Most abused words - Critical, Urgent, Important, High Priority

Most of the people who are working in private organizations are quite used to of hearing and reading words mentioned as heading of this writing.

We normally hear these words from clients, business development department and marketing departments and last but not least by managers like myself.

I use these words to emphasize my sub ordinates of importance of situation or matter in hand. But, do we ever think how badly we abuse these words and they are losing their impact day by day. It’s like saying “Pakistan tareekh k aik nazuk daur say guzur raha hai”. We all have been hearing it since we were kids.

Do we really think once the situation has passed, if it was that critical that I declare it as a TSUNAMI? I guess no. If we think on these lines we could see how many false alarms we generate every now and then and how badly we are destroying the essence of these words.

It’s all about handling situation effectively. I sometimes realized that if I can handle pressure myself rather than running myself in the crowd and saying “Bhagooooooo”. It was my fault and I apologize for the ones who suffered due to my miscalculation.

One of my friends was telling a story about an advertising campaign for which he worked. Now, Analyze this situation tomorrow there will be a major strike in city by some of the political party and he was instructed to keep his field workers out in city all night to put on all the advertisement banners by morning considering situation is getting worse in city. Now, see how critical it was. The person instructing it could have handled situation on his own but he didn’t and he just passed on what he received.  The fun part here no one dared to come on street on strike day even they guy who mentioned it to be a critical activity.

Medicine is the most critical of all kinds of services being provided.  But, I have hardly seen any urgency or criticality in this area. I have seen patients in life and death situations in ICUs even my father was in such situation. Their doctors didn’t come at the time of emergency and people are told that on duty doctor will take care of your patient. In worst case they will make a call to respective doctor. In some cases when you have good terms with Doctor they can come in but mostly it is not case. I ask myself this question that the most important area is the most neglected one. We are ready to save an advertising campaign, recovering an email server from crash but not a human life.

These words should be used with caution and as a first step we should analyze if it is really a critical situation. If they are really critical we should pass on as much knowledge to receiver(s) so that they also what is happening in background otherwise they will destroy your image in front of receivers.