Author Steven Johnson recently discussed his book Farsighted: How We Make Decisions that Matter the Most in a podcast discussion with Malcolm Gladwell. In the interview, Gladwell asks Johnson if the decision-making strategies described in his book can apply to something like deciding what college you should go to.
Integrated Thinking
Author F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
Psychologists call this ‘integrative thinking’.
Conduct a Risk Analysis
Whatever job offer you decide to accept, it’s likely that you’ll make a decision that involves an element of risk.
Risk is made up of two parts: the probability of something going wrong, and the negative consequences if it does. Risk Analysis is a process that helps you identify and manage potential problems. To carry out a Risk Analysis, follow these steps:
Attain Distance
Newton Baker was one of the most interesting men ever to serve as U.S. Secretary of War. He was an avowed pacifist when he took the post in 1916. Yet, after the United States entered World War I, Baker’s dedication, spirit and leadership won the respect of Democrats and Republications.
How could a man of such caliber conclude he’d be perfectly safe standing on the bridge of a battleship while the country’s best pilots attacked it with bombs?
Baker made an error in judgment that can happen to even the best decision-makers. Many educated people in the World War I era believed that no gnat of an airplane could sink a battleship. Worse than guessing wrong, Baker’s big mistake was holding his beliefs with utter conviction, without considering whether the available information justified the depth of that conviction. Baker knew with total – and totally unjustified – certainty that planes could not sink ships.
When Warren Harding succeeded Wilson, General Mitchell’s squadron of tiny planes demonstrated its power and promptly turned a supposedly unsinkable ship into a permanent part of the ocean floor (Don’t worry about Baker, he had returned to private citizens and a successful law practice).
Baker’s error illustrates the mistakes intelligent people can commit when they fail to evaluate carefully the information available to them. This illustrates two more decision traps:
Beware of The Giant Spreadsheet
In the previous module, I wrote a caution about relying on your intuition.
Today, I want to write a caution about relying on a spreadsheet calculation to make a critical decision.
Don’t Trust Your Gut (Without Testing It)
‘Listening to your gut’ is probably the most common approach to decision making. It’s the way many people make most decisions; if we used an exhaustive, complex decision-making process to decide what to eat for lunch, we’d never get anything else done.
Reducing Dimensionality
Cognitive research has found that human beings are wired to make less-than-wise decisions. Science has shown our brain uses a system to simplify decisions, but these mental shortcuts often are not in our best interests. The question then becomes: How do we overcome these innate predilections and decide better?
Create a Career Vision Summary
Perhaps you’ve heard the saying that you can only get where you want to be if you know where you’re going.
If you haven’t done so already, today I’d like you to list the ‘key ingredients’ (e.g. what’s most important to you / the ‘evaluation criteria) of the right work for you by completing this Career Vision Summary form.
By listing the ‘key ingredients’, you are ‘framing’ how you’ll evaluate job offers and choose the right one for you. Framing helps decision-makers think about the viewpoint from which they will look at the choice and decide which criteria they consider important and which they don’t.
With this insight, it will be much easier to get a clear sense of how a job offer stacks up to what you’re looking for in your work (e.g. where you want to be).
How to Choose the Right Job Offer
Our daily lives are the cumulative effect of hundreds of small decisions we make constantly. These decisions encompass everything from what you chose to wear today, what you’re eating for your next meal, and what you’ll watch on Netflix tonight. Generally speaking, decisions like this come fairly easily, and we rarely agonize over the small choices we constantly make throughout our daily lives.
Big and high-risk decisions, like choosing whether to accept a job offer, however, can sometimes be very difficult to make. That’s to be expected: making career decisions is an emotional process with potentially significant financial considerations to take into account, as well as your desire to do what is best for you personally and professionally.
Complex decisions, like deciding which job offer to accept, often have several shared traits: There may be many evaluation criteria (with some of them conflicting), the risks and outcomes are hard to predict, and data is unavailable or incomplete.
While there is no one “right” way to make a big decision, thankfully there are proven decision-making strategies and frameworks you can use, either individually or, more likely, in conjunction with each other.
In this training module, my goal is to give you additional knowledge, strategies and tools you can use to effectively evaluate job offers and help you choose the best one for you.
While there is no one “right” way to make a big decision, thankfully there are proven decision-making strategies and frameworks you can use, either individually or, more likely, in conjunction with each other.
