Converting Away From Hourly Billing When It Is Deeply Seeded In Your Org's Culture
Welcome to this month's article of Let’s Be Frank, a monthly newsletter series hosted on LinkedIn and authored by our founder Digby. If you are interested in following along pop over to the Let’s Be Frank LinkedIn page here and hit the subscribe button to have these articles sent straight to your inbox.
In the first eight articles we have covered so much. In particular Articles 2 and 3 were a two part series on how to move away from hourly billing. Article 2 covered building pricing guidelines on a project by project basis (see AltFee for a tool to help on this) and Article 3 covered how important continuous learning was in constantly improving.
In this article I will dig in on how you effect the change away from hourly billing when it is so deeply interwoven into your everyday culture. I definitely did not get this completely right as we launched Frank Fee, but I have now had some time to reflect and soak in my learnings.
Champion
To get started you need a Champion who is committed to the change, someone with the passion to lead even when there are bumps along the way. This person could come from anywhere in the firm as long as they have a desire to lead. In our case that was me and I was definitely passionate. The Champion will need to build a supporting team so that there are many touch points in the firm and an aligned message is consistently being delivered. I should have spent more time on this at the outset, but we now have a strong team moving the initiative forward and the energy comes from many.
Strategic Change Initiative
It is key to recognize that the movement away from hourly billing is a fundamental shift for the firm. We had a clear plan at the start as I could see the basic steps required, but we could have been way more strategic about our approach. Looking back I would have been more inclusive at the start getting more voices at the table, creating action items with target dates with responsible individuals for each action item.
As a great tool, I suggest you get a copy of Michael Canic’s book “Ruthless Consistency”. Michael’s secret sauce is how he rejects the concept of strategic planning and rather adopts a dynamic process of using a strategic framework to achieve an objective. Something that does not go in a drawer but rather is front and center for you throughout the initiative and is adaptive to changing circumstances.
Good luck with moving away from the hourly model and remember you can take it on in small bits.
Until next time,
