Symptom: People are expected to spend all of their time on projects, leaving too little for critical overhead tasks such as responding to new clients.
It may be that time spent responding to clients inquiries was not planned in the budget. In such a case, people must spend all of their time working on existing clients' projects in order to break even (meet their budget). Of course, this leaves no time to work with new clients on future business.
Another way to say this is: people have too high a target "sold ratio." The sold ratio is the percentage of time people are supposed to spend on clients' projects (as opposed to overhead tasks). The sold ratio is reflect in pricing (in those organizations that charge for their products and services) or in the number of hours made available to clients for their projects (in staff functions that do not charge for their products). If the sold ratio is too high, critical overhead functions will not occur.