Here are 10 strategies you can use to help you choose the best new job / career path for you:
Create a Career Vision Summary
Don’t Trust Your Gut (Without Testing It)
Introduction to Job & Career Idea Research
It’s a 3 step process to identify the best way to move our career forward.
- In step 1 (our first coaching session), we discussed the ‘key ingredients’ of the right work for you.
- In the second step (our 2nd coaching session) we recapped the key ingredients of the work for you, and we discussed alternate job ideas.
- The 3rd step of the clarity coaching program is to research the job and career ideas to identify the best work for you.
2nd Clarity Session Recording
Many of my clients have found it very useful to listen to the recording of their 2nd clarity coaching session when they consider and evaluate the alternate job and career ideas we discussed.
I recommend downloading that recording so you’ll always it. (Once you open the video, there will be an option on the top right side of the page to download it).
Overview of Resources (all of which are described in more detail below):
- The Job Summary Profiles for the work ideas we discussed
- A document that explains each field on the Job Summary Profiles
- An Idea Assessment Summary Sheet that you can use to keep a record of your research and evaluate the different possibilities
Job Summary Profiles
The Job Summary Profiles you received in your 2nd Clarity Coaching Session include ‘General Job Search Phrases’ you can use to research the ideas we discussed. Because different companies use different titles for the same type of job, you’ll notice many Job Summary Profiles list several “General Job Search Phrases’ that you can use to conduct your research. Please be sure to read the ‘Explanation of Fields on Job Summary Profiles‘ report for more information.
You’ll notice that I’ve ‘coded’ the General Job Search phrases in simple Boolean language to help you get more relevant search results. Coding these titles is not an exact science and you’ll want to test each of the phrases I’ve provided to see which ones solicit roles that could appeal to you.
I recommend copying and pasting one General Job Search phrase (exactly as I’ve typed it) into the ‘What’ box on Indeed.com. (While you can use any job board to search for a job, I recommend doing your research on Indeed.com because it is very responsive to Boolean search phrases).
I typically recommend skimming 20 to 25 job advertisements for each type of position you research to see if it might appeal to you. Here’s why you need to examine this many: 80% of companies might use a given job title for a set of responsibilities that don’t appeal to you, but 20% of companies might use that same title for a set of responsibilities that DO appeal to you.
To find the best work option for you, you’ll want to do the legwork of looking through enough job advertisements for each title to determine if some companies use the title in a way that could be a good match for your skills, interests, motivations, etc.
The General Job Search Phrase Modifier Strategies report shows you how to modify the General Job Search phrases to find:
- Roles that require different levels of experience – you can use these strategies to look at both more senior roles (e.g. where you could be a few years from now – so you can see if the career path looks appealing), as well as more immediate target roles that match your level of experience
- Roles in industries that appeal to you
- Roles that leverage your current skillset
As you complete your research, please don’t let my specific recommendations limit your career exploration. It’s possible that you may uncover one or more additional ideas that appeal to you when you conduct your research using the tools, resources, and strategies in my online resources.
Research Summary Forms
It can take some real effort to research these career ideas, but it’s well worth the effort to uncover the best ideas and make a good career choice. I have attached a Job Ideas Assessment Worksheet (Job-Ideas-Assessment-Summary-Sheet MW Word) (Job-Ideas-Assessment-Summary-Sheet PDF) that you can use to summarize and keep your research organized.
How to Make Difficult Decisions (Like Choosing a New Job) Easier & More Effectively
Big and high-risk decisions, like choosing a new job and career path, can sometimes be very difficult to make. That’s to be expected: making career decisions is an emotional process with potentially significant financial considerations to take into account, as well as your desire to do what is best for you personally and professionally.
While there is no one “right” way to make a big decision, thankfully there are proven decision-making strategies and frameworks you can use, either individually or, more likely, in conjunction with each other.
Over the next few weeks, I will be sending about 10 emails (typically every other day) that aim to give you additional knowledge, strategies and tools you can use to effectively evaluate the different job and career ideas and identify the best new work path for you – while helping you to avoid analysis paralysis and other situations that can cause you to get stuck or fail to act.
If you don’t want to wait for each email to learn the strategies you can use to make a complex decision like choosing a new work path, you can find them here.
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