Aligning purpose: ikigai, change work & public impact
9 a.m. Light shifts through my window. Shadows shimmer: orange dawn, green reflections, terracotta façades. I cup a coffee, sip, and think about how purpose and practice must sometimes mirror that layering — shadows and light always overlapping.
Lately I’ve been reflecting on how we value different learning styles, how people learn through change, and how we might move beyond strengths vs. weaknesses to “strengths overplayed.” In that exploration I rediscovered ikigai, a Japanese concept popularised by the team at Leapers and others:
It’s the overlap of the things you love doing, the things you’re good at, the things the world needs, and the things you can get paid for.
In that sweet spot lies — as the idea goes — your purpose.
Today I want to share how this reflection is shaping my thinking about change work, collaboration, and designing organisations. And I hope it invites you to try it for yourself.
What I love doing
To me, joy in work comes in these moments:
- Designing journeys that bring people from different backgrounds together around shared causes, often through creative or playful methods.
- Tinkering in the crack spaces: the “in-betweens” of systems, hidden corners, emerging transitions.
- Running both experiments and strategic alignment at once: one-off events, test labs, and longer-term institutional change.
- Seeing someone recognise they own a path forward, not just being acted upon.
My vision is that people feel excited and confident navigating change in their communities — belonging to dynamic, fluid, co-created neighbourhoods, not passive recipients.
What the world needs
My sense is that what’s missing is spaces — not physical only, but relational, cultural, imaginative — where diverse intelligence, lived experience, non-academic ways of thinking can meet systems and institutions. Places where:
- People aren’t judged by credentials but by curiosity, care and connection.
- Communities can imagine, test, fail, iterate together.
- Agency is embedded: “you own what you create.”
- And, importantly, where systems (local government, public service, anchor institutions) show up to listen, not just to respond.
This resonates deeply with arguments in civic innovation and new public design. Nesta, for example, has called for “radical co-creation” and emphasised that creative practice must be embedded in public systems, not layer-on. (See Creative Civic Change and related reports.)
Likewise, New Local’s framing of community power argues that outward trust demands internal openness.
What I get paid to do
In my roles, I lead teams who harness different levers (policy, partnerships, finance, facilitation) to build strategic responses to cross-cutting challenges. I help mobilise experimentation now, while thinking about scaling and embedding impact later.
The overlap between what I’m paid to do and what I love is strong. Yet the gap persists — often in scale, in authority, or in how “on-the-ground” I get to be.
I often wrestle with these tensions:
- The amplification vs. direct involvement trade-off: as a senior, I often must negotiate and steer, which can dilute the immediacy of hands-on change.
- The scale mismatch: many of the issues I care about (inequality, climate, belonging) require structural change that is bigger than a borough or a single programme.
- Sensory dissonance: many of my favourite projects involve place, movement, fieldwork. Working from home or behind screens sometimes dulls my senses.
That said, I believe there’s strength in working both top-down and bottom-up. The trick is to maintain humility, curiosity, and a constant feedback loop.
How to explore your purpose zone (for organisations and teams)
You don’t have to write a perfect manifesto. Here’s a pathway you can try:
- Map your four circles
On paper or digitally, draw four overlapping circles: Love, Good At, Needed, Paid For. Brainstorm ideas to occupy each. Don’t censor. - Identify where the overlaps wobble
Where do your “love” and “good at” overlap heavily, but not with “paid for”? That’s a seam to explore. Where do “needed” and “paid for” overlap without “love”? That’s a risk zone. - Prototype a “bridge” project
Choose one gap: e.g. a pilot where you lean into “what you love + what’s needed” without expecting full revenue yet. Let it be low-risk, time-bound, and open to iteration. - Reflect and refine language
As you prototype, test how people talk about it. Does your team, your partners, your stakeholders resonate with the framing? Iterate your phrasing. - Align institutional levers
Look at your rules, budget, performance metrics. Can you shift them slightly toward supporting your emerging zone? Can you protect discretionary time or space for the “bridge” experiments? - Share stories, invite others in
Even if imperfect, publish short reflections from the experiments. Invite others to bring their own overlaps and tensions into conversation.
Examples of people or organisations embodying ikigai in change work
- Henk Campher / Centre for Public Innovation — Campher has long written about blending “the practical” and “the possible” in public innovation, advocating that innovators stay rooted in day-to-day service logic while pursuing transformative visions.
- Transition Network — many community-led sustainability groups live in that overlap of caring (love), doing (good at), ecological need, and local economic action. Their global network shows how small place-level work can scale values.
- The Young Foundation — UK social innovation body has programmes (e.g. Catalyst) where people test new roles and models at the intersection of what they love, what society needs, and what can be sustained.
- Fairphone — this B Corp builds modular, repairable phones — combining love for hardware/design, need for sustainable production, and economic viability.
- Teach For All — organisations in many countries recruiting and supporting educators who love teaching, believe in equity, and build sustainable models.
Why this matters in public and civic work
Because many public systems treat people as “resources” or “clients,” not creators. Meanwhile, many talented, caring people feel they must leave systems to find purpose. If public institutions can lean into ikigai — embedding curiosity, experimentation, agency — then systems can become places people want to belong to, not resist.
Purpose is not static. It shifts. So sustaining that overlap requires humility, iteration, small experiments, and openness to tension.
Call to action
- Try the four-circle exercise yourself. Sketch it, share it.
- If you’re leading a team, invite them to do the same. Use it as a conversation starter — where are the gaps?
- Commit to one “bridge” experiment that leans into where love, need and capability intersect, even if it’s not yet paid.
- Share your reflections publicly — your cracks, your tensions, your small victories.
I believe the overlap between what we love, what we’re good at, and what the world needs is not just personal — it’s a blueprint for better organisations.
So I return to my earlier question: What is your overlap? And where will you open your shutter first?
