The three powerful resources you
always have available are: love, prayer, and forgiveness. But for some people,
humans are resources.
This 'HURTS MY INTELLIGENCE".
Microwave ovens are resources, phones are resources,
laptops and internet all are resources – but humans are humans. And the sooner
we realize that, the better it will be for all of us. Addressing or using human as “resources” most likely
commenced in medieval times when there were autocratic lords and they had labor
who sow their crop, cut their harvest, look after their livestock and to do all
the other things that required humans. If a laborer died or was handicapped
they could simply be replaced by another who could do the same thing – a
typical direct replacement, like replacing your refill when the pen ink gets
over. However, we now live in more
civilized times (even if you feel that your boss is a autocratic lord
sometimes, trust me, he cannot order your head chopped off anymore!) and I feel
that it is time we stopped using humans like that – as if they were replaceable
or renewable and regenerative cogs (aka resources) in some huge organic engine.
IT jobs these days by its very nature is a
creative pain – you may spend countless hours or days on a problem without
coming up with a optimum answer and all of a sudden it strikes you when you go
to get that fifteenth cup of coffee to keep you alive Or maybe you need to just
sleep on it and the next day on your way to your office it all magically
becomes clear and you wonder how you missed something so simple and obvious.
Show of hands – how many people have never had
this happen once in their career so far? No hands? I thought so! Anyway, the point I want to make is that the real
resource you need care about if you are a project manager (God help you!) is
not the quantity humans or the time they should spend on a given problem or a
piece of so called work. Instead, you should be worrying about their levels of
result, inspiration, motivation and even current mental state. Sadly, these are
all very ideals and abstract qualities and, moreover, they do not have any
units of measurement.
Project managers cannot say, for example – I need 7 grams
of creativity, 120 metres of inspiration and 10 motivations on this project for
the next 6 months. So, ironically, they only decision or measurement what they
can – number of people and time – and think they are done. That is where the
debate comes in, because 'X' people is
not equal to 'X' other people. Actually,
the real fallacy is not in the numbers themselves but in considering them as if
they were only numbers. They are not – not numbers, not resources, not
exchangeable, not replaceable. They are humans – real, live, blood and flesh
and feelings humans who have their own strengths and weaknesses, their own
likes and dislikes, their own hopes and fears and dreams and their own state of
mind on any given day, and who will go to the corners of the planet to pull off
a miracle for you if they actually want to.
If you only considered them like – humans.
Nikhil Chandwani
National Best-Seller Author
Columnist at STIMULUS INDIA !
