The History of OND
Born in the real world for real business needs.
Marcus Harwood, the inventor of Method Teaming and CEO of OND, was a partner at a major consulting firm during the 1990’s and held a position on the Executive Committee. At that time, the North American Chairman outlined a stunning new challenge for the business; to increase revenue from $350MM to $700MM, while decreasing the number of clients from 2000 to 300; and all in just five years. Working committees were created to orchestrate the transformation and Marcus was named as co-chairman of the People and Culture Committee.
Marcus quickly concluded that the firm would have to deploy multiple partners into a single account. This was unheard of in the industry at the time, as the usual business model was to have the partner who established a new account benefitting from everything the client purchased. The new model would mean that partners, each with their own expertise, must collaborate for the first time to build relationships and develop business in one account. This fundamental change required the firm to transform quickly from a zero-teaming to a world-class teaming organization. A global search for a teaming methodology was launched, but nothing could be found that matched their needs. As a very creative and pragmatic Partner, Marcus’ view was “Fine! We will simply have to create one” and the predecessor methodology to Method Teaming was born. It was crude compared to what we have today, however, it ensured the organization met its revenue objective in 3 years and over the 5 year program produced triple digit percentage growth, moving the firm from 6th to 2nd position in the market. Although this organization did many things correctly during this era of massive increase in market share, the most important ingredient was putting people with the right talent in the right place and at the right time. Partners learned to utilize each other’s natural strengths and team around their vulnerabilities.
Marcus knew that he had found his passion; talent management in a teaming context. He started OND in 2003 and developed Method Teaming in earnest. Today’s Method Teaming (SM) is way ahead its predecessor and companies around the world are enjoying high productivity improvements because of Marcus’ pioneering work.
