does it still need saying

(people are not resources)

I know plenty has been written about this topic, and I’m not the first agilist to fight to see this language change in an organisation. However, it was recently suggested that I ask myself whether this is the hill I want to die on after receiving feedback that it doesn’t matter if people are called resources. Challenging a coach to do some reflection could be considered like shooting fish in a barrel, and I’m not one to back down from a challenge. Here are my thoughts that I hope are interesting to people other than myself.

In this particular organisation, Human Resources is no longer called Human Resources and instead is called People. When even the part of the organisation there to protect itself from liability against its employees stops calling those employees resources, the rest of us should take note that perhaps we shouldn’t be labelled resources. If nothing else, an organisation should have consistent language.

By labelling a person as a resource, we fail to acknowledge the part of the work that is about knowledge. Knowledge work is not about specialist knowledge of your technical discipline; it is about having expert knowledge of the systems you work on and in. It is the knowledge you cannot Google and only acquire through the experience of working on and in those systems. A good programmer will take a year to become a competent technician of the software they are working on. Replacing one programmer with another is not the same as replacing one cable with another. It is even worse than you may first imagine, as the new programmer will take up the time of at least one other programmer on the team. A new programmer doesn’t replace; they detract.

Culture is behaviour, and behaviour is driven by communication. Therefore, if you want to change the culture, changing the language is a good place to start. Why do organisations hire agile coaches if not to come in and change the culture? If an organisation has hired agile coaches to move towards agile adoption, they are asking us to come in and change how their organisation works. In my experience, the first step is changing how colleagues think and feel about each other.

Do we distance ourselves from others enough that we don’t feel the need to treat people well because of this label? What will the manager do if they find a team underperforming and decides it’s because of John? If John is a person with a life outside of the office and ambitions beyond his current role, I hope the manager would work with him to help him grow. If John is a resource, perhaps without even a name, then that manager should be asking to replace him as soon as possible. Is there something about how we have designed our organisations that managers need to dehumanise the people they work above to do what the organisation expects of them and still sleep at night? Perhaps I was aiming my critique of the word at the wrong group in the organisation…

This was the first organisation I decided to have this battle with. I occasionally poked at people for using the term resource, but it didn’t bother me enough to go to town with it. Something about the way this organisation used the term was different. Perhaps it’s because they are so heavily outsourced and would happily insist on replacing one person with another without a moment’s consideration. Even those who thought of themselves as the agilists in the building didn’t seem to have a problem switching out an outsourced resource if they considered that person unsatisfactory.

I propose that we follow the entertainment industry and call each other talent, especially those who are the doers in our teams.

As always, what is most interesting to any of us in life is our own self and our reactions to the world around us…

Merry Christmas :)