Decision Making Process

Everyday people are faced with making decisions; some are thoughtless, while some are complex and complicated. Making the right decision has its rewards and making the wrong decision has its consequences. Depending on the nature of the decision, the decision making process can be challenging, dreadful, frustrating, and overwhelming at times. For instance, deciding what to wear to work is not a difficult decision for the majority of people, but for others it could quite a challenge. When making a lifelong decision concerning career-related goals, marriage, children, purchasing a home or personal wellbeing it requires for you to seek advice, analyze, and align your actions with your life purpose and personal values. Some decision require immediate action while others my take months or years to make a sound decision. According to our text there are six stages in the decision making process which includes: identify and diagnose the problem; generate alternative decisions; evaluate alternatives; make the choice, and implement the decision (Bateman & Snell, 2011).

The first stage in decision making process is "Identify and diagnose the problem". Identifying and diagnosing the problem helps you to recognize that something needs to be corrected or is not working properly. The decision that I had to make is choosing the right career after retiring from the military. In order to diagnose this situation, I had to take my military records to the Army Career Alumni Program (ACAP) and a representative assisted with the transition to civilian life.

The second stage of decision making takes the problem diagnosis to generate an alternative courses of action targeted at solving the problem. This particular stage is two-folded; there will be two different solutions that may occur during this process one of the solutions is called ready-made solutions. A ready-made solution is an idea that has been seen or tried before. The second solution is called custom-made. A custom-made solution is a way to find new or creative solutions designed specifically for the problem (Bateman & Snell, 2011).

Evaluating alternatives is the third stage in decision making. This process will determine all the values of the alternatives by identifying the pros and cons as it relates to my career-path goals. I took all of my options in consideration then I followed the fourth step in making a decision on which career path was suitable for me and my family. Initially, I was going to take a job overseas, which would have been great financially but long term it would have been a strange on my family. So, I accepted a job with the Department of Defense at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The fifth step requires implementing the decision that was made. In my situation, I turned down the job offer overseas and starting working at Fort Campbell. The final step is to evaluate the decision you made.

Deciding not to go overseas was