ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laura O'Leary
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT EXPERT
I have spent eighteen years inside professional services, running resource management functions at some of the world's most successful consulting and advisory firms. On several occasions I have been the person brought in to establish the capability where it was missing: building resource management functions from the ground up, leading a technology build for a firm that had the function but not the tools, and standing up a resourcing for a business unit that had opted out of its firm's central provision. I have, in other words, not just run resource management but repeatedly created it.
BUSINESS BUILDER & LEADER
I have also built and led a multi-region Technology PR and Public Affairs consulting business as both its COO and latterly as it's Global Managing Director, which is why I treat resourcing as a profit-and-loss question rather than an operational one.
I write about resource management not as a theory, but as something I have spent a career doing, and occasionally getting wrong, inside real firms under real pressure.
TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION GEEK
I have been lucky enough to lead the design and implementation of an inhouse Resource Management software build for a FTSE 100 Aerospace and Defense company.
Further to this, I have worked with the major resource management technology vendors on the market and have come to know both the products and the people who build them.
I have seen the problem The Invisible Asset describes from every side: as the person making the staffing decisions, as the person held accountable for utilisation and margin, and as the person weighing up, and defining the requirements for the systems that are meant to help optimize capacity and enable strategic workforce planning.
CONTACT
Questions, reflections, or a firm you'd like to talk through? Send me a note. I read and reply to every message personally.