I once spoke with the Global VP of Professional Services at a major tech firm, and he said something that’s stuck with me ever since:
“My job is to maintain the tightest possible team to provide the best services to customers.”
He was under no illusions — he knew this was easy to say and hard to execute. He described the holy grail as a tool that would help him “grow professional services in a financially responsible way—you can’t just hire because everyone is fully utilized. You need to point to trends and pipeline to justify adding resources.”
Since that conversation, I’ve often thought of PS organizations as rubber bands: leaders want to stretch them to maximum tension without breaking. And when I’ve shared that analogy with other PS leaders, I usually get the same response — a solemn nod. It resonates.
But over time, I’ve started to think the rubber band metaphor isn’t quite enough. Because a rubber band just stretches. What professional services orgs are trying to do is more complex—they’re trying to transfer force, to keep multiple parts of a system moving in sync. The closer metaphor?
A fan belt.
Why the Fan Belt Fits
If you’ve ever popped the hood of a car, you’ve seen it: a simple rubber belt wrapped tightly around a series of pulleys, quietly transferring energy from one part of the engine to another. It’s not flashy. But without it, the whole system fails. This is the fan belt — or drive belt — and in many ways, it’s a perfect metaphor for how professional services (PS) organizations attempt to operate.
Because in PS, the goal is the same: to keep the organization taut. Efficient. Responsive. Fully utilized — but not overstretched. The problem? Just like with a fan belt, most organizations aren’t getting the tension right. Some are running too loose. Many others are dangerously tight.
And very few realize how close they are to snapping.
The Cost of Slack: When the Belt’s Too Loose
Every org aspires to maximize utilization, but few admit how often they settle for less. Resources sit idle between projects. Talent is misaligned or under-leveraged. People are working — but not always on the right things.
This is what happens when the belt is too loose.
It’s the inefficiency that creeps in slowly:
- Sunk costs on underutilized headcount
- Revenue leakage from slow staffing
- Diminished margins from inefficiency
Looseness feels safe, even intentional sometimes. “We don’t want to burn people out.” “We need to stay flexible.” These are valid instincts. But when left unchecked, slack kills momentum — and quietly drains margin.
The Invisible Danger of Over-Tension
Here’s the harder truth: many PS orgs aren’t too loose. They’re too tight! And they don’t even know it.
Like a fan belt pulled too hard, these organizations look efficient on the surface. Full calendars. No bench. High velocity. It feels like optimal performance.
Until it doesn’t.
Because overtightening brings its own kind of failure — quieter at first, then catastrophic:
- Customer experience starts slipping. Teams don’t have time to prep deeply, respond thoughtfully, or innovate mid-project.
- Attrition creeps up. Burnout turns into disengagement. Disengagement becomes exits.
- The best people leave first.
- And then the clients follow.
This is the organizational equivalent of a snapped belt at 70 miles an hour: everything shuts down, and you’re left trying to figure out how it happened so fast.
Why PS Orgs Struggle to Find the Right Tension
The issue isn’t a lack of intelligence. It’s a lack of instrumentation.
Most firms still rely on lagging indicators to tell them whether they’re stretched too tight or too loose—utilization numbers, project delays, turnover stats. By the time the data shows a problem, the damage is already done.
What’s missing is dynamic tension sensing — the ability to measure and manage the elasticity of your workforce in real time.
- Are we aligning the right talent to the right work?
- Are we over-indexing on a few key players, while others fly under the radar?
- Are we building in slack where it’s strategic—but not where it’s wasteful?
These are not just operational questions. They are existential ones. Because in professional services, your engine is your people.
Getting the Tension Right
There’s no universal formula. But the best-performing PS orgs share a few common principles:
- Precision Resource Management
They don’t guess who’s available—they know. And they use intelligent tooling to map capacity and demand dynamically, not quarterly. - Elastic Teaming Models
They build around adaptable team structures that can flex without fatigue — balancing consistency with fresh energy. - Strategic Slack
Not all downtime is waste. The best orgs create intentional slack: time to learn, recharge, rethink. That’s not softness — that’s sustainability. - Early Warning Systems
They use leading indicators (engagement signals, pipeline pressure, forecast gaps) to adjust before things break.
Final Thought
The goal isn’t to stretch your people to their limits. It’s to operate with the kind of optimal tension that creates power without pain. That keeps the engine humming — not grinding.
In professional services, your people are the engine.
Too much slack? You lose power.
Too much tension? You lose people.
And when the belt snaps, it’s not just productivity that stalls — it’s trust. Some customers, and some talent, may never come back.