I have been advising many GPODS Fellows and former students, and even mid-career professionals who are my friends on their career pathways. Indeed, I think quite a lot about my own career and where is it headed. Such an evaluation, done occasionally, seems to be a healthy exercise
One challenge that I have come across is that while everyone thinks of aligning intrinsic motivation and compensation, there are a lot of blind spots in dealing with those issues. Often we don’t know our intrinsic motivations clearly enough and when we do, we quickly find that no one will pay for it. Similarly, despite the fact that we write down a whole list of skills on our LinkedIn and resume, we are seldom sure if those are actually the skills that we are good at and if those are actually the skills that can give us a job/career. Nobody got a real job with “networking” or “Python” as a core skill. It’s not just about that. There is something more.
Often, finding those overlapping matches between what we are skilled at, what people will reward/compensate, and what is the core of our current skills and expertise is most addressed by the Ikigai framework.
Credit: Management360
But really, if you ask yourself, Ikigai doesn’t help. To be clear, Ikigai makes a lot of sense. The logical overlaps are conceptually both sensible and useful but try finding your Ikigai staring at those overlapping circles in the Venn Diagram and you will barely be able to work your way to the core.
I have never found anyone able to really find their perfect career path, or their north start working their way through the Ikigai Venn diagram. The reason? It is a deductive method to answer a fundamentally inductive question. It is deductive because you have all of the criteria, now all you need to do is to fill in each criterion and write your answer. And eventually, you’ll reach there - your ephemeral Ikigai.
But try doing that and you’ll get stuck at the first stage. Let’s look at any one of the three main circles -
Q. What does the world need?
A. I don’t really know. Perhaps technology, communication, kindness, cooperation, and basic comfort, are each element in Maslow's hierarchy of needs? But I don’t really know.
Q. What can you be paid for?
A. I have no idea. Perhaps for being a Python coder but I am not good at it.
Q. What are you good at?
A. I really wish I knew.
Q. What do you love?
A. No idea. Different things on different days. Perhaps a few things consistently such as talking to interesting people, reading, consuming entertainment etc.
Now notice that we barely understand the answers to the fundamental questions. If can barely answer these, imagine how onerous it would be to answer the overlaps of these Venn diagrams. For example, if I ask you,
Q. What are you good at and what can you be pie for?
A. I wish I only knew !!
Or
Q. What do you love and what are you good at?
A. I don’t know.
And then combining all of these iteratively and getting to your Ikigai is a near-impossible task. It looks like a neat framework but is barely useful because we hardly can answer with certainty the things that we are actually good at and the things that the world needs and will put for. Our knowledge of the self and the world is simply too limited. Our knowledge of the overlap of self and the world is even more limited. So much so that it should be a discipline. Most disciples either teach of the self or the world but not the intersection.
In any case, the deductive method simply doesn’t work when it comes to career choices.
Deductive reasoning is the process of drawing a specific conclusion from one or more general premises. For example, if you know that all humans are mortal, and that Socrates is a human, you can deduce that Socrates is mortal. Deductive reasoning is valid if the premises are true and the conclusion follows logically from them. Deductive reasoning is also sound if the premises are true and the conclusion is true. The challenge is that we don’t even know the premise in the Ikigai framework. So perhaps we should start from the other direction.
Let’s do it the inductive way. Inductive reasoning is the process of drawing a general conclusion from one or more specific observations. For example, if you observe that every time you turn on the switch, the light comes on, you can induce that the switch controls the light. Inductive reasoning is strong if the observations are reliable and the conclusion is probable. Inductive reasoning is also weak if the observations are unreliable or the conclusion is improbable. However, inductive reasoning can never be certain, because there is always a possibility that the conclusion is false or that there are exceptions to the rule.
Keeping those humble aspirations in mind, let us try and approach the career issue with some observations of ourselves and the world and draw some tentative conclusions. Some leading questions could help.
The best is to start by answering, do you even know what you really do? Consultants could find it especially hard to answer.
So an easier question to answer would be:
1. What would your job role be called if you were doing this 1000 years ago? (This is what you actually do/who you are, professionally). Indeed some jobs may not have existed 1000 years ago but what would have been a close equivalent? What needs are you fulfilling or would be fulfilling 1000 years ago? What would you be called?
For example, today, I organize a fellowship program, consult private sector clients of sustainability and sustainability communications/advocacy, conduct political risk analysis for clients, write reports and papers, organize/curate events/panel discussions/round tables/workshops, and occasionally teach.
What would I be called 1000 years ago? Most of these roles didn’t exist back then. Perhaps I would simply be called a teacher, or an advisor.
So this gives me a more watered-down (indeed reductionist but useful) description of what my current experience and expertise is in.
Perhaps if you’re a coder and those roles didn’t exist in the past, ask yourself what needs you actually fulfill. Perhaps as a coder, your main job is to figure out the logic on which various machines work. There were technicians even back then. That is your role - make non-living things work/machines work.
2. The second important question is: Imagine there is a war going on. Your nation is fully engaged in it down to its last resource. How would you make yourself useful during a war? (This is what you can actually do for society, you can sure do a lot more but given your current skills and experience, this is your potential).
My answer would be that I would perhaps be in the equivalent of an Information & Broadcast department, communications, or psychological operations department, or in diplomacy. While nobody is trying to learn the philosophy of public policy during a war, you still need communicators to keep the national spirit in the right direction, break the adversary’s narrative strategies, and build alliances in favor of your country.
While an extreme question, and morally reprehensible, this forces us to think about what society may need in times of crisis and what we can possibly offer.
Note that different crisis situations would call for different societal needs but run yourself the right to any societal crisis and you can start getting useful answers.
Let’s say there is an acute climate crisis, how will you make yourself useful?
Here again, research communication and translating research into policies or management practices would be my game.
Or if there is a severe financial crisis? How would you make yourself useful?
Same for me.
This means that communication is essentially my forte. This is sprinkled with research and management.
Now once we know what we actually do, and what our potential is, the really tough question comes I got the picture. What do we really want to do? It’s not an easy one to answer.
3. So here is what I would ask: If you had tremendous compensation but were allowed to have only two bullet points in your resume, what would those be ? What are those two things you can do almost infinitely? (this is what you enjoy doing really).
I would answer by saying, I like (1) reading, politics, policy, and strategy while communicating what I think based on what I’ve read, and (2) connecting really accomplished people.
I can gladly do these things for extended periods of time (perhaps all the time).
So making knowledge grow is my thing. In my worldview, that solves a lot of problems.
But please note that for some people, there could be a wide mismatch between their two bullet point job descriptions of what they’d do a lot if they had tremendous compensation, their usefulness during the war, and how their career would be described 1000 years ago. Such cases are few and there are usually mismatches between the last two questions rather than the first two questions. In such cases, some deeper dialogue, introspection, and even coaching may be required.
But with these questions, you can reach the answer to your career choice and direction in a much more effective manner because it is inductive. Strategies about subjective issues such as career directions and unknown unknowns are best tackled by inductive reasoning. For the observations to become more clear and apparent, it is sometimes useful to pull oneself out of their present situation and frame questions based on another setting with its own unique boundaries/limitations.
Now try for yourself,
What would your job role be called if you were doing this 1000 years ago?
Imagine there is a war going on. Your nation is fully engaged in it down to its last resource. How would you make yourself useful during a war?
If you had tremendous compensation but were allowed to have only two bullet points in your resume, what would those be? What are those two things you can do almost infinitely?
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