Top students quickly figure out that getting A’s requires delivering what the teacher is looking for, whether answers on tests or responses to questions asked aloud in class — they focus on the “correct” answer.
Setting aside the question of regurgitation versus critical thinking, top students focus on getting the answer right, on not making mistakes.
For physicians, as well as other professionals, that error-avoidance drive becomes hard coded into their careers.
But although risk avoidance and the focus on excellence serves you extremely well as a physician in terms of patient care, it hampers you in terms of group business success.
That’s because succeeding in business requires the exact opposite trait: the willingness to take risks and the understanding that risks unavoidably lead to mistakes. Those mistakes serve as the rocket fuel for learning what works and what doesn’t.
If you want to be a successful group business leader, you have to you learn to flip the switch: To compartmentalize your life into elements of both risk adverse clinician and as a failing forward faster entrepreneur.
