From the President’s Desk: Over ice and under pressure
It was a dark and stormy night.
Well, not really, but the snow had come down hard before nightfall. When the plane touched down after midnight in Indianapolis, my wife and I could see snow piled up around town. As we walked out of baggage claim in the dead of night, the wind howled and pushed the cold right through our clothes. We knew we were in for a long drive home.
My gracious wife offered to drive, and she hopped in the driver’s seat as I loaded the bags. As we pulled onto the highway, she began reflecting on some of our kids’ recent successes.
As we took a high flyover, I could see dark patches of ice where snow on the right shoulder had melted and run across the banked curve.
“The kids always put their minds to it,” she was saying. “I know they’ll do great. I wonder what I can do to help them. I wonder if they’ll ask me.” All great questions! But the looming question for me was whether 70 miles an hour over ice was a good time for the discussion.
At work, we often find ourselves dreaming even as we drive over icy roads, so to speak. When teams meet to talk through an issue, we can find ourselves talking about factors that are certainly important and relevant, but post-meeting, we realize no real progress was made because we spent time talking about things that were not CRITICAL.
It can be difficult to sort out what’s critical from what’s important. For help, we can look to other professions: Tim Finke, a veteran critical care nurse and medical device sales director, has made these calls in the ER.
“We use the term ‘triage.’ This means assessing which injuries are most life-threatening, and working on those first in order to give patients the best possible outcome,” Tim said.
Even if, for example, you’re sitting in the emergency department with a cut that really stings, “first, we’re going to help someone whose life is at risk right now … We don’t have unlimited time and unlimited resources, so we have to first put our effort where we are going to make the most impact.”
It’s still IMPORTANT for them to get to your cut. It could become infected, and you don’t want to just sit there. But that’s a different level of importance than someone whose life is in immediate danger. That’s why, whether at the hospital, on the highway, or at work, we have to separate what’s critical from what’s simply important. We are ALL working with limited time and resources, and these choices we MUST make.
So how do we make those distinctions under pressure? It can be difficult, especially when decisions stack up and your team is counting on you. Tim has made these calls when the stakes are highest.
“In life-threatening situations, we rely on process,” Tim said. “We use colors to flag severity, so we can see each patient’s status at a glance. Red is most critical, and Orange is serious but less urgent. The highest-severity cases are seen first. With the staff we have, that sometimes means we’re caring for Reds, and Oranges have to wait. We call in outside help as needed, and we use every resource available, even pulling surgeons in, to treat people in order of priority.”
Your team or organization might not be saving lives (though many careers do; look at the way civil engineering preserves the lives of millions of infrastructure users every day), you can use these same tools to help you separate what needs attention now from what matters, but can wait.
Take a moment today to look at where you’re spending your time, especially if you feel overwhelmed. First, what do you need to handle right now? Next, what matters, but can be scheduled or passed to another person on your team? Reflection, organization, and prioritization can help you breathe easier.
Another day, another car ride – this time along the highway as my wife drives us toward a meetup with friends. “Don’t these look incredibly like each other?” she demands, holding up a ChapStick in her right hand and, next to it, a Dramamine vial in her left, wrists balanced on the steering wheel. As I consider her question, the back of my mind idly wonders whether her forearms would be able to use the wheel in the event of an emergency. I quickly realize we’d never even notice an emergency, since we’re both staring at ChapStick. In the end, though, I realize I don’t always have to be worrying about triage. On days like this, I can sit back and just be thankful she’s driving me around.
