How Ikigai Drives Our Mission at AskAHealth
How Ikigai Changed the Outlook of What I Do
My Background: As an independent management consultant, I’ve had the privilege of working on diverse, challenging projects. One of the perks of being a consultant is the flexibility it offers—free time between projects allows space for reflection and dreaming about how to make a real impact on society. However, there’s a downside. As a consultant, you don’t always see the long-term results of your work. You move on to the next project, leaving the outcomes to unfold in ways that may differ from initial projections.
Typically, consulting projects lead to three potential outcomes:
- The client takes action on the recommendations, leading to meaningful results.
- The client uses the advice to justify a point they already believed.
- The client doesn’t act on the advice due to resource constraints or other reasons.
There’s a fourth scenario, often invisible to clients but experienced by consultants, where we see the endless possibilities for helping organizations improve. This scenario prompts the question: Was the work truly purposeful?
This question lingered with me until I discovered the concept of ikigai during a business trip. After coming across the book “Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life” by Héctor García, I was immediately fascinated. This concept has since transformed my understanding of my work and the purpose behind it.
What is Ikigai?
Ikigai (pronounced “icky-guy”) is a Japanese term that translates roughly to “the reason you wake up in the morning.” It’s a framework for understanding life’s purpose, and it consists of four foundational elements. At the intersection of these four elements lies ikigai—the purpose that guides what you do.
The four elements are:
- What you love (your passion)
- What the world needs (your mission)
- What you can be paid for (your profession)
- What you are good at (your vocation)
This concept became widely known through Dan Buettner’s TED talk on Blue Zones, regions with a disproportionately high number of centenarians. Buettner found that one common factor among these long-lived individuals was having a strong sense of purpose—a personal ikigai.
The Value of Ikigai for Our Community
At AskAHealth, our mission is to provide accessible healthcare and help care providers deliver better care to their patients. By “better care,” we mean the right care, at the right time, and the first time. This ensures individuals live longer, healthier lives.
I chose ikigai as a guiding model for transforming the outlook of my business and, ultimately, the businesses of our clients. To discover your own ikigai, you must first understand what you’re passionate about. Then, identify the work or role through which you can express that passion. This is a concept I’ve always connected with, and I believe it’s something our clients will easily relate to as well.
My own passion lies in helping companies improve efficiency and effectiveness. My background in supply chain optimization within the industrial and retail sectors, coupled with my research in healthcare systems engineering, has given me a deep understanding of how to optimize healthcare delivery.
In memory of my father, a dedicated physician, I feel a personal responsibility to help healthcare providers improve their services. Managing healthcare facilities is a complex task, blending scientific principles with the art of management. Our service is designed to make the scientific component more robust, reducing the reliance on subjective decision-making by using evidence-based approaches.
Our Ikigai at AskAHealth
The four foundational elements of ikigai drive the work we do at AskAHealth, as we aim to optimize healthcare services for providers and patients alike. Here’s how these elements align with our vision:
- What we love:
We are passionate about helping care providers optimise their services so they can deliver high-quality care, maintain profitability, and ensure the satisfaction of their employees. - What the world needs:
We believe that everyone deserves access to the right care at the right time. Ensuring that patients receive the appropriate care when they need it is a fundamental part of improving public health outcomes. - What we can be paid for:
We provide robust processes for decision-making, offering solutions to healthcare service providers in times of need. Our mission is to help providers care for their patients more effectively and with less stress. - What we are good at:
Our expertise lies in optimising the flow of activities within healthcare systems, enabling providers to deliver better care to more people using limited resources. Our systems engineering background and experience in other industries make us uniquely suited to achieve this goal.
By applying ikigai as a socio-technical model, we give our work meaningful purpose. Understanding the intersection of these four elements helps us connect with our clients’ needs and empowers us to assist them in achieving meaningful success.
Conclusion
At AskAHealth, we have embraced the ikigai framework to guide our approach to healthcare transformation. By aligning what we love, what the world needs, what we can be paid for, and what we’re good at, we can provide meaningful value to our clients and the communities they serve.
In future articles, we will explore how ikigai can further inform the design and optimization of healthcare systems, helping providers meet the evolving challenges of patient care. For now, I encourage you to reflect on your own ikigai. What are you passionate about, and how can you express that passion in the work you do?
If this article resonated with you, check out our next blog on “The Core of Healthcare System Design”—an application of the ikigai approach to healthcare systems design.
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References
Buettner, D. (2010). How to live to be 100+. [online] Ted.com. Available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_buettner_how_to_live_to_be_100.
Garcia, H 2018, Ikigai : the Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life., Thorndike Press.
Long (2019). Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Héctor García & Francesc Miralles (Notes). [online] YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/eLWRv_8RliQ [Accessed 5 May 2020].
