Thinque Futurist Blog by Anders Sorman-Nilsson

Ikigai: Purpose-Led and Sustainable Leadership

Written by Anders | September 7, 2021

At Thinque we know that you want to be a sustainability leader. In order to do that, you need to win over the hearts and minds of your organisation's key stakeholders. The problem is that your company's culture may be eating future-fit strategy for breakfast which makes you feel agitated and bereft of purpose. We believe you deserve to transform your company into a purpose-led industry leader. As entrepreneurs and strategists, we understand the battle between delivering short-term profits and making your brand a sustainable innovator, which is why we co-design strategy and transformation journeys that deliver on the 3Ps of People, Planet and Profit.

 

 

The below is an excerpt from futurist keynote speaker Anders Sörman-Nilsson's keynote for Di Jones' 2021 kick-off in Sydney:

"What are the types of technologies you can think of that would actually make the customer, vendor or buyer experience even more seamless? Now research from the United States holds that when it comes to contributing innovative or automation ideas inside of organizational cultures, if employees believe they would have to do different work as a result of such technologies being implemented, only 37% of people would actually liberate and offer such an idea.

But in cultures where they believe that the technology would help make their job better, 87% of people in those organizations would gladly offer their innovation idea. Inside of your agency, is it the 37% who avoid doing different work, or do people believe they are part of the 87% who say actually this technology would help make my life easier - help me close more sales, get more listings, help more people find their new home.

And these types of technologies, of course, are being led here both by Di Jones in Australia but also by this Australian-founded company called Compass in the United States. They now have technologies like this illuminated QR code-enabled sign that can beam you highly relevant information, yes it's an innovation that's about two years old, but I love this quote from the CTO, the chief technology officer, Joseph Sirosh, who says: "our vision at Compass, is to blend man or woman, and machine to disrupt the global real estate market and help everyone find their place in the world. We build AI to empower human agent intelligence."

This is what it's all about. Wo/man and AI playing together. Enabling us to actually tap into more of our lives' purpose, our career purpose, our Ikigai, as the Japanese would call it. Which is when you combine what you're passionate about, what you're good at, what you can get paid for, and what makes a positive contribution to your local community, and even the world.

Who would like to spend more time with those concentric circles actually overlap? Who's just really good at punching data into spreadsheets? Well, you should maybe do that. But if you like to spend more time with humans, making a difference, getting paid for it, and making a positive contribution to the world while doing stuff you're passionate about, technology can liberate your Ikigai."