Chip Royce, Flywheel Advisors
Flywheel Advisors designed our services based on our deep understanding of business cycles.
Technology may come and go, but it’s never different.
Data and automation have been economic drivers for the past 30 years. Mean reversion is inevitable, and people will again become a competitive advantage.
This forward-looking approach may not be easily understandable by all of our prospective clients. Some want today’s simple solutions and are less worried about preparing for tomorrow.
Facing these marketing challenges we took our own advice.
We reflected and analyzed. We gathered more information about our customers. We adjusted our thinking and looked to improve our offers and capabilities.
In this newsletter, I’ll share:
- The Japanese concept of “Ikiagi”
- How we used “Ikiagi” to uncover a dormant superpower
- How you can unearth your superpowers through “Ikiagi”
Have you heard of the Japanese word “Ikiagi”?
It means “life purpose” or “reason for being”.
When you explore your Ikigai, you’re defining your personal meaning of life in relation to your talents, passions, and profession. You define what you can give to the wider world.
If you’re interested, you can learn more about “ikiagi” HERE, HERE, and HERE.
I’ve always valued the process of exploring one’s “ikiagi”. It usually unlocks one’s most fulfilling and successful career. One finds roles that meet at the intersection of what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what they’ll pay you for.
Our Ikiagi Workshop
We did a short, fun, workshop looking at our historical work in the context of ikiagi to identify more tangible services to offer to clients.
- We cataloged our careers and client engagements.
- We cataloged the types of companies, and how they went to market.
- Most importantly, we looked at the activities that created the most value
- We cataloged who our clients sold to
Our “a-ha” was in the last step, value creation.
We saw the frequent occurrence of partnerships.
Clients and career roles kept coming back to business and corporate development. We helped companies of all sizes figure out how to partner with other companies, often larger ones, to create exponential value.
This included helping our own companies become ready to partner. This avoids embarrassment and damage to the company brand and future relationships.
Today, when we brainstorm with companies about ways to generate growth, we still gravitate to this strategy.
We brought what we learned back to “ikiagi”.
Did each project align with all four criteria? No. But, almost all did.
Besides, this unearthed a component of “ikiagi” that we forgot to mention in our customer-facing materials. Without this exercise, we would never have unearthed this passion, this superpower.
How can you unearth your superpowers through “ikiagi”?
1) Find the time
Either by choice or by necessity, get your team in front of a whiteboard and take a good look at your team and product.
Do you have “ikiagi”?
- Are you actually good at what you claim do to?
- Do you love what you do?
- Do your customers need your product or service?
- Are they paying you? Or giving this away hoping to convert to paid in the future? (Product-led growth) Do you have enough information to answer this or are you working off of old assumptions?
2) Get more information
I believe none of us have the answers to every question.
Time to do some soul-searching.
Spend the time with your team members to find out what drives them.
Speak with prospects and customers to gather insights about their pain points and what drives value.
3) Find your “ikiagki”
Bring your entire team together and see if you can align around your “ikiagki.”
Was one small piece missing? Do your marketing materials leave out a key feature or value to customers? Do you need to build a new feature or reconfigure the product to make it easier to use?
Or did you uncover larger problems? Is your company not selling to the right customer? Is your company mission not fulfilling to your team?
The latter requires some tough conversations and some tough love.
We all talk about culture and execution.
“Ikiagi” may be one way to tie your personal or company values to culture and drive alignment to unlock your success.
Our firm is already seeing the benefits.
Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways we can help:
1) Schedule 25 minutes to chat about your businesses: new opportunities, current challenges, aspirations, pretty much anything!
2) Sign up (if you haven’t already) for this newsletter.
3) Read back issues for more insights into how to (re)ignite growth for your company.