You've got to tell them resources is people

Bob Schatz, a.k.a. "Scrum Bob" told me once that "People are not resources."  He was very emphatic and brought up some very good points.  Namely, you don't want management to think of your top talent (and even your middle and low talent) as being something they can mine like a mineral or a tree.  They should be thought of as people with the same needs and motivators as any other person.

Fighting the urge to call people "resources" is hard.  The further you go up the chain, the harder it is to change this behavior.  The further disconnected you are from the people who would be considered resources you get, the harder it gets to see them as people.  Upper level management, executives, VP's, even directors must focus on the bigger picture.  This is especially true in a larger company.

So why fight it?  Why not work with it?

What prompted this line of thought?  I saw The Lorax with my kids.  If you've not seen it, lets just say that it is very transparent about its underlying message:  unregulated corporate greed is killing the environment.  The main message is that if you over utilize your resources (in this case, the Truffula tree) your business will fail once the resource is depleted.  No more resources means no more product.

So as long as managers are aware of this and understand the concept of sustainability the company not fail (well, at least not due to depleted resources).  I'm quite alright with being called a resource as long as I'm not mined/logged/fracked into extinction (or near extinction).

This draws a lot of analogies.

Some resources are like a forest.  During critical times, they can be heavily deforested providing wood for fire, shelter, furniture, musical instruments, etc...  The problem is, if you take trees out of the forest as fast as you can, the forest doesn't have time to regrow.  Eventually you run out of trees.  If you don't take the time to plant new trees you will wipe out an entire ecosystem.

The analogy here is that new, talented employees might start with a whole forest full of ideas.  If we constantly harvest those ideas without taking the time to plant new ones or allow old ones to germinate and grow new ideas, our new talent will start showing diminishing returns.  100% utilization is not sustainable.  Creativity and  new ideas need time to grow.

So go ahead and call people resources, as long as you understand that people and resources both need to be treated responsibly and used in a sustainable manner.