Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
The Measure of Effective Resource Management
Michael R. Wood is a Business Process Improvement & IT Strategist Independent Consultant. He is creator of the business process-improvement methodology called HELIX and founder of The Natural Intelligence Group, a strategy, process improvement and technology consulting company. He is also a CPA, has served as an Adjunct Professor in Pepperdine's Management MBA program, an Associate Professor at California Lutheran University, and on the boards of numerous professional organizations. Mr. Wood is a sought after presenter of HELIX workshops and seminars in both the U.S. and Europe.
When it comes to managing IT resources effectively, the last thing you want to focus on are those pesky Full Time Equivalents (FTEs). Managing intellectual capital is a function of positive outcomes achieved more than the hours it took to achieve the desired results. Heresy, you say? Balderdash, I say…and the facts are with me on this.
Doing rote and routine work is a matter of managing hours and deploying time efficiently. But when it comes to creative endeavors, time is not the measure at all. In fact, some of the most amazing outcomes happen in very short spans of time surrounded by large gaps of seemingly non-productive time in between.
Consider artists (painters, sculptors, poets, song writers and the like). In most cases, the longer they toil over a piece the less impressive the outcome. Billy Joel is said to have written his huge hit “The Piano Man” in about 15 minutes. My mother, Barbara A. Wood, a relatively famous impressionism artist, can knock out a masterpiece in an hour where paintings she worked on for weeks usually get scrapped.
As a writer, I know for a fact that quality comes in gushes. I might putter around doing seemingly valueless tasks for days and then the creative juices start to flow, and within a single sitting an article or chapter of a book is penned. Amongst colleagues I am typically labeled the guy who gets more done in a …
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"We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again, and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore." - Mark Twain |