Congratulations to Claudia Goldin on her 2023 Nobel prize-winning achievement. Dr. Goldin’s work on labor economics and 'Greedy work' is foundational for this article.
Professional services businesses, like finance, consulting, medical, and legal, have been called "Greedy Work." This name was mentioned in Claire Caine Miller's New York Times article. Miller indicates “Women Did Everything Right: Then Work Got Greedy.” She documents how jobs have morphed into a monstrous octopus, squeezing the life out of family and leisure time.
This article explores the "Greedy Work" premise in the context of sustainable business investment. We do expand the gender premise scope to include all those smart, creative women and men drawn to professional services. We show how firms may exploit the "Exempt / Non-Exempt employee" arbitrage permissible under current U.S. law and enabled by American culture. We show how "Greedy Work" may decrease work satisfaction, increase attrition, decrease firm investment, and ultimately decrease long-term firm value. We consider "Greedy Work" a negative reinforcing cycle that is very hard to break and best to be avoided.
We also provide solution suggestions, both in terms of what an enlightened firm may do to break the "Greedy Work" cycle and ultimately, how U.S. law may be changed to resolve the "Greedy Work" syndrome.
About the author: Jeff Hulett is a career banker, data scientist, behavioral economist, and choice architect. Jeff has held banking and consulting leadership roles at Wells Fargo, Citibank, KPMG, and IBM. Today, Jeff is an executive with the Definitive Companies. He teaches personal finance at James Madison University and provides personal finance seminars. Check out his new book -- Making Choices, Making Money: Your Guide to Making Confident Financial Decisions -- at jeffhulett.com.
Table of Contents
Background: Business sustainability and seeking a TODAY / FUTURE balance
Balancing the TODAY / FUTURE mix is not a new idea
How the TODAY / FUTURE investment mix works
The TODAY / FUTURE investment mix risk and opportunities
Solution ideas for getting the TODAY / FUTURE investment mix correct
Conclusion and Notes
1. Background: Business sustainability and seeking a TODAY / FUTURE balance
At a high level, most businesses balance two things to drive success:
They deliver value to customers TODAY; and,
They invest in delivering value to customers in the FUTURE.
If they balance this well, they will have happy customers, employees, owners, and communities where they work and serve. Getting the investment tradeoff right between the TODAY and the FUTURE is what creates a SUSTAINABLE business model. This is really hard to do....in my experience, consistently getting the TODAY / FUTURE investment mix right is the hardest thing we do as business leaders.
Where this is particularly hard, are industries where the core factor inputs are mostly people. That is, industries where people are the primary raw materials used to build and deliver client products and services. To be clear, all industries include people, but "including" people is not the same as using people as raw material. For example, the banking industry manufacturing raw materials is mainly customer data and contracts. The auto industry manufacturing raw materials are mainly plastics, metals, computers, and batteries.
However, in professional services (legal, accounting, tax, advisory, finance, medical, management consulting, etc.), the primary raw material is people. It is people that are the raw material to build and deliver professional services. This article is about why people-dominated factor input industries, like professional services, make it particularly challenging to manage the TODAY / FUTURE investment mix and drive a long-term sustainable business model. We will also explore high-impact solutions.
2. Balancing the TODAY / FUTURE mix is not a new idea
As a concept, the TODAY / FUTURE investment mix balance is certainly not a new idea. Adam Smith's concept of the "Invisible Hand" (The Wealth Of Nations, 1776) is central to considering multiple business stakeholders and with multiple investment time frame needs. Alexis de Tocqueville's discussion of "Enlightened Self-Interest" (Democracy in America, 1835) is similarly consistent (i):
“…they (Americans) show with complacency how an enlightened regard for themselves constantly prompts them to assist one another and inclines them willingly to sacrifice a portion of their time and property to the welfare of the state.”
More recently, global businesses have given more emphasis to the TODAY / FUTURE tradeoff with an eye toward business SUSTAINABILITY. For example, the "Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation" (The Business Roundtable, 1997) explicitly commits to a long-term business investment framework.
3. How the TODAY / FUTURE investment mix works
This section defines the TODAY / FUTURE investment process. We also provide an investment framework to help get the investment mix correct.
TODAY - This is where professional services consultants are utilized to deliver a particular service. I will use the word "consultant" broadly, to mean consultants, lawyers, doctors, or any individual delivering a professional service. This could be many different services but is essentially based on some existing and practiced methodology that is tailored to meet the current client's need. It is very likely the majority of the consultant team has previously delivered this service. Most professional services firms are organized as "practices" which literally means they are practiced at delivering the service. The firm will make money as the difference between the consultants' bill rate and salary. Hence, this is why the "people as a raw material-based direct cost" analogy makes sense.
