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A framework for career decisionmaking
Posted on April 21st, 2010 No commentsI recently thought up a good way to frame decisionmaking about what I would like to do with my life. I think I value 3 qualities in a profession. In no particular order these are:
1) Impact meaning the impact of my work on people’s lives as defined by some measure of quality improvement in someone’s life times number of lives affected.
2) Independence – by this I mean both the personal and professional flexibility to be creative with my day and as Krishna would say determine the “texture” of my day.
3) Wealth and Profit – I am a big believer that value can always be measured in $ and that no matter what people say about the advancement of nonprofit, it takes the profit motive to really add the scale, permanence and continuous innovation and competition that we see in mature markets. Take adoption of Hospice care for example which was a movement by nursing to make end of life care reimburseable and when the route of advocacy, changing government legislation and endless policy briefs. It took approximately 40 years starting in the 50s and to finally get reimbursement in 1995 and full adoption of Palliative care as a field is still ongoing process. Then take microfinance which discovered an untapped market which took almost as long 30 years to become mainstream starting in the mid seventies and culminating with Muhammed Yunus winning the Nobel in 2006. Compare this to the launch of the iphone in 2007 which this year projects to hit 58million units just 3 years later.So using this framework, I have analyzed the following career options Academic physician, Entrepreneur, Venture Capitalist, Corporate Exec.
AP VC E CE
Impact H L M M
Freedom H H H L
$$$ M H L MThe conclusion? I should be an academic who is also a VC.