Oliver W. Markley, Ph.D.
CONSULTING
SERVICES
•
Social entrepreneurship for integral well-being
•
Focused visioning for strategic direction and revitalization
•
Environmental scanning and risk assessment
•
Forecasting and strategic planning
•
Team building and organization effectiveness improvement
•
Stress management, creativity and wellness improvement
OBJECTIVE
Consulting
assignments and social entrepreneurship initiatives to help teams of people
resolve pressing problems in ways that are strategically proactive, humanistically
satisfying, and promote integrity.
BRIEF
BIO
Oliver
Markley is an emeritus professor of
human sciences and studies of the future. His career began as a design engineer
but quickly expanded to include social psychology and “futures research” (forecasting,
strategic trend assessment, visioning, strategic planning).
After ten
years as a principal in a pioneering futures research “think tank” at the Stanford
Research Institute's Management and Social Systems Group, he was recruited to
chair a new graduate program in Studies of the Future at the University of Houston-Clear
Lake, where he taught for 23 years before retirement. As a master of Focused
Visioning methods, Dr. Markley maintains a part-time research and consulting
practice, Inward Bound. Most recently, he has founded The Integrity
Project—an experimental social action initiative using "Integral Spiritual
Activism" as a way to uplift the level of integrity in the body politic:
personal, public and planetary.
SUMMARY
of CURRENT and RECENT PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
- Forty
plus publications on environmental scanning, forecasting, planning, issues
assessment, the management of planned change and creative intuition, including
four books:
- Changing
Images of Man (1982)
- Information
and the Future: A Handbook of Sources and Strategies (1988)
- America
Beyond
2001: Opposing Viewpoints (1995)
- Twenty
First Century Earth: Opposing Viewpoints (1996)
- Consultant
and trainer for more than forty organizations, both in the U.S.
and abroad.
PROFESSIONAL
EXPERIENCE
- 1978 –
2000, Associate Professor to Professor of Human Sciences and Studies of the
Future, University of Houston-Clear Lake. While chair of the Studies of
the Future Program, transformed curriculum from a liberal arts orientation
to practical training for professional consulting, resulting in a three-fold
increase in student enrollment from 15 to 45 and a strong community of alumni
who are now leaders in the field of professional futures research and consulting.
- 1968 –
1978, Visiting Fellow to Senior Policy Analyst, Principal Investigator and
Management Consultant at the Center for Study of Social Policy, Management
and Social Systems Group, Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International).
In addition to other duties, as director of methodology development, developed
a wide variety of innovative tools and methods now widely used in the professional
field of futures research and consulting.
- 1967
– 1968, NIMH Post Doctoral Fellow with Carl Rogers at the Western Behavioral
Sciences Institute, learning client-oriented methods for group dynamics
facilitation and consulting.
- 1958
–1964, Design engineer, computer
systems programmer, and draftsman at numerous California Aerospace firms before
changing career focus of from design engineering to social and organizational
psychology, futures research, consulting and teaching.
REPRESENTATIVE
RESEARCH AND CONSULTING ASSIGNMENTS
- For a
variety of major high technology firms in California
and in Texas
(e.g., Apple, Texas Instruments, Tenneco,
Conoco, Amoco), did proprietary trend analysis and executive briefings on
“STEEP” threats and strategic opportunities leading to improvements in
product and strategic planning (STEEP is an acronym for Social/demographic,
Technological, E conomic, Ecological, and Political.)
- For the
NASA Johnson
Space
Center,
did an audit of strategic planning that led to a new approach which won
them an award for “best practice” of strategic planning at NASA.
- For the
Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, did a feasibility study, leading
to the implementation of a new system for vocational forecasting and strategic
planning of vocational education at the community college level.
- For the
National Institute of Education, did a feasibility study of systems-oriented
governance of R&D management, leading to a more community-oriented management
model.
- For the
California State Department of Benefits Payments (welfare) Planning Office,
developed an innovative trends
monitoring and intelligence system that gave them early warning on challenges
needing to be planned for and managed.
- For the
Kettering Foundation, led a pioneering futures research project with Joseph
Campbell, Margaret Mead and others focusing on the possibility of a future
“new paradigm” society that would be both sustainable and humane. Its 1973
report, Changing Images of Man, became something of an underground
classic for evolutionary theorists and activists, before it was possible to
get published, almost a decade later.
PRINCIPAL
UNIVERSITY COURSES TAUGHT
- Forecasting;
Technology Assessment; Applied Futures Research
- World
Futures; Visionary Futures; Social change
- Meaning
and Identity; Human Consciousness; Global Consciousness
- Change,
Management and the Future; Media and the Future; Issues Management
- Creativity
in Business; Entrepreneurship and the Future
- Strategic
Planning and Organization Development
- Your Changing
Future (a personal/professional strategic planning course for non-futures
majors)
EDUCATION
AND CERTIFICATION
- B.S. and
M.S. in design engineering, San Diego State
and Stanford
University
(1962 and 1963)
- M.A. and
Ph.D. in social psychology, Northwestern
University
(1966 and 1968)
- Registered
Professional Engineer: California
No. ME-13203