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Ikigai - Finding Your Preferred Future

Ikigai Week 4

By Rick Aman
on

“The future depends on what you do today.” — Mahatma Gandhi

Strategic plans often fail for reasons that have little to do with effort, intelligence, or commitment. Most organizations work hard. They gather data, hire consultants, hold retreats, and produce thoughtful plans. Yet many of those plans lose momentum within a year or two. Failure is rarely execution. It is far more often a loss of clarity. When an organization lacks a shared sense of identity and corresponding mission, even carefully articulated strategies become a list of aspirations rather than a living direction.

This is where Ikigai for Organizations becomes an especially powerful tool. Throughout this series, I have described Ikigai as a way to clarify organizational identity and, at the governance level, protect mission. In this final article, I want to move Ikigai one step further. Ikigai is not only a lens for oversight or decision-making. When used well, it becomes the foundation for defining an organization’s preferred future.

Why Preferred Futures Break Down Without Identity

Many mission statements (preferred future) statements fail because they attempt to describe outcomes before clarifying identity. Leaders jump quickly to questions of scale, growth, innovation, and reputation without first anchoring who the organization is becoming. The result is a future that sounds attractive but lacks gravitational pull. It is easy to support in theory and difficult to sustain in practice.

Without a shared center, futures become additive. New priorities are layered on top of old ones. Initiatives multiply, metrics proliferate, energy disperses. Over time, the organization becomes busy, well-intentioned, and unfocused. The future exists on paper, but the day-to-day work of the institution pulls in multiple directions.

Ikigai addresses this problem at its root. By clarifying what the organization is deeply committed to, what it does exceptionally well, what the community truly needs, and what can be sustained financially, Organizational Ikigai creates a coherent center. That center gives the future weight. It slows decision-making in productive ways making it more deliberate. It introduces discipline before ambition. Most importantly, it answers a foundational question that many planning processes skip: who are we becoming?

You cannot design a preferred future without first clarifying identity. Futuring not grounded in identity tend to drift. Futuring grounded in Ikigai has a better chance to endure.

Ikigai as the Anchor of the Preferred Future

Organizational Ikigai should not sit alongside strategic planning as a parallel exercise. It belongs in the beginning and at the center. When placed there, it naturally shapes everything that follows. The preferred future statement becomes an expression of identity rather than a marketing narrative. Key initiatives emerge as commitments rather than hope. Measures begin to reflect direction rather than activity. Alignment across teams and budgets becomes easier because decisions reference a shared center instead of competing priorities.

In practice, this shift changes the tone of leadership conversations. Instead of asking whether an initiative is innovative or timely, leaders ask whether it strengthens who the organization is becoming. Instead of debating tradeoffs in isolation, teams evaluate options through a consistent identity lens. Strategy becomes less about enforcement and more about coherence.

One of the most important outcomes of placing Ikigai at the center is that alignment stops being a goal in itself. When identity is clear, people understand why certain priorities matter and others do not. Budgeting conversations become less adversarial. Tradeoffs become defensible. Leaders no longer need to rely on authority to drive alignment; the logic of identity does the work.

From Identity to Direction: Stating the Preferred Future

A preferred future is not a forecast. It is not a prediction of market conditions or enrollment trends. It is a declaration of intent grounded in identity. Ikigai ensures that this declaration is authentic, relevant, and sustainable.

Authentic futures reflect who the organization truly is, not who it wishes it were. Relevant futures respond to real community needs rather than abstract trends. Sustainable futures acknowledge financial realities and institutional capacity. When these three conditions are present, the future becomes credible. Importantly, leadership, staff, and constituents can see themselves in it. They understand their role in bringing it to life.

One of the most useful prompts I offer leadership teams is simple: if we grew into our Ikigai (preferred future), what would be unmistakably true three years from now? This question shifts the conversation from tactics to trajectory. It invites leaders to imagine the organization as a coherent whole rather than a collection of initiatives moving into an unknown future.

From this clarity, key initiatives begin to narrow. Ikigai does not encourage doing more. It encourages doing less with greater intention. Initiatives become expressions of identity rather than reactions to trends. Fewer initiatives create clearer ownership and stronger outcomes. Energy is conserved rather than dissipated. Over my career I have seen strategic plans with fifty-plus individual items.

Ikigai does not answer the question of what should we do next. It answers a more demanding question: what must we do to become who we say we are? According to the authors of The Great Upheaval, Levine and Van Pelt, that distinction changes everything.

Measuring Progress Toward Identity

Traditional metrics are necessary. They help leadership understand and operationalize performance, efficiency, and compliance. But they are insufficient when the goal is long-term direction. Ikigai-aligned organizations measure progress toward identity, not just activity and head count.

This shift does not imply abandoning dashboards or data. It requires reframing what success looks like. Boards and CEOs begin to look for confidence in trajectory rather than perfection in execution. Measures emphasize depth over breadth, coherence beyond growth, and alignment over volume. For example, instead of tracking how many initiatives are underway, leaders ask whether the work is becoming more focused. Instead of celebrating growth alone, they examine whether growth reinforces identity. Instead of measuring activity across every domain, they pay attention to where the organization is becoming unmistakably strong and relevant.

What gets measured signals what the organization truly values. When measures reflect Ikigai, they reinforce identity rather than distract from it.

Closing Reflection: Choosing the Future from the Center

“Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.” — John F. Kennedy

Organizational Ikigai becomes the bridge between identity and a preferred future. It is not a slogan and not a planning tool in the narrow sense. It is a steady reference point that allows organizations to adapt without losing focus. In times of disruption, this matters more than optimization. Organizations that know who they are can change without panic. Those that do not will optimize themselves into irrelevance.

Organizations do not drift into strong futures. They choose them, and the strongest choices are made from a clear center.

Ikigai as the Bridge

My articles over the past four weeks included:

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Aman & Associates works with governing boards and CEOs to clarify organizational Ikigai before strategy, plans, and initiatives are set. Building on the Organizational Ikigai frameworks explored in this series, we facilitate focused board and leadership sessions that strengthen decision quality, reduce mission drift, and support long-term sustainability. As a new year begins, a short board or leadership retreat can be a timely way to reconnect organizational identity with a preferred future. Aman & Associates offers a half-day Zoom session designed specifically for organizational Ikigai alignment. If this would be useful for your board or leadership team. Feel free to message me.

Rick Aman, PhD Aman & Associates   

rick@rickaman.com | rickaman.com/articles