Jef Staes

About Jef Staes

He confronts his audience with the challenges of the information age, offers a new vocabulary and so enables CEOs, managers, and employees alike, to start implementing solutions today.

Jef is a leading authority in Belgium on Learning processes and Innovative Organizations. With over 30 years of experience in dealing with learning and innovation, he currently assists organizations and companies in their quest to find a comprehensive answer and approach to the changing dynamics of today’s market.

Jef’s stories about red monkeys and passionless sheep have awakened many listeners. With these stories, he paints a stark picture of the design flaws in our society and its organizations. Neither has been built to withstand the flood wave of innovation and information of the 21st century.

Based on a professional career as software engineer, training manager and Corporate Learning Officer, he focuses on the urgent need for culture change. Not only does he discuss the future role Human Resources Management, but also the need for Executives to wake up and start building Learning and Innovative Organizations.

“Why don’t organizations learn and innovate fast enough?”

Jef Staes offers an answer to this question. As a business speaker he awakens companies and presents them with a unique concept to guide them through the necessary changes. Change processes in the field of management and learning, should always aim to dramatically increasing the flexibility and the power to innovate of workers, teams and organizations. Jef Staes has given hundreds of lectures on culture innovation bringing a variety of different perspectives to this subject and this for a very diverse audience (Conferences, Education, In-company, Associations…). He was a speaker at numerous international conferences.

He is also the author of the Red Monkey Trilogy of which the first book ‘My Organization is a Jungle’ has been translated. Here he further explores the dramatic difficulties Innovation faces in most organizations today. Through the use of rich metaphors and exciting parallels, he engages you in the story of the Red Monkey.

His most important project is the Red Monkey Company to further aid organizations in their transition to a new culture. The aim is to bring companies together to share information and best practices. And ultimately to implement ideas that increase the agility and innovation power of employees, teams and processes.