Poor Decision Making

The poor business decision that I made was in talking my husband into hiring his brother to do some sub-contracting work. The situation at the time was this: My husband and I owned a general contracting company and it was going pretty good. So good in fact that we needed to hire a new employee. At the time my brother-in-law was unemployed and living at home with his parents. I personally felt that he was being a financial drain on them and thought to help everyone involved by convincing my husband to hire him to work for us. I figured that this would solve several problems at once. First, it would his brother feel better about himself. Second, it would his brother learn a skilled trade. Finally, it would keep him from being a financial burden to his elderly parents.

How this good intention of mine went bad. Well, my brother-in-law felt that his youngest sibling (my husband) he could not teach him anything. He wanted to come in as the project manager on the job we were working on. He also felt that because his brother was the owner of the company he should get higher wages just for showing up.

Poor Decision Making 3

The decision was the wrong one to for several reasons. I will not write a paper about all of them, because the class does not last long enough. The top three reasons why it turned out to be a bad decision are: 1. It caused discord between my husband and I. 2. It caused discord between my husband and his family. Last, it caused discord between us (my husband and I) and our other employees.

The decision I made correlates with Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon’s theory of satisficing. Deciding to hire my brother-in-law satisfied the need of our company to hire another person. However, it was not the ideal choice to make as the results of my decision manifested. I also believe that in accordance to the definition of stochastic “1. Random; specifically: involving a random variable < a stochastic process> (www.lib.uchicago.edu). The random variable was my brother-in-law. I severely underestimated him. The random variable was his lack of desire to improve his circumstances.