How Do You Turn a Billable-Hours Target Into a Development Goal?

How do you turn a billable-hours target into a development goal?

Take the one lever most likely to move the number, turn it into something you can practise weekly, and leave the target itself — 75 percent utilisation, 120 billable hours a month, whatever it is — as the scoreboard, not the goal. A utilisation figure tells you the business needs more chargeable time. It does not tell you what to get better at. That translation is the work.

This is the same problem a sales quota poses, and the approach in how you turn a sales quota into a development goal applies here too: find the behaviour behind the number, then build a plan around the behaviour.

Why "raise utilisation" fails as a goal

Utilisation is an outcome of several smaller things: how fast you scope new work, how often clients say yes to proposals, how much time goes to unbilled admin, and whether you take on work that drags on past its estimate. A goal that just restates the outcome ("get to 75 percent") gives you nothing to rehearse on a Tuesday afternoon. Locke and Latham's research on goal setting found that specific, challenging goals outperform vague ones largely because they're clear enough to guide action — and "raise utilisation" fails that test, while "cut proposal turnaround from five days to two" passes it (Locke & Latham, 2002).

Find the lever before you write the goal

Most consultants and small-firm founders can name their utilisation drag within a few minutes of thinking about it. A short list helps:

Pick one row. Resist the urge to fix all five at once — a point covered in how many professional goals to run at once: most people hold their standard better with one or two live goals than with five half-attended ones.

A worked example: an independent consultant

Say the target is 70 percent utilisation this quarter, currently sitting at 58 percent. The drag, on inspection, is proposal turnaround — scopes take five days to write because each one starts from a blank page. The goal becomes: build and refine a proposal template library, measured by turnaround time, with a first step of drafting one template within seven days from the last three jobs won. Practice sits mostly in doing (writing and reusing templates on live work), some in feedback (asking two clients what made the proposal clear or unclear), and a small amount in reading one or two short pieces on scoping language — a 70/20/10 split, whose evidence base is mixed rather than proven, as covered in the 70/20/10 model explained.

An example outside consulting: the same translation for an athlete

A fast bowler whose season target is "bowl 15 overs a match without a workload breakdown" faces the identical translation problem. The target is an outcome. The capability underneath it might be recovery routine between spells, or run-up consistency under fatigue. The practice is the same shape — a specific, measurable behaviour, rehearsed on a schedule, reviewed against a baseline — whether the scoreboard is overs bowled or hours billed. This parallel is explored more fully in a development plan for professional athletes.

Checking whether it worked

A rise from 58 to 64 percent utilisation might be the new habit, or it might be one unusually busy month. Before crediting the goal, it's worth asking whether the change is bigger than the normal month-to-month swing — the same logic behind minimal detectable change in clinical measurement (PMC, 2018). If the number moves within its usual range, the honest call is "held steady," not "improved," a principle set out in measuring professional growth honestly.

Where a platform like Jobulary fits

Jobulary is an Individual Development Plan platform from Bodhih Training. A goal like "cut proposal turnaround to two days" can go live with its reason, where it sits (current role or profession), a measure, a weekly hours budget, and a first step due within seven days — with a trade-off noted if another goal is already live. Plans follow a practice-first 70/20/10 path sized to the hours you actually have, reviewed in 90-day cycles.

If a firm sponsors the plan, the sponsor sees that a goal exists and its progress against the measure — never the reflections or check-in notes behind it, and the plan travels with the person if they move on. Check-ins take about three minutes, and notifications stay capped and quiet, with no streaks to chase.