At a recent physician-centric healthcare conference, a CEO, who is also a physician, asked the audience how would they spend one million dollars to help improve physician satisfaction and retention.
My answer was quite simple: create an “ikigai fund, ” one which allows for physicians with minimal oversight to pursue passion projects which may advance both their mission and their organization’s mission. (For the business-speak folks, feel free to call this an “innovation fund.”)
Key point: As physicians progress in their career, their ikigai ( their confluence of passion and skills, with what they perceive the world will pay for, and what they perceive the world needs) changes. Ikigai change is a desirable thing—any healthy organization should want their key players to expand their career mission, not contract it. Yet there is a risk that a more expansive mission of these key players will diverge from their organization’s mission. An ikigai fund would allow physicians an opportunity to realign their personal mission with their healthcare organization’s mission, and that will improve satisfaction and retention.
Anyway, it was a great question.
For more on my thoughts on ikigai, read Physician: Know thy ikigai? Then Know thy Twitter.