To Stay or not to Stay.......that is the question

As I look back at certain events of my life, I see how strategy has played a huge role in my decisions. I look specifically at one particular event in my life that occured several months ago and while I knew that I was making a decision, it wasn't until I looked through the eyes of a strategist (thanks to this SDA class) that I finally understood why I made the decision that I did.

I had gotten into the CDC through a Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) program in 2006 and I just knew that it was going to be a fantastic experience. It was a 2 year program that encouraged rotating through various programs within not only the agency, but it's sister agencies (NIH, CMS, AOA) and it's parent (DHHS) as well. Our home office (the office that hired us) was to pay for our salary through the 2 year period even though they would technically only have us working for them for a 1 year period (because for 1 year of the 2 years, we were going through four 3 month rotations). At the end of the 2 year period, we were to return to our "home office". My supervisor had been very supportive throughout my rotations and even went as far as to suggest offices and programs that I should rotate in. I felt like I owed her my loyalty for her strong support throughout the year and so, when several opportunities came my way at the end of my 2 year period, I turned them down and stayed. I stayed even though I felt like I was not given the same support that some of my colleagues were receiving. I was starting to dislike my supervisor and the job.

Why did I stay? For the longest time, I could not fathom it. I attributed it to my loyalty to her, but could that really be what I had done? Maybe! Maybe not! I found out that what I had actually done was to somehow unconsciously run a decision tree assessing the payouts of both staying and leaving. They were as follows:

If I stayed, I could:
be miserable (+100)
learn to love job & excel (+1000)
be viewed as loyal by my boss and please the boss. The boss could then either choose to promote me (+500) or keep me static (+10)

If I left, I could:
get a worseoff job and be miserable (-100)
get a better job and be happy (+400)
be viewed as disloyal and displease boss. The boss could then either spread "bad" rumors about me (-10) or do nothing (+200).

So, in the long run (through rollback analysis), it was not my loyalty that made me decide to stay, but the fact that I feared the unknown and I gave more value to staying on and flourishing at my current place of work . I felt more comfortable believing that I would learn to love the job and excel at it. In my mind, I assumed my boss was rational and that she would have the same payoffs that I had. Maybe she would have encouraged me to apply and test unchartered waters, maybe she would have flipped out, or maybe I over analyzed the whole situation. Did I make the right decision? I'm not sure. I guess only time will tell.