In tackling the issue of staffing efficiency on engagements, no activity in the office surpasses in importance good management of the scheduling process.

Once it has been decided how an engagement is to be staffed (who is assigned, and what portion of the engagement each is scheduled to do), the engagement’s leverage structure is in place. Staffing decisions also clearly play a significant role in determining the amount (and character) of skill building. Most of the skill building that takes place in the firm’s practice comes from the types of engagements its people are sent on, and what part of the engagement they are given to perform.

As we have noted, many studies have shown that motivation, morale, and ultimately retention are affected by nothing as much as the pattern of work that the staff is given to perform. Accordingly, the scheduling process is where most of the real managerial decisions in running the practice are taken. It is the place where the real strategic trade-offs between short-term profitability, client service, skill building, and retention are made.

High-level attention to this area by practice managers offers a significant opportunity to correct the under-delegation problem. Unfortunately, in many firms scheduling is viewed as an administrative or tactical function, which it is not. It should be the time when powerful practice managers challenge equally powerful partners to defend why they have staffed their engagement in the way they have, to explain why they really need the people they have requested. Only in the to-and-fro of such discussions will the (often hidden) under-delegation problems be revealed.

Excerpted from ‘Managing the Professional Service Firm’ by David Maister, page 48