Planning season is here. Revenue gets a lift, utilization gets a target, and the organizational chart looks comfortingly familiar. We call it looking ahead.
But the people entering our firms bring different habits. In a Gallup survey this spring, about half of Americans ages 14 to 29 used AI at least weekly, and curiosity was the feeling they named most often. They are also more skeptical of it than a year ago. It is not a survey of young engineers, but it reminds us that curiosity and skepticism about AI are entering the workforce together.
When good ideas repeatedly go nowhere, ambitious people start looking for somewhere they will.
Hands, Handoffs, and Heads
The hands on this month’s cover are mudras from an installation at Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi. Each hand gesture carries a specific meaning. They got me thinking about three parts of our business.
Hands are the people closest to the work and the expertise clients pay for, often the first to see what needs changing.
Handoffs are the moments when those observations become ideas, and when those ideas either move forward or disappear somewhere in the hierarchy.
Heads are those of us who lead teams and decide what gets heard, tested, supported, and rewarded.
We spend considerable time planning headcount. We should spend as much on what connects the hands to the heads.
The expertise remains. The billable unit may not.
For years, federal rules required railroads to visually inspect much of their track twice a week. After railroads added automated inspection, the Federal Railroad Administration granted a five-year waiver in December 2025: on qualifying track with monthly automated inspections, visual inspections could drop to once a week. The technology did not make the inspector obsolete. It changed what the rules permitted.
Our industry prices plenty of work by the hour, the visit, or the sample, often in quantities someone else determines.
For 2027: Before approving another staffing plan, identify which services depend on those quantities. Then ask what higher-value work your people should be preparing to deliver by 2029.
Ideas need somewhere to go.
Imagine a junior engineer proposing an AI-assisted workflow that eliminates twenty hours of repetitive reporting. The client gets the same defensible result, faster.
Wonderful. Except the project is billed hourly. The engineer sees an improvement. The utilization report sees twenty fewer billable hours.
For 2027: Settle one governance question before the plan is final. Who has the authority to sponsor an improvement that reduces billable hours, without penalizing the manager whose utilization drops? Then give every employee idea, AI or not, a route to that person. Recognize improvements implemented, not suggestions collected.
An innovation culture that cannot name one employee idea it adopted may be little more than a PowerPoint culture.
Are the managers evolving, too?
We often ask whether younger professionals are adapting. We rarely ask it of those of us managing them.
Many of us were shaped by long hours and exacting mentors. Some of that was invaluable. Some was simply how things were done.
How often does our plan distinguish hiring for growth from hiring because someone decided to leave? Those are two very different business problems.
Fair compensation, meaningful assignments, and career advancement matter. So does having a voice in shaping the business.
A team can execute this year’s plan flawlessly and still lose the people it needs for the next one. That is a leadership problem before it becomes a recruiting problem.
For 2027: I want this standard applied to me. Alongside revenue, margin, and utilization, ask me: Whom did you develop? Whose ideas did you champion? What can your team do today that it could not do a year ago?
If we want a different workforce by 2029, our management scorecards should look different in 2027.
Who gets the productivity dividend?
We tell clients they are buying expertise and professional judgment, not hours. Yet much of our business remains organized, priced, and measured around hours and visits.
If technology delivers the same reliable answer in half the time, who captures that value? The client through lower fees? The firm through higher margins? Or the people doing the work through opportunities to develop something better?
I do not have a settled answer.
Jigar
Sources
- Brenan, M. (2026, April 8). Gen Z’s AI adoption steady, but skepticism climbs. Gallup.
- Federal Railroad Administration. (2025, December 5). Decision letter, docket FRA-2025-0059.