This struck me when I worked for a huge law firm, more than a decade ago.
We had to schedule some jury research. We were inviting the whole world — a collection of lawyers from the firm and a collection of in-house lawyers. The jury research was impossible to schedule. We finally found a date that was good for everyone — a Friday some months off.
The lawyers at my firm were delighted that the jury research had been set for a Friday. That would let you work all week and then fly home either late Friday night or early Saturday. Everyone naturally preferred to travel during dead time on a weekend.
A couple of weeks later, one of the in-house lawyers called: “I just noticed that we scheduled the jury research for a Friday. That’s ridiculous. We’d have to fly home late on a Friday night or on a Saturday. I’m not going to miss a Friday night or a Saturday for work. Please reschedule the jury research.”
We did.
But it got me to thinking.
Maybe a good way to test the work ethic (or the insanity) of an institution is to see whether people prefer to fly on weekdays or weekends.
If everyone is itching to fly on Sunday, to start work bright and early Monday morning, your place is on the industrious side.
Conversely, if everyone refuses to fly on Sunday — “Why would I fly on one of my days off?” — and plans to fly during the workweek, we’ll put your joint on the more leisurely side.
My test may not apply to an institution as a whole. At a law firm, for example, the lawyers may prefer to fly on weekends, but the folks who don’t generate revenue — the IT staff, for example — may be weekday fliers. Or maybe it depends whether the IT staff is paid on an hourly or annual basis.
At corporations, you may see differences between revenue-generators and non-revenue generators; between folks who are frantically busy at work and folks who are less busy; between people who are childless, rearing children, or whose kids are in college or beyond; and so on.
But the “when do you prefer to fly” test is a pretty good one, helping you to judge whether a person aggressively prefers to devote time to business or personal affairs.
Have I told you something about yourself?
Or maybe you could innocently work this question into your job interviews and get a sense of how institutions view work-life balance.
Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now deputy general counsel at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Inside Straight: Advice About Lawyering, In-House And Out, That Only The Internet Could Provide (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.