The year OAD was founded. 38 years before most of our competitors existed.
Behavioral assessments in our dataset, one of the longest-running of its kind.
Countries where OAD has been deployed in hiring and team decisions.
OAD was founded on a simple, and at the time, deeply unfashionable, idea: that behavioral drive is measurable, that it predicts job performance, and that companies making hiring decisions without that data are flying blind.
In 1986, organizational psychology was mostly an academic discipline. The idea that a 7-minute behavioral diagnostic could give a hiring manager more predictive information than a 45-minute interview was not widely accepted. We built the data to prove it anyway.
38 years later, the dataset speaks for itself. 10M+ assessments. 40+ countries. Three independent third-party validation cycles. And a platform that finally makes that science accessible to every revenue team, not just the ones with a dedicated people science function.
1986
1992
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2025
2026
Michael Gray, founder of OAD.
Processing early data on rented mainframe time.
In the 1980s, Michael Gray set out to answer a question the U.S. Department of Defense had been wrestling with: can you predict human behavior with real accuracy? His background was in quantitative analytics and behavioral science, and he was convinced the personality tests of the day, built on self-reporting and riddled with bias, were the wrong tool for it.
After years of research, he cracked it: an algorithm that mathematically mapped the core traits behind decision-making, leadership potential, and team dynamics. The work was so far ahead of its time that he rented mainframe hours at MIT just to process the data. The result reached a level of predictive accuracy that had been considered out of reach.
Rather than let the research disappear into classified archives, Gray founded OAD, Organization Analysis and Design, to turn a military-grade behavioral assessment into something companies could use to build high-performing teams. Over the decades it became a quiet standard inside the Fortune 500, used by names like Air Canada, American Eagle, and Dale Carnegie.
In 2025, we made the decision that changed everything: bringing OAD to small and mid-sized businesses, giving them the same hiring and team-building power once reserved for billion-dollar corporations. That is what OAD.ai is, decades of behavioral science, in a tool any growing company can pick up today. Lead with Certainty.
Most business decisions are made with data. Hiring, promotion, and performance decisions are still mostly made with instinct. We’re closing that gap, one behavioral assessment at a time.
Simplicity
is the ultimate sophistication.
Clarity
Extreme clarity leads to extreme results.
Anticipation
We don’t react. We predict.
Leverage
We multiply what works.
Execution
We move fast but we move smart.
Complexity kills. Simplicity scales.
We strip away noise. Whether it is how the product works or how we communicate, we aim for intuitive and frictionless. Our rule: if a feature needs a manual, it is not ready.
Extreme clarity creates extreme results.
We do not operate in fog. From how we make decisions to how we build teams, we seek precision in roles, communication, and outcomes, inside our company and in the organizations we serve.
Don’t react. Predict.
We spot patterns before they become problems. We listen deeply, to data, to clients, to trends. Proactive by design and curious by nature. That is how we stay a step ahead.
Multiply what works.
We do not scale through effort alone. We scale through systems, data, partnerships, and behavioral insight. Leverage lets us do more with less, and helps our clients do the same.
Ideas are cheap. Action compounds.
We move with speed and precision. When something is not working, we pivot fast. Tight feedback loops, smart iteration, and finishing what we start. Results, not perfection.
Performance is predictable. Most companies just don’t have the data to predict it.The behavioral traits that predict quota attainment, operational reliability, and management effectiveness are measurable. They’ve been measurable since 1986. The problem has never been the science, it’s been the accessibility of the tools. OAD.ai makes the science accessible to every revenue team, not just the ones with a dedicated people science function.
The interview is a confidence filter. It was never designed to predict performance.Decades of industrial-organizational research consistently show that unstructured interviews predict job performance at a validity coefficient of roughly 0.14. That’s barely better than chance. We don’t believe this is anyone’s fault, interviews were designed to assess communication skills and cultural resonance, not behavioral drive. OAD fills the gap the interview was never equipped to fill.
Compliance isn’t a constraint. It’s proof that the science is sound.EEOC, APA, BPS, GDPR, PIPEDA. We’re compliant with all of them, not because our legal team required it, but because a tool that has no adverse impact on any protected class and has survived 38 years without a successful legal challenge is simply a well-built tool. The compliance record is the validation record.
HR is a revenue function. The data exists to prove it, most teams just haven’t used it yet.Every mis-hire costs $150k+. Every percentage point of turnover reduction saves real money. Every point of quota attainment improvement is real revenue. The People function has always driven business outcomes, it just hasn’t had the data to show it in terms the CFO and board understand. OAD.ai gives CHROs and People leaders that data.
The benchmark already exists inside your organization. You just haven’t built it yet.
You already know who your top performers are. OAD.ai’s job isn’t to tell you something you don’t know, it’s to turn what you already know into a repeatable, measurable, scalable hiring filter. The free Top Performer Profile exists for this reason: because the answer is already on your team, waiting to be quantified.
The best tool is the one that gets used. Science that lives in a drawer helps nobody.We’ve seen what happens when a behaviorally valid tool gets deployed in a way that’s too complex for the managers who need to use it. It gets ignored. The diagnostic takes 7 minutes. The profile is readable by anyone. The AI coaching guide is actionable immediately. We build for the manager at 7am before a hiring panel, not for the people science conference.
The assessment space is crowded. PI, Culture Index, DISC, Hogan, Predictive Index — there are dozens of tools claiming to predict performance. What none of them have is 38 years of continuous longitudinal validation data at OAD’s scale. That dataset is not reproducible. It took 38 years to build. It’s the reason the benchmarks work.
The dataset advantage
10M+ assessments across 40+ countries and 38 years means our role benchmarks are built from real-world performance data at a scale few can match. A benchmark drawn from a large sales-professional dataset is categorically different from one built from 5,000.
The validation record
Three independent third-party validation cycles. EEOC, APA, BPS, GDPR, PIPEDA compliant. The compliance record is the science record, they’re the same thing.
The format advantage
Free-choice word selection means results can’t be gamed, coached, or socially desirable. 7 minutes means adoption is near-universal. These aren’t cosmetic features, they’re what makes the data reliable at scale.
Every feature in OAD.ai is built backwards from the question: does this help a VP Sales, COO, or CHRO make a better people decision? Not “is this technically impressive.” Not “does this check a product roadmap box.” Does it change what someone decides and whether that decision works out.
OAD’s behavioral diagnostic has been validated against EEOC, APA, and BPS standards, the three governing bodies for employment assessment science in North America and the UK. Every study is published and available on request.
Assessments, the largest behavioral performance dataset of its kind
Of continuous validation, one of the longest-running datasets of its kind
Independent third-party validation cycle completed in 2023
We never ship what we can’t defend scientifically.Every product decision gets tested against one question: is there behavioral science behind this? If the answer is no, we don’t ship it. This is why our product roadmap is smaller than our competitors’ and our validation record is longer.
We sell by showing clients their own data.We don’t run traditional sales processes. We start with the free Top Performer Profile, which shows the client the behavioral profile behind their best person. The data sells itself. Our job is to walk them through what it means.
Every client interaction is consultative, not transactional.Performance Directors are practitioners, not account managers. They’ve managed teams, made hiring mistakes, and used behavioral data to fix them. That’s who runs every Readout Call, activation session, and QBR.
We take compliance as seriously as performance.38 years of behavioral science. EEOC, APA, BPS, GDPR, and PIPEDA. We do this because we believe tools that create legal exposure for clients shouldn’t exist. The compliance record is the integrity record.
The free Top Performer Profile is how every client relationship starts. Name your best rep. See the data. The rest follows naturally.
No contract · No credit card · Results in 24 hours
