How good are you at prioritising?

Today I'm taking as my theme the following mnemonic, which may be familiar to you:

                                                                     MOSCOW

 No?  Well it's all to do with prioritising needs.  Most of us are not in the happy position of being able to have everything we need for our business just as soon as we need it. This may be for financial reasons, or simply because some things take time to acquire, for example recruiting and training key employees.

What you can do immediately however is to work out what you need, and how urgently you need it. That's where Moscow comes in, not for any reasons of political ideology, but because it stands for: 

MUST have

SHOULD have

COULD have

WOULD LIKE to have 

It sounds simple, and, like many good ideas, it is simple - at least in concept. What you have to do is to work out your priorities. A good starting point comes from the author Jerome K Jerome in his novel 'Three Men in a Boat' - the saga of three young men in the Edwardian era who plan a two-week trip up the Thames, living on a (rowing) boat. Faced with the mountain of items they think they need (which clearly won't all fit on board), they make the momentous discovery that, instead of thinking of the things they could do with, they should think about the things they can't do without - in other words, prioritise!

That should take care of the 'Must have' - and the rest is down to you!

Do let me know how you get on.