Managing the Professional Service Firm

The Motivation Crisis

Motivating junior professionals is harder today than it used to be,: and is more important to the success of the professional service firm. In the past, the up-or-out partnership structure of the typical professional service firm provided all the motivating force that was required.

Young professionals knew that, if they worked hard and well, added continuously to their skills, and kept out of trouble, then they had a reasonable chance of reaching for the brass ring: the generous rewards (financial and otherwise) of partnership. Personal attention by partners to motivating juniors was not necessary: the system, combined with the inherent ambition of young professionals, took care of the problem.

A number of changes have occurred which that make this “automatic” motivational system cease to function as well as it did. Today’s young professional can see that the odds of making partner are lengthening in most firms. Talk of tougher (and changing) partnership standards, prolonged times to partnership and permanent non-partner positions are is common in every profession.

Rather than inspiring juniors to even more strenuous efforts to be chosen as one of the select few, the lengthening of the odds has the opposite effect: Juniors are increasingly questioning whether the game is worth the candle.

This attitude is being reinforced by both economic and cultural trends. Given the competitive intensity of today’s professional world, the economic and psychological satisfactions of being a partner at many (if not most) professional firms are not as great as they once were.

It is not unusual to hear partners make comments (in private conversation) such as, “The practice of law (or accounting or medicine or consulting) is just not as much fun anymore. Today’s clients are demanding, cynical about the value they receive and treat you less as a professional and more like an ordinary vendor.”

“The pace, intensity and workload are greater than ever, and rather than supportive, the firm atmosphere is competitive, and certainly less collegial. With all this concern about profitability, it seems like we’re being asked to work even harder for what might turn out to be less money.”

Similarly, in conversations with mid-level junior staff inside accounting, consulting, law and other professional firms, I frequently hear things like, “The closer I get to the firm’s partners, the less attractive their lives seem to be. I’m increasingly questioning whether what they have is what I want. Professional life requires significant sacrifices, for both my spouse and me, and I’m no longer certain that the rewards are there to justify them.”

Motivation levels are also affected by the range of options open to young professionals, which are greater today than ever before. It is no longer considered unethical, or even unusual, for young professionals to move between firms to advance their careers: in all professions, the mobility of individuals is on the rise. Satisfying, and frequently less intense, professional careers are also increasingly attainable inside corporations, at salaries which that are competitive and sometimes superior to those offered by professional service firms.

In addition, in-house professionals are no longer treated as second- class citizens in the professions: they continue to accumulate the power, responsibility and respect that historically was were the preserve of the outside professional provider.

Finally, we should note that not only is competition for clients intensifying in the professions, but so is the competition for talented young professionals. The baby-boom generation has passed through its apprenticeship years. Today’s 25- to 35-year year-olds are less numerous than their older siblings, and recruiting, motivating and holding onto the talented among them is becoming an increasingly challenging task.

THE IMPORTANCE OF MOTIVATION IN PROFESSIONAL WORK

A less than fully motivated workforce is a competitive disadvantage for any business organization. For a professional firm, it is a death knell. In few professional firms does the opportunity exist to achieve productivity and quality through the systems, procedures, close supervision and technology upon which industrial companies have traditionally relied to control work pace and quality of output. For professional work, both productivity and quality are highly correlated with the degree to which the professional worker is engaged and committed to the task at hand.

All professionals must have had the following experience: You are responsible for a piece of work about which you just cannot seem to get excited. It is not that the task is too difficult, too easy, or even inherently uninteresting: It is just that the spark is not there. Nevertheless, being dutiful, you sit at your desk and try to work at it, being neither productive nor at your best.

Then the next morning, for some obscure reason, you begin to see the work in a new light. You approach the work in a new way, and begin to delve into the problem. Gradually, what had appeared as mundane now has an element of interest, which grows into curiosity and, into fascination, and ultimately into involvement, effort and productive, creative work.

No amount of procedural work plans, tight supervision or incentive schemes could ever substitute for the inner motivation described in this anecdote as a means to achieve productivity, quality and, not coincidentally, professional satisfaction in a job well done.

This link between motivation and performance in professional work results in an interesting and important phenomenon: the motivation spiral. The elements of this spiral are as follows: high motivation leads to high productivity and quality, which leads to marketplace success. In turn, this results in economic success for the firm, allowing the firm to be generous with its rewards, including high compensation, good promotion opportunities and challenging work. This atmosphere of ample reward breeds good morale, which results in high motivation: and the cycle begins anew.

Of course, the spiral effect also works, all too effectively, in reverse. Poor marketplace success means poor economic success, which means fewer rewards available to be shared. With lesser fewer rewards, morale, and hence motivation, is low. This, inevitably and inexorably, leads to poor productivity and less than top quality, which reinforces the lack of marketplace success.

