I’m Not a … Resource!!

Stuart Oakley
2 min readSep 23, 2021

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The other day, a coworker shared the links to a few t-shirts that I will be buying tomorrow!

For the record, I am not being paid by TeeSpring, nor am I telling you as the reader to go out and buy. But if you happen to stumble upon this blog post, I wouldn’t say no to a thank you! ;)

Here is the “toned down” version:

And here is the probably NSFW version:

https://teespring.com/i-am-not-a-resource?pid=2&cid=2397

For many years, one of my mentors has always talked about getting a shirt like this. Paul, if you’re reading this, here’s your chance!

In having Paul tell this many times, when I was an up and coming Scrum Master, it really resonated with me to the point that I call it out to the people that I am coaching and supporting. Admittedly, I probably offended some when I ask them to try to refrain from calling people resources.

People are not Resources, hard stop! Tables, chairs, computers etc. ARE resources. Even the dictionary says so!

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/resource

So if you find yourself reading this, please take a moment to reflect whenever you say resource, and hopefully you will start to change your thinking around resources.

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Stuart Oakley
Stuart Oakley

Written by Stuart Oakley

Stuart is a Business Modernization Expert, Agile Coach, Accredited Kanban Trainer (AKT), ICAgile Authorized Instructor, Professor, and Conference Speaker