I once knew a guy, let’s call him Charlie, a physician. This was years ago. He was always complaining that he wasn’t making enough money, but he never did anything about it. You see, he was afraid to take risks. No risk, little chance of reward.
One of the reasons that business people in healthcare have been eating physicians’ lunches for some time is that they’re perfectly comfortable taking risks. Practicing physicians, though, are, for the most part, captives of their training. They’ve been taught that taking risks is dangerous. They’ve been taught that there’s a high price to being wrong.
On the other hand, business people understand that failure is only temporary, and that it, like time and money, is one of the raw materials of success.
In order to succeed, either as a medical group leader or as a business person involved in ventures outside of practice, you need to become more comfortable with the notion of business risk as an ally as opposed to risk as a nemesis.
Go ahead, try it. It won’t kill you, or anyone else.
