In today’s episode, I talk about the importance of capacity planning so firm owners can achieve the work-life balance they need.
0:45 – In episode 49, I shared something that I call the professional services growth trap, which means that firms in the accounting industry experience overwork, long work hours, and unbalanced work-life balance.
1:10 – Business model standardization can help you avoid this growth trap, and to help calm the chaos in your firm, capacity planning is another important step.
1:55 – In general, our natural tendency is to accept whatever work comes our way, not considering that we may not have the capability to deliver.
2:20 – Simply put, capacity planning is to plan your work in such a way that you can deliver the work that you promise your clients.
3:29 – By assigning time forecasts to all tasks within the firm, assigning it to individuals, and producing a comparative report of capacity and committed work, I can then see over/under capacity at a team member level along with over/under capacity at a firm-wide level.
4:06 – The firm’s operational decisions are based on capacity. In any case, I want to make sure that the team does not get overworked, and can take on more work if necessary.
4:44 – I know of just one software that handles capacity planning properly: Teamwork, which has an adaptable workload planner report.
4:55 – Karbon is also starting to release some capacity planning functionality which is a good start, but still falls short.
5:35 – I view capacity planning as so important that I handle it on a personal basis in Future Firm ®. For any service provider, this is one of the best operational improvements they can make.
