How the professional sausage factory keeps churning out bad behaviour
My lads are in their early twenties and, as such, many of their friends are finishing up university degrees and heading out into the real world. Maybe it's a function of both the region they grew up in and the school they went to, but many of those peers are finishing accounting and law degrees and heading into graduate programmes with large professional service firms.
I’ve been thinking about the journey they’re on since last weekend when I read the news that the chair of one of our larger accounting firms was stepping down because of some not-detailed “historical behavioural matter”. This is but the latest example of historical bad behaviour from within these sorts of firms. In the post-#MeToo world, seemingly every month there is another allegation of poor behaviour from senior staff at these organisations.
Now before I get pilloried as an apologist for inappropriate behaviour, an unfeeling misogynist or a dinosaur male chauvinist pig, let me be clear: there is clear fault from those who take advantage of a power imbalance to abuse their juniors. Whether that abuse is verbal, physical or sexual doesn’t matter, power imbalances are real and need to be recognised by those who benefit from them.
With that disclaimer out of the way, I think it is worth looking at these examples of bad behaviour as symptoms of a far deeper underlying cause. And I'm not speaking about the evils of the patriarchy or latent sexism (two things that there should be a valid conversation about). Rather, I’m referring to the norms within these large firms and the way they work.
For those who have never been privy to the way the professional sausage factory works, it’s kind of like this: every year, dozens of the smartest law and accounting graduates sign up for graduate programmes at these firms. They do so with the knowledge that they will start off being paid very little and working very, very hard. Not unlike those in John Grisham’s novel, The Firm, these individuals know full well that there is an unspoken contract that they will work incredibly long hours in order to prove themselves.
In addition, proving themselves means being a team player. So beyond pulling all-nighters and clocking up 80+ hour weeks, they are expected (whether explicitly or implicitly) to play as hard as they work. Lots of drinking, boozy lunches and dinners, and the enjoyment of substances illicit and not, are all part of the norm. These firms are built upon an operating model that sees them take on large numbers of new graduates, and slowly have those grads drop off until, a decade or two later, those with the biggest appetite for work (and, one assumes, the most alcohol-compliant liver) will come through the funnel and make it to the hallowed halls of the partners. Partnership being, of course, a guarantee of amazing lifetime earnings and the respect and admiration of one’s peers.
Is it any surprise that these masters of the universe start to believe in their own superiority and feel that they can have expectations of their underlings that go beyond simply hard work and an ability to consume inordinate amounts of alcohol? And, similarly, is it any surprise that in these days of more awareness and a heightened understanding of power imbalance, many of these accusations of historical bad behaviour are surfacing?
But it strikes me that simply berating the bad actors, as justified as that is, doesn’t get to the root cause of this situation. A culture of attrition, a promise of partnership after the requisite decades of toil and subservience, the very fundamental nature of this approach that sees dozens (or hundreds) enter the funnel and only a select few actually rise to the hallowed halls, is what creates the breeding ground for situations like this. If we don’t deal to the underlying cause, we'll continue to read about these situations year after year.
Maybe my lads’ peers will have a different experience as they enter the pantheon of the big professional services firms. But my hunch is that, despite a new coat of paint and some token words of caution, nothing has really changed.