For what reason? Individuals ask themselves questions about meaning and purpose. And more and more companies too. And the answers are extremely helpful for companies. Ikigai, the traditional tool from Japan, provides central questions for finding cardinal answers.
Why is the existence of companies worthwhile? Of course, to make a profit. To sell a good product. To give people jobs. There are a thousand reasons why a company is worthwhile, which justifies its existence. But for survival, continued life and a sustainable existence, all you need are four precise and resilient answers.
The Ikigai, actually created to determine the location of individual existence in life, also provides these answers for companies and organizations - if you know how to use it appropriately.
- Firstly: "What you love" should be translated and understood as "What the company likes to produce (with love).
- Second: "What the world needs" - If a product is not needed (for whatever reason), it cannot assert itself and will disappear. So does the company that produces it (unless it offers another product that is needed).
- Third: "What you are good at" - Some manufacturers lack the skills to manufacture a specific product. the result: an unsatisfactory, bad product. In the digital world of social media and real-time evaluation, rubbish is recognized as such more and more quickly and ends up where it belongs: on the recycling yard. Scrap no longer has a long life. Quality, on the other hand, is valued. This also applies to so-called cheap products, because the relationship between price and performance is part of the assessment of quality.
- Fourth: "What you can be paid for" - actually easy to understand. Anyone who produces something but is not paid for it can only go broke.
In summary: If a company produces what it likes to produce, has the necessary skills, the world also needs this product and is also willing to pay for it - only then can the company survive with the production of this product.
In fact, this applies to projects of any kind. If they are started and carried out with pleasure, i.e. motivated, with personal commitment, including love, the necessary skills are available and are also used, there is also a need for the success of the project, i.e an interest in the result, and this result will also pay off - only then is success guaranteed.
Back to the consideration of individuals. Quite a few people do what they love but are not paid enough or not at all. Some people also do what they love, but can only do it very amateurishly. Many people do what they don't love but are very good at. The world could possibly also use what they do, even though they don't love it, meaning they hate doing it and are still very well paid for it.
The Japanese recognized centuries ago that imbalance creates disharmony. A lack of balance always has a price. For individuals as well as for entire companies. The price can be death.
The Ikigai matrix provides a method to avert disharmony, i.e. increased costs, possible downfall and to stabilize a company or an entire company.
In the Augmented Leadership Framework, the Ikigai matrix is provided with a scale of values. This makes a possible imbalance measurable and can also be shown evolutionarily on a timeline. After all, these values are not fixed, but change. With ikigai probably for the better.
Ikigai for business or organization means survival.