FUTURE - This is where professional services staff and consultants are utilized to research, design, test, and roll out new services. Since the exact FUTURE is unknowable, placing bets on highly probable FUTURE services becomes important. As an example, if it costs $100k for each FUTURE bet and only 1 in 10 future bets successfully pays, that is only a 10% success rate. However, if the revenue payout on a single successful solution averages $10mm, then the payout rate is a very profitable 10x. [$10mm bet payout / (10 bets x $100k cost/bet)] By the way, this is a similar payout model used by private equity/investment funds that manage portfolios of companies. Our client businesses are generally very dynamic. Olivier Sibony, a former McKinsey consultant and an Associate Fellow at Oxford University said (ii):
"Risk-taking in smaller projects... should be.... encouraged: a diversified portfolio of high-risk, high-return projects would be an extremely rational choice."
As such, staying ahead of client demand, making FUTURE bets, and quickly ramping up successful payout solutions are critical to long-term professional services growth. (iii)
The MIX - Getting the TODAY / FUTURE investment mix correct is so important. Think of TODAY as paying rent. This is how the firm pays bills today. Think of the FUTURE as how the firm will create revenue tomorrow. If a firm doesn't invest enough in the FUTURE they will get caught flat-footed when tomorrow comes. If they invest too much in the FUTURE, they may not be able to make rent TODAY. The graphic shows a solution investment approach, which requires taking existing talent that could be working on TODAY services and diverting them to FUTURE solution development.
In particular, step 3 envisages a formal investment or capital planning process. This process marries objective investment information with the professional judgment of senior professional services leaders. The optimal investment process outcome includes:
A precise investment result based on the objective and judgmental proposal solution information,
An accurate investment result based on the firm's goals and objectives (iv),
An actionable investment schedule, implementable by the firm's valuable consultant resources, and
Results tracking and audit to record investment decisions and rationale.
A common challenge I hear is: "My leadership is not always forthcoming with investment budgets. They tend to be more opportunistic and reactive." All the more reason to have a disciplined investment or capital planning process! As the old saying goes: “Opportunity does not waste time with those who are unprepared.” As such, when budgets do become available, those that are ready are more likely to receive investment funding.
4. The TODAY / FUTURE investment mix risk and opportunities
So far you may be thinking, "Hey Jeff, this makes sense, but this seems relevant to all industries, not just professional services. What am I missing?"
First, you are correct in that this thinking could be applied to almost any industry or organization. The uniqueness of professional services is the people as a “raw material” component. Professional services companies generally hire really smart and experienced professional talent. These are highly disciplined and creative-based people that are attracted to other really smart, creative people and industries. Here is the thing, the talent is generally attracted to the TOMORROW investments and considers the TODAY work as paying rent. They do not mind paying rent but do not want to overpay rent and will only tolerate paying rent as a means to get to the creative, fun TOMORROW stuff.
Back to how professional services firms make money and create a SUSTAINABLE business model, they do so by getting the TODAY / FUTURE investment mix correct. I have not found a magic investment mix formula, but I do know having an ongoing organizational investment focus is a sign the firm takes the FUTURE seriously.
The main danger is that professional services firms over-invest in the TODAY. This may happen for a variety of reasons. Not least of which is when these firms are beholden to investors or other organizational incentives that may drive the professional services arm to over-invest in the TODAY. Short-term profit is generally very salient. Making long-term investments in the uncertain future is often challenging. Our naturally occurring loss aversion generally makes short-term focus easier for most people.
A good exemplar mechanism to “over-invest in the TODAY” is by taking advantage of the "Exempt / Non-Exempt employee" arbitrage. Consultants are hired as professional exempt employees. Under the U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act (U.S. FLSA), exempt employees do not get paid overtime.
As an example, a consultant may work an 80-hour week but only get paid for 40 hours of work. As such and to the firm, the arbitrage is valued at a 2x salary multiple [80/40]. Whereas, culturally, many employees do not value this arbitrage in the same way. Many take it as a given they must work unpaid overtime. Not only that, many employees accept their time as a call option, constantly callable by their employers. Meaning, the professional services employee may feel compelled to consistently prioritize work over personal interests. Culturally, many Americans are taught at a young age that competing on "who can grind more" is an honorable pursuit, like a badge of courage. The U.S. FLSA is a remnant of the Industrial Age and the arbitrage, in part, relies on the culturally-based unpaid overtime willingness of the exempt employee. As such, this arbitrage is a labor market trade. The firm effectively sells a 40-hour-a-week resource and buys a resource with the cultural expectation to work a multiple of 40 hours a week, plus, is constantly callable.
