Prioritizing Organizational Wants Versus Needs - How To Tell The Difference

...and make the right decisions

In strategic planning, we must learn to separate wants from actual needs.  We are forced to make tough decisions that open one door and close another.  Weighty strategic decisions can be made easier if we apply a decision “triage” to help structure the cognitive process we must complete.  But how do we separate requirements from “desirements” in the business world fairly and consistently?  Sometimes budgetary constraints drive us to adopt a strategy of eliminating options that are not actually requirements for our business, at least not at this time.   For that first round of elimination, we need a litmus test of sorts.  More to the point, what we need is a decision process to help us filter the wants from the needs.  This article provides a system for making such an evaluation within our strategic planning process.