From Bedroom to Boardroom: The ON THE MARK Story

From Bedroom to Boardroom: The ON THE MARK Story

Nearly 20 years ago, I began my own business in a spare bedroom of my home.  The year was 1990.  I had an unlimited amount of desire, sufficient levels of denial, and a brand new laptop and printer I had purchased for too much money.  In my mind and in my heart, I was ready to be a change agent in every sense of the word.  ON THE MARK was born.  It didn’t happen overnight though.   Three years before, I had been given the opportunity to be a part of an organizational redesign.  I volunteered with a team of consultants that helped a company restructure their entire organization for improved efficiency, productivity, and performance.  Besides achieving these improvements, they had also engaged the hearts and minds their employees throughout the process. The experience had a profound impact on me, and ultimately inspired me to start my business focused on strategic change, organization design and alignment work.  I imagine that’s how I justified buying the overpriced computer and printer years later!

Today, my consulting firm ON THE MARK, Inc. and ON THE MARK-UK, Ltd works with companies across the globe to change and redesign their organizations for success.  We are based in Phoenix, Arizona and have an office in London, UK.  Our clients include multinational companies like American Express, BAE Systems and Nestlé, state agencies, regional and local businesses.  We offer a full suite of solutions to our customers ranging from business strategy to detailed work design and leadership development.  Over 95% of our clients come to us by referral or repeat business, and we specialize in equipping our customers with the tools they need to continue their success well beyond the time we spend with them.

The reason for our success is simple.  Our firm operates on the mantra that if you do good work for your client and help the organization succeed, the rest takes care of itself.  We promote three key principles to our customers:

• Collaborative business transformation. Many organizations make the same mistake when they encounter a problem: they put a single person or group in charge of developing a solution, and then expect the rest of their organization to fall in line behind the result.  Our philosophy is that people support what they help create.  Therefore, we encourage our clients to make more of their people a part of the solution, which leads to broader support and much more sustainable results.
• Solutions for complex problems are already within the organization.  The single most important component of any business is its people.  Our clients already have the tools and the resources within their systems to succeed; our role is to help the organization properly design their business so that it solves problems instead of creating them.
• It’s OK for leaders to not have all the answers.  Leaders are promoted to higher positions because of their expertise and experience.  As a result, many fall into a pattern of feeling as though they have to have all the answers to whatever problems arise.  We help our clients’ transition to a new pattern where leaders set the parameters, boundaries, constraints, and targets, and then empower other’s in their organization to solve those problems.

The first organizational redesign I was a part of in 1987 affected me so much because I saw firsthand the results of a successful collaborative redesign.  When done well, people discover their full potential and experience a renewed sense of purpose.  This in turn translates into a more engaged workforce, higher productivity, more satisfied customers and ultimately a better bottom line. This is just as true today as it was twenty years ago, and I’m proud to say that our clients across the world can attest to this fact as well.

About Mark LaScola — Mark has been collaboratively solving complex problems for over 20 years.  You can reach Mark at mlascola@on-the-mark.com or www.on-the-mark.com.

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