13 Questions to Design a Holistic Business: Creating a “Business for Good”
Is it possible to harmonize holistic practice with entrepreneurial activity?
“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.” Lawrence P. Jacks
The Business Design Based on Mindfulness
My Mindful♥Business or the business design based on mindfulness supports the holistic professionals in integrating the technical and business dimensions of their practice.
The method addresses the main difficulties encountered in recognizing and managing the “business side” of holistic activity, for example:
- Choose cooperate rather than compete
- Generate a differentiated value related to what already exists
- Publicize my services by sharing knowledge
- Discover and delight new customers
- Better communicate the value I deliver
- Separate personal and business finances
- Develop a strategic thinking
- Seek economic sustainability in my holistic activity
- Overcoming prejudices about the business world
- Harmonize what I love and do well with what the world needs and can sustain me.
Two complementary methods
Of the many methods that can address the above questions, we choose two that complement each other to help us design a business aimed at generating quality of life: the business model canvas and the Ikigai.
The Business Model Canvas
The business model canvas (Osterwalder, Pigneur 2017) is a model that helps us visualize how the parts of the business generate customer value (Figure 1).
The canvas is a metaphor for “you draw the picture of your business”. It is formed by 9 blocks. The blocks on the right will represent how needs, desires, and opportunities of a particular segment of customers will be met by your value proposition, which can be a product or service. It also shows how we cultivate relationships with customers and through which channels we deliver value to them. The left side shows how that value is built: what activities are performed, with what resources, and what partners. The bottom part shows what types of revenue are generated in customer service and what costs are involved in the production and delivery of the products or services.
Canvas is a snapshot of your “business model,” that is, it pictures a way of delivering value to a group of customers and, in turn, earning a living.
Ikigai
The Japanese word Ikigai does not have a direct translation in English, but it incorporates the idea of achievement in life, being composed of the terms iki, meaning life and gai, meaning value and merit (Mathews 2010). Essentially, ikigai means “reason for being” and is described, in the culture of Okinawa, in Japan, as “the reason why you get up in the morning”. Ikigai comprises both one feeling fulfilled and performing a work that generates well-being for others, as well as being able to see or know the people served by your work. Every person has her ikigai, although she is not aware of it. Denial of the ikigai, caused by an external force, blockages or self-sabotaging can generate a sense of emptiness or meaninglessness in life. This “raison d’être” is the source of energy and determination, which leads some people to face deprivation and take risks when exploring the pathways to their personal mission. It is this kind of driving force that moves the Olympic athlete, the political activist, the disruptive entrepreneur or the innovative artist, in their saga of doing the unthinkable, against all possibilities and independent of the opinions of others.
For some people, ikigai may manifest in less heroic activities, making them experience fulfillment while gardening, helping people in need, finding a home for abandoned animals, publishing a public utility blog, finding his dream team, learning to play an instrument, or creating a revolutionary project.
Ikigai is represented by a mandala that relates: what we love, what we do well, what the world needs and what we are paid to do (Figure 2).
So Ikigai combines the individual dimension of what makes my life worthwhile with the social dimension of what I contribute to the world and to the community. My ikigai can be centered upon one or more focuses, either material or existential: family, work, religion, politics, social projects, business, art, sport, fun, pleasure, and dreams in general. Ikigai helps us to understand why many people who have health, beauty, good work, money and a “good life” suffer from the perception that “something is missing.”
Connecting Ikigai to the Business Model
If ikigai is related to “purpose in life,” the business model is related to the “purpose of the business.” Both deal with the “raison d’être” of the entrepreneur as an individual acting in the world and with the “raison d’être” of the business as an organization generating value.
Respecting their different philosophies and cultural origins, both models lead us to question the “reason for being” of what we do.
“If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. … We need not wait to see what others do.” Mahatma Gandhi
Research indicates that “people with a greater sense of purpose live longer, sleep better, and have a better sex life.” They point out that “purpose” reduces the risk of stroke and depression … it helps people to recover from addiction or manage their glucose levels if they are diabetics” (Schippers 2017).