A greedy work syndrome example: I am a client-patient of Kaiser Permanente ("KP"). KP has a unique medical services business model that vertically integrates insurance, medical, and pharmacological services. I experience it as a central "one-stop-shop" for all my medical needs. Presumably, the integration provides more revenue levers and cost control to manage profitability. I had a candid conversation with one of my favorite doctors recently. I asked an open-ended question: "What is it like to work here?" They answered as long as I would not reveal their name. The answer I received:
"I am part-time, thank goodness. I get paid for my hours. I self-manage my benefits. The typical KP model is to dangle a decent salary and a big pension in front of a young doctor, then work them to death! It is not right. They ask me to work my patient follow-up for free. I refused. I might be leaving soon."
This is the greedy work syndrome in action. While I did not ask, I can only imagine the salary multiple is high. Perhaps 2x or more during high volume times. The call option of being "always on" is probably stressful. The KP employee hours leverage approach is the rule, not the exception in professional services.
Regardless of whether you believe in the “badge of courage” cultural heritage, it is the main source of employer success as to the "Exempt / Non-Exempt employee" arbitrage.
In effect, a consultant "practicing" delivering TODAY's consulting service is not much different than a factory worker "practicing" on an assembly line. But the factory worker is non-exempt, which means they get overtime pay and have other legal protections.
This "Exempt / Non-Exempt employee" arbitrage may accelerate current period revenue. But, this arbitrage comes with significant risk. Persistent over-investment in TODAY also leads to employee lack of creative satisfaction, burn-out, employee attrition, and firm under-investment in the FUTURE. Remember, in the case of professional services, an employee is the same as a raw material. To me, burning out a single professional services employee is like lighting $100,000+ on fire. But sadly, this happens all the time.
And now, the risk kicker: The FUTURE under-investment starts a reinforcing downward feedback loop because when the under-invested FUTURE becomes TODAY, professional services managers will necessarily further exploit the arbitrage because of past under-investment. This causes even more TODAY over-investment, burnout, and attrition. This is particularly poignant in the 2021 pandemic-effected world, as many professional services firms are losing their best talent. To make their numbers they may increase the "Exempt / Non-Exempt employee" arbitrage and dig an even deeper future revenue hole and further accelerate attrition. (v)
5. Solution ideas for getting the TODAY / FUTURE investment mix correct
First, all firms should take a “health-check” inventory of their existing investment management process. Does it resemble that described earlier? Does the process have a formal structure, process support, governance, budgets, commitment from senior leaders, etc?
Beyond the current investment management process, the following are 2 solution suggestions to drive your investment environment. I think of these solutions in terms of "adapting to the rules” and "changing the rules."
Adaptation means finding a better way to manage the rules as they currently exist. Adapting to the rules is within the direct control of individual professional services firms. Adaptation is generally quicker to implement in the short term.
Changing the rules is external to the professional services firm. It would mean convincing lawmakers or other policymakers to change industry-wide applicable rules and regulations. Changing the rules is more of a long-term endeavor and may include industry groups or consortia.
1. Adapting to the rules - Professional services firms manage client-facing employee utilization to optimize availability for client work. No matter the employee level, generally, everyone is afforded some non-client "investment" time. This time can be used in a variety of ways, including investing in new solutions or other high-value, creative endeavors. The challenge is that utilization targets are often managed as a floor, or minimum billable hours. When only the utilization floor is managed, this essentially leaves an uncapped utilization ceiling, This may create an environment where staff is over 100% utilized for long periods. The "rent overpaying" environment causes a large bandwidth tax (vi) and the challenges mentioned earlier, leading to burnout and attrition. A solution is to manage utilization targets as a ceiling, where managers would be held accountable for allowing staff to exceed the ceiling. While the target is the same, the difference is how the target is managed. With “rent overpaying” set as an organizational control or exception, this approach should provide organizational incentives to work on investment-oriented FUTURE projects.
This approach would cause engagement managers to schedule more resources on jobs, as a strategy to manage utilization ceilings. This adaptation would effect an 1) increase in the number of resources involved in TODAY's firm practice, and 2) provide a motivated and stable human resource raw material to invest in the FUTURE using the framework described earlier. This would lead to more consultant job fulfillment and lower attrition. The industry would “stop burning $100k bills.”
2. Changing the rules - in most industries and from a competitive parity standpoint, industry-participating firms need to play on a level competitive playing field. All firms will seek to maximize profitability under a current competitive ruleset. Changing the U.S. FLSA would maintain competitive parity and create an environment that decreases the incentive for the "Exempt / Non-Exempt employee" arbitrage and increases the incentive for long-term / FUTURE investment. Simply, the suggested rule change is to make professional services employees that deliver client services as a "raw material" non-exempt from FLSA. This would require professional services employers to pay overtime wages and provide non-exempt related benefits and protections. The idea is, with professional services firms having less of a TODAY income benefit from staff billable hours, they will be more likely to invest in FUTURE services and decrease the likelihood of employee burnout.
