And That Inspiration You Had Jogging in Central Park Is What Fraction of a Billable Hour?

In "Face Time," Business Week probes the irrationality of all of our insecurities about failing to show sufficient of same—that is to say, our fears of what will happen if we're not in the office at all hours.  (This is a two-way street, by the way:  Just as junior employees worry if they don't demonstrate "enough" face time, managers worry about employees, no matter how impeccable their performance, who seem to go missing more than others.)  The syndrome goes like this:

"It's as though managers say to themselves: "Now that Fran is in charge of the product launch, the plan should be in great shape. Fran has a terrific track record and excellent relationships in the industry. Our weekly one-on-one will keep me up to date on her progress. She's also great about cc:ing me on correspondence with our partners. But hey -- if I can see her in the office every day from 6 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., I'll feel even better about how her project is going."

And this is for those lucky schmoes who aren't even prisoners of the billable hour.  (By the way, the anecdote of the untouched Chinese food container is a keeper.)

But I have another candidate for what can make us all feel in a pressure cooker of someone else's devising at times, and for better or worse it links directly to the concept of being a professional:  Client expectations.

Living up to, or even exceeding (!), client expectations is something I hope we all aspire to.  Today that can mean responding by Blackberry within hours, if not minutes. 

At the Fordham Law School conference where I spoke 10 days ago (on challenges to "professionalism" posed by large firm practice), an off-agenda, spontaneous and heartfelt dialogue broke out about the nefarious impact of Blackberry's—albeit on the premise that there's no going back.  A Cravath partner said rather wistfully that when he began practicing and a client posed a question, "one had time to reflect, to turn it over and around in one's mind, to probe it."  Can you say, "that's so yesterday!"

This saddens me.  And maybe it doesn't have to be this way.  We are, after all, collaborators in submitting to the tyranny of the clock.  Although it's too soon to know for sure, initial reports are that the train derailment in Japan that killed over 90 people yesterday was caused by the motorman speeding because he was 90 seconds behind schedule.  An extreme case of "clock tyranny," to be sure, but isn't our reaction to that story to hold the simultaneous and incompatible views both that the motorman was crazily irresponsible, and that we can understand his wanting to be on schedule?

There's no simple solution to this, of course, but we can begin, as did Business Week, by pointing out how irrational it all is.