In professional work environments, success breeds success, and failure sets the scene for more failure. The spiral can begin, up or down, at any point. But once launched, its forces are hard to resist. In consequence, the motivation crisis is a very serious problem for any firm that allows it to take hold.

Addressing the problem of motivation in a professional firm requires an examination of all of the firm’s managerial systems and practices, from recruiting, through work assignments, performance appraisal and feedback to, promotion and outplacement.

However, the responsibility for achieving high motivation rests not only with those who exercise management functions within the firm: Changing the systems is only a partial solution. Increasingly, it will become the responsibility of every partner to nurture the motivation level of junior staff by developing good supervisory skills.

MOTIVATION AND THE RECRUITING PROCESS

If high motivation inside the professional firm can no longer be assumed, but must be carefully nurtured, how then does one motivate professionals?

There is a school of thought, that asserts that it is difficult, if not impossible, to motivate anyone who does not have an inner drive, ambition or energy level. The best that can be done, according to this view, is, first, to avoid demotivating an ambitious individual (a result that many organizations, particularly those that are slow-growing or bureaucratic, seem to achieve all too often); and second, to channel that drive into fruitful, productive efforts.

Consequently, a significant component in achieving the highly motivated organization is the recruitment process itself, which, if it is to serve its purpose, must screen as much for drive, energy and ambition as it does for intellectual capabilities and technical skill.

In his Pulitzer prize-winning book The Soul of a New Machine, Tracy Kidder describes the “signing on” process used by Tom West, the manager of a team of young computer design engineers, to recruit and select the members of his team.

Rather than make unfulfillable promises by, for example, minimizing the scale of the effort required, or by presenting the project as one which that would allow for a balanced life-style, Tom West took the opposite approach.

He described accurately the high demands that the work would place on people, and presented the project as one that only the “best and the brightest,” the truly committed, would be suited for. Not surprisingly, he screened out early on those who would not be able to take the pace, and generated an enthusiasm and commitment to success from the very beginning.

In their eagerness to attract the junior professionals needed to staff engagements, I have observed many professional firms compromising the simple principle embedded in the Tom West story: that, to serve the firm’s interests, it is more sensible to ensure that potential recruits truly know what they are letting themselves in for.

Subtle misrepresentations during the recruiting process (about workloads, variety of work, extent of client contact, the degree of counseling, or any of a number of issues of concern to young professionals), may serve to bring more people (bodies?) on board, but quickly begins to work against the firm’s interests as new recruits discover the realities of the practice: a prime example of how to demotivate.

One lawyer I know describes his firm’s recruiting process as follows: “I describe the real life of being a lawyer as best I can. Then I ask them, ‘`Do you really want to be a lawyer?’’ It’s amazing how many hesitate. And if they do, I don’t want them. I’d rather take someone with slightly less skills but with fire in their belly than a brilliant but naive student who doesn’t understand what it’s all about.”

Such an approach to recruiting may not produce the raw numbers that many firms think they need, (because potentially good candidates are “‘scared off”’), but this is a less serious error than the opposite result: bringing people on board not temperamentally suited to today’s practice realities. Furthermore, a professional firm should always have (slightly) more work than it can handle with its current staff putting in a normal work week. Professionals flourish in an atmosphere of challenge and a full “work plate.” Expressions of discontent, complaints about the firm and poor morale never surface more frequently than when there is not enough work to keep everyone occupied. I have observed more firms get into trouble by attempting to hire too many people than by hiring too few.

THE PROFESSIONAL PSYCHE

Are professionals different from other types of workers? Do they need to be managed (and motivated) in special ways? While it is difficult to support the assertion that all professionals are different from all other workers, my work has led me to suspect that, when it comes to motivating forces, the average professional is different from the average worker in other environments: a difference based, I suspect, not on such things as educational levels, but on the psyche of those who choose professional careers.

The typical professional is apt to describe him or herself in the following way: “I am the type of person who gets bored easily. I hate doing repetitive sorts of work, and always like to seek out new challenges. Once I know I can do something, it tends not to satisfy me anymore.”

This is, of course, a somewhat self-flattering description. In my experience, however, it is an accurate one. Professionals, certainly the best among them, are constantly driven to seek out the new, the unfamiliar, the challenging. The key word here is “driven.”

People who feel the (neurotic?) need to constantly and repeatedly test their skills against unfamiliar problems with an uncertain probability of success are frequently insecure, with a low sense of self-worth (never expressed in public), and are in constant need of external tests of their merits to prove (to themselves) that they have still “got it.”

Many professionals, I would assert, are prime examples of what is now termed “The Impostor Syndrome”—successful people who live in constant dread that someone will, one day, tap them on the shoulder and say “We’ve found you out. You’ve been faking it all these years.”