When designing a business purpose statement, it is recommended to find a way to express the impact of the organization on the lives of clients, students, patients — whoever you are trying to serve (Kenny 2014).
The purpose is related to the why of creating a business, to its reason for being, to its essence, that then determines the decisions of what and how to do in practice.
Connecting Ikigai to the Business Canvas helps to align the “purpose of life” and the “purpose of the business” (Figure 3).
My Mindful Business: Integrating Business and Mindfulness
Most holistic professionals already work with concepts and techniques related to what has been called Mindfulness or Full Awareness. However, many did not have, during their formation, access to elements that help them think about their holistic practice from the viewpoint of an activity that must sustains them, in the short and long term, what in entrepreneurship, is equivalent to thinking on the business side of their activity.
In addition to the Ikigai and the Business Canvas Model, seen above, business mentoring employs other tools that help the holistic professional understand who their customer is, what their needs, desires, and potentialities are, how to set up a service or product that combines quality with convenience, how to differentiate your value proposition from other existing offers, how to think about your service under the impact of new technologies and how to plan the evolution of your business.
By combining coaching and consulting, the My Mindful ♥ Business methodology supports the professional holistic to integrate the therapist with the entrepreneur, since each patient is also a client in search of a value proposition that meets their needs.
13 Questions and a Process
The 13 questions to be answered during the mentoring process, based on the visual models of Ikigai and Canvas are:
- What do you love (to be, to do, to dream)?
- What does the world need?
- What are you good at or can learn?
- What sustains you or can sustain you?
- Who are your potential customers and what are their wants, needs or problems?
- What value can you generate to meet the aspirations of your potential customers?
- How do you relate to them?
- How do you deliver value in the form of services, products, experiences?
- What revenues do your services/products generate and how/when do you receive them?
- What activities do you carry out to generate and deliver value to customers?
- What resources (inputs, knowledge, effort) do you employ in these activities?
- How much do these activities and resources cost?
- Which partners can add resources or activities, reducing costs and complexity?
In fact, these 13 questions are a subset of the many involved in creating or reinventing any venture.
By starting the strategic thinking from Ikigai’s point of view, we place purpose as the central axis of our holistic business journey.
By associating “what we love” with “what the world needs” and “what we are good at” we discover our mission and can nurture it with our passion.
By “seeking our sustenance” applying “what we are good at” to “what the world needs,” we align our profession with our vocation.
From there, we can use the business canvas to detail how we can generate that value that the world needs so much.
Our motivation can be summarized by the following:
“Just because life is ultimately meaningless doesn’t stop us searching for meaning while we are alive. Some seek it in religion, others in a career, money, family or pure escapism. But all who find it seem to stumble across the same thing — a thing psychologists call purpose” (Burrell, 2017).
Learn more about My Mindful ♥ Business mentoring.
Gratitude.
Namaste
References
Burrell, Teal. A meaning to life: How a sense of purpose can keep you healthy. New Scientist, Jan 25, 2017
Jacks, Lawrence P. Education Through Recreation. New York (NY): Harper and Brothers; 1932.
Kenny, Graham. Your Company’s Purpose Is Not Its Vision, Mission, or Values. Harvard Business Review, Sep 03, 2014.
Kawasaki, Guy. Don’t Write a Mission Statement, Write a Mantra. http://ecorner.stanford.edu/videos/1172/Dont-Write-a-Mission-Statement-Write-a-Mantra
Kawasaki, Guy. Make a Mantra. Guy Kawasaki’s 60 Second StartUp Series
Mathews, Gordon. Finding and Keeping a Purpose in Life: Well-Being and Ikigai in Japan and Elsewhere in Gordon Mathews and Carolina Izquierdo (eds.), Pursuits of Happiness: Well-Being in Anthropological Perspective, Berghahn Books, 2010.
Osterwalder, Alexander; Pigneur, Yves. Business Model Generation: Inovação em Modelos de Negócios, Alta Books, 2011.
Schippers, Michaéla. IKIGAI — Reflection on life goals optimizes performance and happiness, ERIM Inaugural Address Series Research in Management, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), 2017.
Originally published at inovelab.net on August 16, 2017.
