Prioritise like a surgeon!

Most people get it wrong. Treating everything (or nothing) as a priority is a road to disaster, shortage of resources, chaos and inefficiency. Learn how to prioritise like a surgeon!

There are two groups of people who are extremely good at prioritisation, due to their training, or selection: Soldiers and Surgeons.

In the fast-paced environment of an accident and emergency department, prioritisation is a critical skill, essential for managing the constant and unpredictable flow of patients. This process, commonly known as triage, is designed to ensure that patients receive care in an order that reflects the severity of their conditions.

Upon arrival, each patient is quickly assessed by a medical professional, who evaluates their symptoms, vital signs, and overall condition. Patients are then categorised based on the urgency of their needs, using a system that might include colour codes or numbered levels. For instance, life-threatening conditions are marked as immediate and require urgent attention, while less severe cases are classified accordingly and may wait longer for treatment. This method ensures that allocation of critical resources — including medical staff, diagnostic tools, and treatment rooms — is done efficiently, prioritising those in most urgent need.

This structured approach not only maximises saved lives by ensuring timely care for those in critical condition.

Prioritisation is a cornerstone of effective delivery, embodying the principles of urgency, efficiency, and adaptability in a high-stakes setting.

Those skills, taught and practiced for years in emergency departments, are highly valuable in many other areas of life!

• Imagine applying a quick “triage” to your daily to-do list, evaluating each task based on its urgency and importance. This isn’t just about ticking off boxes in a planner; it’s about recognising which tasks will have the most significant impact on your day, your week, or even your life. It’s about distinguishing between what needs to be done, and what can wait.

• Think about a manager who can assigns tasks and resources to team members based on the prioritised list of projects, ensuring that the most critical for the business are tackled first, thereby optimising productivity and meeting crucial deadlines, and freeing up resources for other tasks

• Businesses, much like medical professionals, must constantly evaluate their strategies, operations, and the market environment, ready to pivot or reallocate resources at a moment's notice to address new challenges or opportunities.

While most people and institutions understand the need for prioritisation, they also struggle to effectively implement it!

How to prioritise to maximise your desired outcomes?

When was the list time you have heard someone saying things like: “Everything is a priority”, “I have a long list of priorities”, or “We are proud to prioritise our customers, our employees, and our shareholders!”?

The truth is - most people get prioritisation wrong most of the time. Many think that everything is a priority, some that nothing ever is a priority. The rest confuses priorities with objectives.

To understand prioritisation, we need to understand resources and objectives.

Here is how to tell if you are confused about what priorities are: If you have ever been in a situation where you think that you don’t have enough resources to complete required objectives, you don’t fully understand prioritisation.

Read this again.

Resources

Resources are things that are finite. They include: