Sublime

By leveraging its high-cost seniors with low-cost juniors, the professional firm can lower its effective hourly rate and thus reduce its cost to clients while simultaneously generating additional profit for the partners.

this latter variable is a significant force in influencing the economics of the firm, its organizational structure, and its positioning in the client and people markets.

over time, the proportion of juniors to seniors required by the firm in a particular practice area will tend to increase.

most significant management variable to be disclosed by the previous analysis is the choice of the mix of projects undertaken, and the implications this has for the (average) project team (i.e., leverage) structure.

Professor Howard Raiffa’s maximum bid of others (or MBOO, pronounced “maboo”) analysis, which captures the fundamental trade-off in graphical form.

typical project which requires 50 percent of a senior’s time, 100 percent of a middle-level person’s time, and the full-time efforts of three juniors.

hiring needs would expand to include a major role for less skilled professionals and more paraprofessionals, since the increased structuring of familiar engagement types would allow the firm to employ an increasing degree of…

Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

Consider what will happen if a firm brings in a mix of client work such that its “proper” staffing requirements would be for a slightly higher mix of juniors, and a lesser mix of seniors than it has (i.e., the work is…

Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

The connection between a firm’s leverage structure (its ratio of junior to senior professional staff) and the people marketplace can be captured in a single sentence: People do not join professional firms for jobs, but for careers.