So you’re wondering how I did it. How I convinced a partner who had been tracking his time for 35 years to never fill out a timesheet again. Or more appropriately, how I freed myself from the bondage of the timesheet. It started with a changed belief system. This was not hard for me, because I did not believe in what I did not understand. Once I convinced myself that I was going to do it, I began searching for early adopters. I came across a gentleman by the name of Mark Bailey out of Reno, Nevada. Mark was mentioned on the verasage site, which happens to be the website of the author of Firm of the Future. I emailed Mark, we scheduled a phone call, and during that call he spent 45 minutes talking about his firm which uses no timesheets. (SIDENOTE: I knew nothing about this man before our call, other than his firm was the two-time winner of “Best firm to work for in the US” in the small firm category (15-24 employees) and he was old enough to be my dad. That is cool). After our call, I had hope that this could possibly work. One of the theories which spun off my talk with Mark was the core purpose of the timesheet. I concluded that the timesheet is nothing more than an illusion of control that partners — in traditional firm vs. firm of the future — think they have over their employees. By illusion, I mean their sole purpose is to keep tabs on making sure the employee stays busy. Partners think they are using them as a metric, when I am 98% confident that the partner knows exactly what they are going to bill for an engagement before they ever start it. I could rant on and on about the level of BS the timesheet is based on, but this post is to talk about “how I did it.” Contact me if you want the rant.
My biggest fear in the switch was client reaction. “WHAT WAS THE CLIENT GOING TO SAY????????” The fear was mildly valid because most my dad’s clients have been doing it the same way for the past 35 years. My mentors in this process assured me that the clients who ran from this would be doing me a favor. So to ease the shock factor, we issued a written statement to all of our clients explaining what we were going to be doing and attached a sample FPA to the statement. Some clients signed the example and mailed it back, others called to praise the change, and some had no comment.
Lastly, we set the date to be January 1, 2010, as our starting point to CRUISE the timesheet. Come back in a week to read about “what it is like now.”
Disclaimer: This is a overview of what went into the transition from billable hour to FPAs. Please feel free to contact me to discuss my full experience and ask any questions.
