VI. THE MODEL IS THE MESSAGE: WHY FEE-FOR-SERVICE FAILS

A model is never neutral—it reveals what we revere. It acts like a mirror, reflecting our true values back at us.

Fee-for-service exalts service as the value, scope as the promise, and transformation as an afterthought. We promise care, but charge for activity. We speak of trust, but bill by deliverable. We claim to steward relationships while tracking the math of every moment.

The services accumulate like bricks in a tower—rising ever higher, growing ever heavier. Yet the tower remains hollow, for the true value was never found in the slabs themselves, but in the grand design toward which they aspired.

The vogue for productized services is no step forward. It is a backward glance—toward repetition, standardization, and sameness. A revival of the assembly line, draped in digital disguise. It flattens the professional into a menu, and mistakes precision for purpose.

But we are not merchants of modules. We are stewards of transformation—summoned not to sell, but to accompany a becoming.

Productsandservices say, “Look what we can do.”
Transformations reveal, “Look at who you can become.”

Those who would finance the future of the professions—arriving with spreadsheets in hand and eyes fixed on margins—would do well to reckon with this: to invest in a model already gasping for breath is not foresight, but capital embalmed in a legacy it cannot revive. In chasing yield and optimizing the obsolete, they consecrate the very conditions of moral injury. For the soul of a profession cannot be priced—it must be pledged. Not to metrics, but to meaning. Not to dividends, but to duty and dignity.

Let our economics reflect our ethos. Let our pricing reflect our purpose. And let the model bear witness to the message: That what matters most is not what we deliver, but who the customer becomes.