Because of this, professionals tend to exhibit some clearly defined behavioral characteristics. They require continual challenge and personal growth to retain their interest, and are impatient when they do not receive it. (They constantly ask themselves, and their superiors, “Am I still on- track?”)

Because of their insecurity, and the ambiguity that surrounds the definition of “good work” in professional contexts, they need quick, repeated feedback on their performance to validate their efforts. They tend to be “scoreboard-oriented”: eager for visible, well-defined measures of success that can reassure them. They like to have unambiguous goals to shoot at.

From their need to achieve self-respect by receiving the respect of others, it follows that professionals value both autonomy in their work and involvement in policy decisions, whether on engagements or firm-management matters. As much as these “rewards” are valued in their own right, they are valued more as signs that the organization trusts and respects them.

MOTIVATION AND SUPERVISORY STYLE

From these observations flow some simple rules for maintaining motivation among professionals. You must provide clear goals; give prompt feedback and reward performance quickly; treat them like winners, involving them in decision-making and seeking their opinion often; give them autonomy in their work, but hold them strictly accountable for results; be tolerant of their impatience;, and provide variety in their work experiences, always keeping the next challenging goal out front.

As straightforward as these principles may seem, they are frequently missing in many professional work environments I have encountered. Unfortunately, the demotivating forces of ambiguous goals, lack of variety, absent feedback and postponed rewards are all too present in professional firms.

The best method I have seen of preserving a high level of motivation in a professional work group is the maintenance of a constant challenge to individuals, composed of two key statements: “Yeah, you’re good,” and… “But how good are you?”.

Both parts of this challenge are essential to its effectiveness. The first, “Yeah, you’re good,”, is necessary to speak to the typical professional’s delicate ego. (“Treat them like winners.”). The second part, “But how good are you?” is necessary to keep the air of challenge necessary to engage the professional’s determination to succeed (“Always keep the next goal out front.”).

A good example of the successful application of this management approach is also given in The Soul of A a New Machine. In that work, a young professional suddenly has a flash of brilliance about how to solve a particularly difficult problem that had appeared intractable. He comes out rushing in to his supervisor, saying, “I’ve solved it, I can have it finished in two months!” (That’s a short time in the world of computer design).

Rather than reacting in a manner such as, “Terrific, well done. I’ll certainly remember you at bonus time,” the supervisor merely said “Oh, come on!,” whereupon the young professional said “well, maybe six weeks”—thus committing himself (an important point) to a self-imposed goal.

Given the importance of eternal challenge in a professional’s life, there is nothing so motivating as a statement like, “Bet you can’t do this.” One does not motivate a professional by being the “good guy” and lessening the pressure;: rather, one does it by helping the professional accept the pressure as a challenge to his or her professional pride.

Motivating professionals is somewhat akin to being the coach of an athletic team: both roles involve trying to bring out the best possible performance in talented individuals. The techniques of doing so are similar in both environments.

A good coach is simultaneously the chief cheerleader and chief critic: demanding and supportive (one without the other is insufficient). When the high- jumper is attempting to clear a given height, the coach is supportive and helpful. But as soon as that accomplishment is reached, up goes the bar by an inch or two. The next goal, challenging but achievable, is kept out front. (Raising the bar by six or seven inches would clearly be demotivating. The scale of the challenge is clearly important.)

Good coaching requires that close attention be paid to the individual’s activities, so that specific, constructive advice can be made about how performance can be improved. While good coaches rarely cosset those in their charge (the best coaches tend to be abrupt, demanding and frequently SOB’s), they clearly demonstrate a commitment to helping their athletes: a commitment that is rewarded with high motivation and high performance.

THE IMPORTANCE OF MEANING

In a survey of research on the management of professionals, (“Leadership and the Professional,” in Scientist, Engineers and Organizations), Morgan McCall, notes that successful leaders spend less time worrying about getting their (professional) subordinates to do something and more about supplying their subordinates with a meaningful understanding of what they are doing.

This conclusion matches my own observations and experience. As discussed above, the same piece of professional work can either strike me as incredibly stimulating, inspiring the energy and attention necessary for creative, productive work, or it can appear meaningless, repetitive and dull: it all depends on whether or not I can readily see where the challenge in the work lies, and whether or not I feel that this piece of work is a “worthy” application of my talents. In turn, how I will react will depend upon the context within which this work is presented to me.

The implication of this is that, perhaps above all else, it is the role of the supervisor of professionals to help create the conditions under which the forces of commitment, creativity and involvement can be unleashed. The supervisor must help the professional find the meaning in the work to be done.

