Ikigai Management
What is Ikigai Management?
Ikigai Management is Eudaimonia Universe's approach to connecting individual meaning, organizational purpose, contribution, and sustainable performance. It designs for people's intrinsic motivation without separating it from business results.
Overview
Meaningful work is often treated as the opposite of performance: improve benefits and productivity falls, push for results and people burn out. Ikigai Management removes that opposition from the premises and holds both in one design: the meaning a person finds in the work, and the results the organization produces.
The organizational problem it addresses
Purpose-driven management that stays at the level of slogans, human capital management that becomes a disclosure exercise, engagement initiatives that never connect to performance measures. Each arises when individual meaning and organizational purpose are discussed in separate languages.
Four points of connection
What a person holds important and what moves them, articulated through the vocabulary of Source 108.
What the organization exists for and where it is heading, and the distance between the stated words and daily behavior.
Who outside the organization the work reaches, and how. A felt sense of contribution is what sustains meaning.
Results that can be sustained rather than quarterly figures, seen through CRV down to how value is distributed.
Development background and method
Ikigai Management was organized through the practice and writing of our founder, Takayuki Mizuno. It was formalized after repeatedly observing organizations that managed engagement initiatives and business results as two separate programs. Source 108 and CRV serve as the instruments of connection.
Evidence status
Ikigai Management is a management approach developed through practice. It is currently being evaluated and is not presented as peer-reviewed, empirically validated research. Ikigai is an everyday Japanese word, and Eudaimonia Universe does not claim exclusive authority to define it. What is presented here is an organizing approach for management design.
Related publications
Books by the founder: ikigai経営術 (Japanese) and ikigai intelligence (English), both by Takayuki Mizuno.
Organizational application
- Putting purpose into practice: connecting a stated purpose to individual motivation and daily roles (Organizational Transformation).
- Human capital management: designing for real change rather than for disclosure metrics (Sustainable Value Creation).
- Improving meaningful work: diagnosing where the break in meaning occurs before choosing initiatives (Engagement and Meaningful Work).
Limitations
Meaning belongs to the person; an organization cannot supply it. What this framework can design is the conditions in which meaning grows, not the meaning itself. Where the business model itself is untenable, designing for meaning will not change the results.
Citation and related pages
Related services: Engagement and Meaningful Work ｜ Sustainable Value Creation ｜ Related research: Source 108 ｜ CRV
Use Ikigai Management in your organization
We take enquiries about applying it to purpose-driven and human capital management, and about joint research.