In the early 1970s, Clark Wilson developed the Survey of Management Practices (SMP) as a teaching tool for his management class at the University of Bridgeport, Connecticut, Graduate School of Business. Students completed the SMP on themselves or their bosses. As more students and their peers and supervisors were exposed to the SMP, it made its way into the industry.

Dupont was the first coroporation to adopt the SMP in 1973. What the company found most effective was that the SMP focused on specific, observable behaviors as opposed to broad evaluative statements. By the mid-1970s more companies, including Dow Chemical, Pitney Bowes and several utilities were using the instrument and contributing data to the norm database. Meanwhile, consultants around the country became interested in using the SMP in their practices as well. With wider use and accumulated data, Wilson produced updated editions and further developed his Task Cycle Theory.

Clients soon began to request additional instruments. They found the operational logic of the Task Cycle to be a powerful teaching device for all organizational roles. By adapting the Task Cycle for other roles, surveys were developed for five main areas: Quality, Leadership, Management, Sales, and Teams.