It’s a new year. The air is full of optimism and possibilities. Everybody is excited and ready to launch new projects on top of the ones your business already has going. But there’s one thing no one else is thinking about: do we have the resources to get it all done?
No one else except you, of course: the person in charge of resourcing.
You could pull it off as you’ve done in the past, reallocating team members, reprioritizing projects, and negotiating with stakeholders. But let’s take a step back because…
[fs-toc-omit] This isn’t working
If you’ve been flying by the seat of your pants reacting to every resource request, you’re likely to have challenges like:
😪 An overworked team
🛑 Stalled projects
😩 High stress levels
💸 Decreased or no profits
😡 Angry clients
One word for this situation: unsustainable.
To be fair, no one wakes up wanting to be a resource management villain. The usual culprits are likely a sprinkle of blind optimism, a misunderstanding of capacity, communication silos, and bringing resourcing in at the last possible moment.
That’s precisely why, sooner or later, you’ll need to have “The Talk” to steer decision-makers in the right direction. And while it sounds a bit ominous, “The Talk” is just code for a discussion in which you strategically:
- Align everybody on what capacity is
- Show the value of bringing resourcing earlier in the process
What does ‘capacity’ mean in your organization?
Say your business has the typical 40-hour work week. Your stakeholders might assume everyone’s got 40 pristine hours for project work; whereas YOU know meetings, training, and administrative tasks take up a significant chunk of your resources’ time.
This is the kind of implicit assumption you need to make explicit. To reach alignment, start “The Talk” from the visual explanation Justin Watt, Co-founder of Switchboard, shared in one of our live sessions:
After you share your definition of capacity, invite others to share their perspectives, carefully noting and addressing any differences. The goal is to reach a shared understanding, which might take some back-and-forth.
The cost of last-minute resourcing
Next, discuss the impact of not considering capacity early in project planning and frame the solution as a strategic business initiative.
Preparing data-driven visuals to support your points improves your chances of getting buy-in. To quote Emily Feliciano, one of the speakers at our live session on estimation:
“I can’t take my feelings to leadership and say, ’I feel like we’re busy.’ But you can’t argue with data. You can’t argue with numbers.”
Pro tip: if you’ve been tracking your team’s time and capacity, use the data to show how overly ambitious plans, combined with insufficient capacity, have impacted past projects or are about to affect future ones.
This is the approach used by Thomas Walters, the Head of Studio at Movember: when faced with last-minute resourcing requests, he “very quickly shows someone why their work can’t be done [when] they want it. They take one look at our timeline and instantly understand the challenges we face, and together we’re able to work on a way forward rather than being stuck at an impasse.”
And if you have no data—well, there’s no better time than now to get tracking 😉
[fs-toc-omit] Shift from last-minute fixer to strategic partner
“The Talk” is more than just a conversation about resources. It’s an opportunity to transform your role from last-minute fixer to proactive strategic partner who guides the business toward smarter, data-driven decisions.
So this year, instead of just managing resources, start managing expectations. Your calendar is ready for that meeting invite.
We couldn't have done this piece without:
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