Coevolving Innovations

When I’m in an academic setting looking into research into services, there’s one idea that I’m continually looking out for: finding a measure that is superior to counting billable hours.

Billable utilization is one of the measures common in knowledge intensive business services (KIBS). This category of services includes professionals such as consultants, lawyers and accountants.

I’ve been triggered on this topic by reading “Exile on Bay Street” by Alec Scott, in the September issue of Toronto Life. This well-written personal account of the life of lawyers on Bay Street — the financial centre of Canada — parallels that of management consultants. Firstly, there’s the external perception of what the life is like (or at least what it was):

The lawyers of the last generation lived the cliché; they worked and played equally hard. Unlike my peers, they loved telling war stories, vividly recounting the ups and downs of the practice. [….]

A colleague pointed out an article in the New York Times, “At I.B.M., a Vacation Anytime, or Maybe None“, by Ken Belson (online on August 31, 2007, subscription maybe required). The article starts with the lead:

It’s every worker’s dream: take as much vacation time as you want, on short notice, and don’t worry about your boss calling you on it. Cut out early, make it a long weekend, string two weeks together — as you like. No need to call in sick on a Friday so you can disappear for a fishing trip. Just go; nobody’s keeping track.

That is essentially what goes on at I.B.M., one of the cornerstones of corporate America, where each of the 355,000 workers is entitled to three or more weeks of vacation. The company does not keep track of who takes how much time or when, does not dole out choice vacation times by seniority and does not let people carry days off from year to year.

Instead, for the past few years, employees at all levels have made informal arrangements with their direct supervisors, guided mainly by their ability to get their work done on time. Many people post their vacation plans on electronic calendars that colleagues can view online, and they leave word about how they can be reached in a pinch.