Do you work on a 24/7 schedule? Always on? People in professional services like IT, consultants, investment bankers, accountants, etc. usually make work their top priority. If they're going to succeed, the rule is they need to be on--all the time. At least that's what most believe.
Blackberry own you? Work more than 50 hours a week, maybe 65? And even more time on the Blackberry? And respond to messages within an hour? Those are the people that really need to see this research.
Counter-intuitive findings reported in the October Harvard Business Review challenge all those beliefs. Jessica Porter and Leslie Perlow of Harvard Business School studied service professionals in the Boston Consulting Group and found that "it is perfectly possible for consultants and other professionals to meet the highest standards of service and still have planned, uninterrupted time off."
Of course, the researchers' notion was a case of rethinking the unthinkable, and a challenge to conventional wisdom. Here's how they carried out the research. They selected a group of four consultants who were working with a new client that the firm really wanted to add to their portfolio. The project involved daily interaction with the client, leading the consultants to believe that they had to be at the client site four days a week. The research required everyone to take a full day off a week--unusual for BCG and major consulting firms. The researchers talked the firm into adding an additional person so that the total time invested in the client wasn't changed, but every member of the team had to take off a day a week. . . on one of the days he/she would normally be with the client. Over the four years the researchers added 10 more teams to the research base.
A lot of nervousness and resistance was inevitable.
Results? In contrast to teams that did not take part in the study, the research revealed the following:
- higher satisfaction with work/life balance
- higher job satisfaction
- more open communication
- increased learning and development
- better product delivered to the client
- increased work efficiencies
- greater likelihood of long term career at the firm (consulting has huge burnout rate)
Intriguing insight:
Exaggerated responsiveness to the client "perpetuates a vicious cycle." 24/7 responsiveness breeds the need for more responsiveness, both in the client and in the consultant.