How can I identify my most important criteria?

Someone just recently that I worked with was facing a similar kind of decision, whether to stay in their current company where they were making good money and it had provided a lot of stability or whether to move to a startup, which offered a little bit more money, but a lot more instability. And so one of the things that we ended up doing was we had a few conversations and specifically what it boiled down to for them. Everybody makes decisions in a different way. What it boiled down to for them was having clarity about what was important to them.

So we looked at a set of values that was really important to them. What is it that they valued about the work that they did? What is it they valued about their life? What is it they valued in the kind of people that they worked with? We looked at what kind of culture would you thrive in? How do you work best? Who are the kind of people that you want to be surrounded by? What's the kind of energy that you want to have around you that allows you do your best work? What do you want in your leader?

And so we went through some of those kind of questions and that really helped clarify making a really hard decision, which was to leave a position that was quite secure and they were doing really well in. Now a few months into it, it's even better than they could have imagined.