Conceptually, the U.S. FLSA rule change would be self-funding, as the current revenue decline from paying overtime would be funded by:
Decreased attrition,
Decreased cost of recruiting and training new associates,
Uniform upward industry pressure on professional services client pricing, and
A more productive employee base.
6. Conclusion
Resolving the "Greedy Work" syndrome is difficult. Professional services leaders may be skeptical of the "changing the rules" proposal. Notwithstanding the current period funding concepts, they still may worry about their ability to meet short-term revenue targets because of increased overtime pay. For this concern, I have no easy answer, but allow me to offer:
Changing the rules will be even across the professional services industry, so the short-term impact will be distributed across competing firms.
Changing the rules will help us get off the burnout treadmill. It will help us improve staff quality of life and “stop burning $100k bills.”
Changing the rules requires effort. Often, doing the right thing may cause the difficult changing of older, less productive habits. As Seth Godin said, “The effort is its own reward.”
Finally, resolving the "Greedy Work” syndrome by increasing incentives for FUTURE investment will improve the overall industry's client readiness for future needs. Adding more rigor and capacity to the investment planning and solution development process will increase the effectiveness of FUTURE-based investments and enhance the job satisfaction of consultants. Instead of reacting by "backing up the bus" with the equivalent of remediation consultant firefighters, the professional services industry will be better prepared to deliver FUTURE-focused capabilities that reduce the need for reactive / remediation-based firefighting in the first place. By resolving the "Greedy Work" syndrome, the professional services work environment will improve, resulting in less burnout, less attrition, higher client delight, and higher profitability.
Notes
(i) de Tocqueville's 19th-century language needs a little interpretation for our 21st-century world. "Complacency" means "naturally," "easily," or "without trouble." Meaning, it is natural for Americans to give of themselves in an enlightened way. When de Tocqueville writes of giving "...their time and property to the welfare of the state," he considers "the welfare of the state" broadly, meaning giving to one's community, environment, or other priorities outside of self.
Economist Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) developed the "Creative Destruction" concept to describe capitalism. Schumpeter suggests ongoing development and sustainable investment is critical to success in a capitalistic system:
"Capitalism ... is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary. ... The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from the new consumers' goods, the new methods of production or transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organization that capitalist enterprise creates."
Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 1942
(ii) Sibony, You're About To Make A Terrible Mistake, 2020
(iii) See our article Wayne Gretzky and creative-divergent thinking. Creative-divergent thinkers are highly relevant to the kind of talent attracted to professional services.
"In the business context, they [creative-divergent thinkers] are adept at using counterfactual thinking, but in the highly structured context of our current business environment and future market trends. They appreciate the future is probabilistically available. They understand the future is informed by ongoing and rigorous expectations updating. They are both analytical and adaptable."
(iv) The definition of "precision" and "accuracy" are often confused. There are subtle but important differences. The following graphic is my favorite way to show the differences. “Team B” is an example where objective and judgmental information together render a precise schedule of investments. However, "Team B" lacks accuracy because of a goal or objective alignment deficit. "Team C" is an example where there is a lack of precision because of a poor process to make investment prioritization decisions, but the firm is clear on goals and objectives. In my experience, noise is the biggest culprit driving a lack of precision and poor investment outcomes. Leadership teams should prioritize tackling noise as a way to optimize their investment decisions.
For a more fulsome definition, please see the article Good decision-making and financial services: The surprising impact of bias and noise. This article's background section does a nice job explaining the difference.
(v) Employee turnover is at an all-time high. In August 2021, the U.S. "quits rate" reached an all-time monthly high of 2.9%. This means a straight-line annual quits rate is north of 30%. The quits rate, as stated by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is defined as follows:
"Quits are generally voluntary separations initiated by the employee. Therefore, the quits rate can serve as a measure of workers’ willingness or ability to leave jobs."
According to the BLS, the Professional Services industry segment has the second-highest quits rate, second to the Leisure and Hospitality industry segment. From a "Greedy Work" standpoint, I argue the two segments are very different. Professional Services has the vast majority of employees as non-exempt under FLSA standards. Thus, Professional Services employees generally do not receive overtime pay and are more subject to the "Greedy Work" syndrome. Whereas, Leisure and Hospitality employees are mostly exempt employees, so they receive overtime pay and are less subject to the "Greedy Work" syndrome. Since Leisure and Hospitality workers are often in lower-paying roles and more subject to the health hazards associated with COVID-19, their reasons for quitting are different.
(vi) For a more complete discussion of the impact of time scarcity and the bandwidth tax, please see our article A Business Priority - Managing time as a scarce resource.
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