Chuck Schaefer and Jeff Evans met in the late 1980’s. Chuck was an experienced OD Consultant and practitioner of SocioTechnical Systems design. Jeff was working in training, OD, and Quality in manufacturing settings and was in his doctoral program. Their common interests led them to working more together, until by the early 90’s they were working together as a small consultancy out of San Francisco California.
They approached all of their projects as an action learning research project, documenting their assumptions, the research base, and their methodologies. Then they ran reflective learning processes to understand what worked and what did not. What followed was over a decade of work around the world in settings ranging from international company transformations to chemical plants. After many experiments they learned what worked, then began to refine it.
In early 2000, they decided to expand on their personal guide to the methodology of creating high performing organizations and turn it into a book. The Ten Tasks of Change emerged, with the intention of being something of a strategic guide to approaching this work. It was published in 2001 through Jossey/Bass-Pfeiffer. Jeff and Chuck continued to work together for years afterwards.
Jeff Evans, PhD.
Dr. Jeff Evans is the CEO of Envision Global Leadership. He also practices in the areas of leadership development, human systems change, and organizational capability, serving clients as a learning partner and coach. He has spent the past 25 years heavily involved in supporting executives through transformational change, organizational development, and the management of organizational development and education systems. His wide experience includes work as both an internal and external consultant.
He has consulted and coached in new organization designs and startups, large group change methodologies, and joint ventures and alliances in international and global settings. His client base has ranged from international executive teams to manufacturing management teams in retail, manufacturing, information technology, telecommunications, research and development, as well as oil and gas exploration.
Additionally, Jeff spends time developing training programs and standards for the Executive Coaching profession. He is the designer and lead instructor in EGL's Executive Coach Training, as well as serving as an exam assessor for the International Coach Federation, and serves as a mentor coach for other professionals.
He is the author of the #1 best-seller 'Inspirational Presence: The Art of Transformational Leadership' and co-author of 'Ten Tasks Of Change: Demystifying Changing Organizations' as well as numerous papers and research studies. Jeff has been a key presenter at conferences in the areas of organization development, large scale change, and internal consulting support. He has authored numerous papers and research studies on learning organizations, leadership, training design, and training systems.
He has degrees in education and social sciences, including a Ph.D. in Educational Human Resource Development from Texas A&M. He completed a 3 Year Post-Graduate track in organization development at the Gestalt Institute in Cleveland and has done post-doctoral work in behavioral systems, organizations, and the psychology of group dynamics. He is also a Master Certified Coach (MCC) through the International Coach Federation (ICF).
Chuck Schaefer
Chuck Schaefer was the director of Schaefer Associates and a senior professional in the fields of applied behavioral science and organization development. In his long time practice, he successfully guided leaders and their organizations through the development of strategic mission clarity and plans, organization restructuring, installation of high performance work systems, management team and work team design and development, critical business and human process improvement, and finding effective collaborative solutions to difficult organizational issues. He worked from a "human systems" perspective aimed at joint optimization of business goals, operating excellence and human quality of work life.
Basically, Chuck operated as a "process consultant" rather than as a business content specialist. He expertly guided people through the tasks of doing fundamental, candid action-research on themselves and their situation, supporting them in managing the human dynamics involved in taking a hard look at oneself and following through with what change is needed to succeed.
In addition to his organization and leadership consulting work, Chuck's professional experiences included time as a program manager and systems architect; university faculty appointments in behavioral science, organization, and management; and workshop leader in human potential development. As well as coaching executives and managers, Chuck guided the development of internal organization development personnel. His undergraduate studies were in aerospace engineering at the University of Illinois , and his graduate work was in applied behavioral science, high performance organization and humanistic psychology at the University of California , Los Angeles . He also had professional certifications in personal growth learning group leadership, large group interventions, application of NLP processes, and applied guided imagery.
Sadly, Chuck Schaefer passed away in 2013. He is greatly missed.