In managing the work of others, in any environment, one can choose to focus either on the WHAT, the HOW or the WHY: what it is to be done; , how it is to be done; or why it is to be done (its purpose or meaning). In the management of professionals, the supervisor should be very clear on the WHAT (‘provide clear goals’), spend only the bare minimum of time on the HOW (‘involve them in decision-making’, ‘provide autonomy’) and spend a lot of time on the WHY (‘provide meaning’).

This is particularly important for junior professionals. On any given professional project, there is a mixture of diagnosis and creativity together with seemingly picayune but no less important execution tasks: drafting memoranda, crunching numbers, documenting progress and the like. Here, above all, the manager of professionals must help the professional worker place the task in context, see its importance and accept the task as worthy of professional effort.

Young professionals are no fools: they know that their work will contain a significant proportion of less-than-frontier-level activities. However, it is profoundly demotivating when this work is presented with an attitude of, “Yes, I agree it’s dull and boring, but it’s got to be done and you’‘ve been chosen to do it.” The good manager can convey a spirit of, “There’s no task too trivial to be done well; there’s just as much opportunity to do good or bad work here as there is anywhere else in the project—it’s all important.” This is, of course, no more than the truth. But in their own personal distaste for “mundane” work, too many partners I have observed fail to convey this sense of importance.

Rarely have I heard of young professionals becoming demotivated because of too much work; most often (all too often) demotivation results from too much meaningless work. And since almost no work done by a professional firm is in fact meaningless (it is all, or should be, valuable to clients, or at least should be), this syndrome represents a failure of management.

MOTIVATION AND PROMOTION

A great deal of the motivation of professionals is accomplished through the interpersonal interactions between the professionals and the partners who lead them. However, as we saw above in our discussion of the role of recruiting, the systems and structure of the firm also play an important role. The work assignment system (how individual projects as matters are staffed) clearly plays a critical role, since it is this system that determines the variety and the challenge of the work to be done by an individual, and these are both are major determinants of motivation. In some cases, work assignments can also be used to ameliorate the effects of diminishing promotion prospects.

Such approaches, however, can never completely substitute for career progress, inside or outside the firm, as a motivating force. Professionals, certainly the ones any organization would want to keep, are, almost by definition, ambitious. Any environment where continued career progress is compromised is almost certain to result in lessened motivation. Whatever its other defects, the up-or-out partnership system has the great virtue that it maintains an air of dynamism, of continued progress, of challenge, that plays to the psychological needs of professionals. Further, by removing weaker performers from the organization, the system avoids the (very strong) demotivating effect on good performers of showing tolerance for weaker, less productive people.

In today’s environment, this last point takes on a special importance. In a professional organization where the odds of making partner are either lengthening or where the criteria for partnership are shifting (i.e., as they are in most professional organizations), the level of ambiguity felt in the middle and upper ranks of the non-partner staff rises rapidly. In such an environment it is inevitable that many non-partners will begin to question their opportunities within the firm, and ask themselves whether or not they should begin to look elsewhere.

If the atmosphere is truly ambiguous, and all non-partners are kept equally in the dark, it is more than likely that it will be the best young professionals, the most marketable, who will leave to seek greener pastures, leaving behind the less-than-superior professionals.

Clearly, to avoid this, professional firms must begin to make distinctions between the best and the competent at an earlier stage, and ensure that those the firm wishes to keep know that they are valued. Only then will it be the weaker performers who will be encouraged to leave. In their attempts to hold on to more non-partner staff short of partnership, many professional firms are adversely affecting the overall level of challenge and motivation felt in the junior ranks.

Given today’s competitive environment, no professional firm can provide continued career progress to every junior professional within the boundaries of the firm. Yet we have seen that commitment to career progress is one of the defining characteristics of the professional.

Fortunately, there is a relatively simple way out of this dilemma: outplacement. A firm that is truly committed to (and actively works at) placing its “alumni” (not passed-over partnership candidates) in good positions can respond to the career progress needs of all of its juniors, and thereby create a highly motivational atmosphere.

As I observe the professional service sector, more and more firms are discovering the power of outplacement, not as a humanitarian effort, but as one of the key elements of the firm’s management system.

CONCLUSION

The appropriate organizational response to the motivation crisis in the professions is not to try and make the atmosphere of the organization less intense. The economics of the practice today do not allow this option.

Future success in the professions will flow only to those individuals and firms who are willing to gird their loins and meet the intensity demanded by today’s practice. If today’s young professionals appear less motivated than in the past, it is not because they cannot be motivated. Rather, it is because the sources of motivation that existed in the past, and the mechanisms through which they worked, are no longer as forceful or effective as they were.

However, with more attention to personal supervisory skills and a re-examination of the firm’s recruiting, work assignment, feedback and outplacement systems, the professional firm of tomorrow can be as highly motivating (and as satisfying) as the firm of yesteryear.