Core Priorities

1. A choice between core priorities

In October 2010, 26-year-old Kim Ramirez received a call from a former coworker, and it quickly became clear that he was trying to recruit her to the tech start-up he’d joined. At the time, Ramirez lived in Chicago, working in sales for one of the leading Internet companies, and she wasn’t looking for other work. Her friend persisted, offering to set up a lunch for her with the founder of the start-up. Figuring she had nothing to lose, she agreed.

Soon afterward, she met the founder, and she left the meeting captivated. His vision was exciting, and the start-up’s small size appealed to her. She found herself agreeing to come visit the company’s headquarters in Boston.

The opportunity intrigued her. The position being offered to her, account executive in Chicago, represented a big step up in responsibility from her current job. But she also knew she had a lot to lose. In her current role she had lots of flexibility, which made it easier to spend time with her husband, Josh. (They’d married just a few months earlier, in the summer of 2010.) For the first time in their relationship, their work schedules were in sync; neither one of them traveled every week or worked crazy hours.

In mid-December, she made her visit to Boston. She met with the other account executives and asked about their lifestyle: How often do you travel? How many hours per week do you work? She quizzed them about their experience selling the start-up’s product: When people don’t buy the product, what are the usual reasons? When customers don’t renew their purchases, why is it? (Notice that she’s pushing for disconfirming information.)

She found their answers a bit salesy—they were trying to recruit her, after all—but she liked everyone she met. They paraded her around the office like a visiting celebrity, and she was swept up in the enthusiasm and energy and ambition of the team. “I came away on a very big high,” she said.

At the end of her visit, the founder made her a formal job offer, and both the compensation and the role were a substantial step up from her current job. (Not to mention the lottery-ticket excitement of owning start-up stock options.)

After the meeting, she called Josh from the airport in Boston and raved, “This is such an amazing opportunity! I need a new challenge, and I think this is it.”

Returning from the visit, she sent her boss a note about the job offer, feeling she owed him that. He called her immediately, telling her how much her work was valued. A few minutes after that, her boss’s boss called, saying she wanted a bit of time to put together a counteroffer. It was just before the Christmas holidays, so Ramirez knew it would likely be a week or two before she’d hear back.

Suddenly, Ramirez was in an enviable situation, with two companies vying for her help, but the choice made her anxious. As the rush of the Boston visit had faded, she’d begun to have doubts. The team had tried to reassure her about the workload, but her intuition was clear: It’s a start-up. You’re going to have to work crazy hours. Is it worth it?

The more she thought about the choice, the less certain she was. During the holidays, she said, “I felt nauseous pretty much every day.… I felt like I couldn’t get my head straight. I didn’t know what I wanted to do.”

She started calling her best friends, asking them for advice: What should I do? One friend, Gina, was supportive of the start-up opportunity but cautioned Ramirez not to discount the flexibility of her current job. “You’ve seemed really happy,” she said.

Ramirez continued to agonize about the decision until, eventually, she realized why she was stuck: It wasn’t just a job decision; it was a values decision. Growing up, she’d always viewed herself as an “ambitious career woman,” and from that perspective, the start-up role was a no-brainer. It offered more responsibility and more growth. She’d be able to put her stamp on the place. On the other hand, as she’d gained experience in her career, she’d come to value balance in her life: time with Josh, time with friends, time with family.

For the first time, she was being forced to make a concrete choice between the two visions of herself. She said, “You can just go along for a very long time without calling into question anything like that: What did I value more?”

As she waited for a counteroffer from her current company, the leaders of the start-up were e-mailing and calling her, asking about her decision. She felt awful putting them on hold. Then came the turning point.

One day in late December, she went for a run at her gym. Five miles into the run, it suddenly hit her. A question. What do I work for? What’s the purpose of it? The thought hit her like a lightning bolt. “I almost fell off the treadmill,” she said.

The thoughts came tumbling out: I work to make enough money to be secure, to travel with Josh, to take a photo class if I want, or to take my sister out for dinner. But if I don’t have enough time to do these things that I love, it won’t matter that I have more money or responsibility.

It became crystal clear to her: She needed to stick with her current job. “I felt at peace about it,” she said.

A week later, her company came back with a counteroffer that gave her even more peace: She was offered a compensation package almost as good as the start-up’s, as well as an assurance that she’d be promoted within a year. On paper, the start-up’s offer was still better, but her mind was made up. She politely declined its offer.

Looking back, she marvels that if she hadn’t taken the time to let the excitement of the Boston visit fade, she probably would have accepted the job, at unknown cost to her relationships and sense of balance. She reflected on the emotion in the moment: You know how after you ride a roller coaster, they try to sell you a photo of you shrieking during the ride? You might impulsively buy the photo because you’re flush with adrenaline.

“But the next day,” she said, “do you really want that picture? Not really. No one looks good on a roller coaster.”

In making her decision, Kim Ramirez had to distance herself from short-term emotion. She felt euphoric after the Boston visit—“This is such an amazing opportunity!”—but she was wise enough to give herself time to reflect.

Even after she let her feelings settle, though, she was still confused. What made Ramirez’s decision difficult wasn’t the distraction of short-term emotion; it was the need to pick between two great options. Ultimately, Ramirez recognized that she couldn’t make a decision about the job offer without first considering her preferences in life.

But the phrase “considering her preferences in life,” while accurate, is a pretty colorless description of what she experienced. She wasn’t rationally cataloging her preferences in the clearheaded way you might compile a weekly to-do list. She agonized. She felt nauseous. Her decision was loaded with emotion—it’s just that it wasn’t visceral emotion, the kind that fades when you “sleep on it.”

And this is a critical point: The goal of the WRAP process is not to neutralize emotion. Quite the contrary. When you strip away all the rational mechanics of decision making—the generation of options, the weighing of information—what’s left at the core is emotion. What drives you? What kind of person do you aspire to be? What do you believe is best for your family in the long run? (Business leaders ask: What kind of organization do you aspire to run? What’s best for your team in the long run?)

Those are emotional questions—speaking to passions and values and beliefs—and when you answer them, there’s no “rational machine” underneath that is generating your perspective. It’s just who you are and what you want. The buck stops with emotion.

And because different people will have different answers to those questions, the WRAP process can’t tell you the right answer to your dilemma. Two people making the same decision might make polar-opposite choices—and they might both be wise to do so! In the end, for instance, Kim Ramirez decided that she valued the “in balance” vision of herself more than the “ambitious, hard-charging” vision of herself. But another woman might have drawn the opposite conclusion.

All we can aspire to do with the WRAP process is help you make decisions that are good for you. Part of what’s “good for you” is gaining distance from short-term emotions when they distract from long-term aspirations.

In dilemmas like Ramirez’s, both options can have long-term appeal. An agonizing decision like hers is often a sign of a conflict among “core priorities.” We’re using the word “core” to capture the sense of long-term emotion we’ve been discussing; these are priorities that transcend the week or the quarter. For individuals that means long-term goals and aspirations, and for organizations it means the values and capabilities that ensure the long-term health of the enterprise.

For a difficult choice, ask which lasting priorities each option serves and which it would crowd out. Clarifying those tradeoffs also helps identify less important commitments that compete for the same time.