Decision Making Personal Decision-Making: Deciding to Accept

Decision Making

Personal Decision-Making: Deciding to Accept a New Job Offer or Not

Having worked for the same company for over eight years and not having seen a raise in five of those years, it was time to consider options for a new job. The possibility of advancing my career, earning more salary, getting greater levels of professional recognition and learning more in an expanded role in a new company all were the benefits of moving on. The downside was that I had become so engrained in the company I was a member of, and had won performance awards several times, that my role was stable and secure and I would be letting that go. I'd been put onto projects that were going to last for at least three years. While many in the U.S. And global economies searched for security, stability and trust with employers, I had worked my way into that type of position after years of being in the same company. Yet there was much more I wanted to accomplish in my career, including running my own department or division, possibly even becoming a CEO over the long-term. It became clear I had become so indispensable in my current role I wasn't going to be promoted anytime in the near future either. The security and stability is highly prized by my family yet I yearn to accomplish more and achieve more. Using the decision-making processes in the text, I was able to navigate the decision successfully,

Analysis of Decision Making Process

One of the significant lessons learned from study the text is that decisions may be more broad or strategic in scope that they initially appear (Bateman & Snell, 2010), This observation about the first step of my decision-making process centered on whether a more important-sounding title (more prestige) and more salary (greater status and ability to provide for my family) was worth giving up the freedom I had in my existing job of being able to leave work at 5 -- 5:30pm and not deal with work in the evenings. As I considered the decision of whether to pursue a recruiter's call for a significantly more responsible and impressive-sounding job with a potential of a salary increase of 30%, I considered from a strategic standpoint, what would this position entail in terms of working with an entire new set of people (Harrison, 1996). The path of framing the problem to seeking people to help with the decision (trusted friends and immediate family) followed the framework in the text as well (Bateman, Snell, 2010). I consulted these trusted advisors not to see if I should take the job or not, but whether I was framing the decision correctly. One particularly insightful comment came from this exercise, which was how much time I was willing to give up I had control over today to excel in an entirely new role in an entirely new company. The issue this friend said wasn't the money, it was what I'd have to give up of my time and focus to meet and exceed the expectations of the new employer. Money would become incidental to the added pressure to excel in an entirely new role.

The next step was to define the process of evaluating alternatives (Bateman, Snell, 2010). The focus on time shifted alternatives for finding fulfillment and great accomplishment in my life; suddenly finding the next job with the bigger title, salary and perks were secondary to stabilizing my life to give my family a chance to have uninterrupted lives. The next step in the process was to define the values surrounding the decision. My initial values, when the recruiter called, were to increase my income as quickly as possible (and aggressively grab at the prestige and status of a very impressive sounding title). After going through the decision making process of the book I realized that the greatest values that were needed for defining the decision wasn't just about my fulfillment or income. The real values centered on making sure my family, from my wife and daughters to my extended family, would not be interrupted purely by my decision.