Certification Institute (a practice that has been in place since the HRCI was established in 1976).

At the press briefing, the SMFT released results of two surveys it conducted in May — one of 3,607 SHRM volunteer state, regional and chapter leaders, and another of 350 grassroots members — showing definitive support for what the SMFT is trying to address.

Highlights of the survey results include a 98-percent agreement that the SHRM board should follow the Center for Association Leadership and BoardSource recommendation of establishing an independent compensation committee, which the current SHRM Board has chosen not to do. Additionally, 91 percent agree that the board’s compensation is too high; 94 percent agree that the current perks, such as domestic premium-class air travel, are not necessary to recruit and retain good board members; and 87 percent believe it is unacceptable that only 38 percent of SHRM board members possess HRCI certification.

The group also announced Sunday that it was launching a massive write-in campaign to elect four of its members to the SHRM board to correct these flaws.

This February 2011 HREOnline^™ news analysis says that, “among other issues, the Transparency group is actively encouraging SHRM members to request outside reviews of board compensation and travel-reimbursement policies; to have the job specifications for the CEO revised to require HR experience and education [which Jackson does not have]; and to discontinue future use of the consumer-price index as a factor in dues increases.

“Reasonable people can disagree on how you attract the best board members,” Jackson said in that story, “and I think the group’s fundamental concerns are that we’re breaking SHRM traditions. But SHRM is growing in size and complexity and that means some of the more traditional things may go away because of that.”