Ikigai – what it really means

The popular Ikigai diagram is wrong. It treats work as overlapping traits, when it is actually a system of relationships between actors, actions, and outcomes.

Like the Career Sweet Spot model, Ikigai highlights what you are great at, what you love doing, and what others will pay for. It adds a fourth factor: what the world needs. This is important as by itself the Career Sweet Spot could lead you to work that makes the world worse.

Like the Career Sweet Spot model, Ikigai has been popularised by a Venn diagram.

Instead of showing overlaps, this map shows who does what, and what that generates.

You use your capabilities to generate a contribution. Your employer uses it to create benefit for themselves. They reward you with pay and benefits. As a side effect of working, you also get fun, meaning and connection.

Impact on the world is a side effect of your work, and what your employer does with your contribution. Your contribution may be amazing, and your employer might use it in ways that create benefit for themselves, but they may also use it to serve or harm the public or the environment. Benefit to your employer and impact on the world are separate, and often diverge. The impact is possible because of the contribution of its people, but it is generated by the organisation.

You choose an employer not just for what they pay you, but for how they use your contribution.

One failing of the Ikigai Venn diagram is that it has no place for necessary work that is unpaid and not fun. Like washing dishes in a food kitchen.

Ikigai looks for alignment in work. This map shows alignment in a system that produces outcomes. Don’t look for overlap. Look at the system your work feeds into – and decide whether you want to be part of it.

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