Insecure Overachievers
There is a single attribute that takes many a highly intelligent and highly qualified individual to the top of the professional services world. And it’s far from obvious given the power, money and glory they command. It isn’t which school they went to, or which university they graduated from. Nor is it their social status, or lack of it.
The key to their achievements is insecurity.
Fundamental to success in professional services, perhaps unsurprisingly, is extraordinary levels of service. The client-firm relationship is paramount. (Presumably this is why many firms still use old chestnuts like, ‘we exist because you exist’ and, ‘our success is your success.’ Perhaps they see obeisance is more important than originality.)
And there is good money to be had for giving good service. Professional services accounts for 17% of UK economy, contributing ca £300 bn, and employing 5.5m people (1).
So, we have high achievers making money . . . where does insecurity come in?
Approval is catnip for the insecure, usually essential for their continued self-esteem. The client needs a service, the lawyer/consultant/banker (etc.) delivers it, receives approval, and then goes looking for the next hit of approval, like a junkie in search of another score.
This cycle of service and approval create a virtuous circle for these so-called Insecure Overachievers (IOs). The more approval they get the farther their career advances and the better they feel. This also explains the absurd, sometimes life-limiting, number of hours that many IOs work in their determination to get client approval
And don’t just take my word for it.
The concept of insecure overachievement has been exhaustively researched by Professor Laura Empson (2).
The insecure overachiever typology has been (covertly) recognised by HR in the professional services sector for years, and is a key recruitment criterion.
It’s immortalised in the McKinsey mantra: Client first, Firm second, Self third.
So far so good, better, best, excellent.
But, in the hyper-competitive struggle to gain more than their fair share of the £300bn professional services market, are firms in danger of taking things too far?
The virtuous circle can turn vicious if the pace of overachievement drops, as David Morley suggests:
‘If you don’t continue to excel then that will lead to complacency, decline and termination. You can’t figure out a way to avoid this . . . if you adopt a more lifestyle approach to the law the competition will topple you’’ (3)
At Sagency we think that now is precisely the time to figure out the way to ‘avoid this’ because:
Like boiled frogs, many firms and their IO employees are ignoring the implications of the ‘always on’ digital age. Now IO’s are challenged to over-deliver 24/7, or at least until they burn out, or worse. It’s no longer even a question of work-life balance, if work is all there is.
Research suggests that part of the reason why Millennials are proving so ‘ungovernable’ is that they reject the old think that says we do it this way because we’ve always done it this way.
Could it be any coincidence that banks and law firms see a peak in departures about four years after recruitment, which research has found is how long takes for the body to start to rebel against a regime of relentless work (4)?
If firms don’t change clients will drive them to change. Some clients are now demanding to interview junior lawyers to find out how they are being treated, as part of the decision on whether to retain the firm or not
Nigel Jones former Senior Partner at Linklater and now chair of City Mental Health Group, thinks this could become a very serious problem indeed:
‘Clients demand high-quality cost-effective service and increasingly recognise that to achieve this people need to be operating at their best . . . and if the City doesn’t change to persuade clients that this is what we’re doing, the clients will go elsewhere. This is why this is an existential issue to the future of the City.’
(1) Financial Times
(2) Professor Laura Empson is Director of the Centre for Professional Service Firms at Cass Business School, London, and a Senior Research Fellow at Harvard Law School's Centre on the Legal Profession.
(3) David Morley former Senior Partner at Allen & Overy on BBC Radio 4
(4) Dr Alex Michel University of Pennsylvania
