Human Resources!
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(This blog post is written by VIT University
The three powerful
resources you always have available to you: 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 are all 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 labors who sow their crop, cut their harvest, look after
their livestock and to do all the other things that required humans. If a
labor 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 regenerable 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 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.
1 Comments:
well, this one is awesomely written. So true and perfect. Human resources are really a mismanaged subject. The problems are rightly reflected.
Blessings Nikhil, u pull of good articles every now and then ~~~ :)
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