1

Book Report on Ikigai Journey

Nicole Brennan
Organizational Leadership
OGL 482: Pro-Seminar II
Andi Hess
July 18, 2021
 2

Introduction

Ikigai in Japan is combining of Japanese words iki indicate life and gai, indicate value or

worth, ikigai is basically all about discovering an individual’s purpose in life. For this book

report that I choose “Ikigai Journey: A Practical Guide to Finding Happiness and Purpose the

Japanese way” by Hector Garcia and Francesca Miralles. Let me introduce myself my name is

Nicole Brennan, and I am a shift supervisor at Starbucks. The genuine explanation on why I

choose this book out of all the other ones was because it is the Japanese way. I have been to

Japan twice in one year, I adore the country and culture. The three lessons I learned from Garcia

and Miralles is one understand our past, moving through the presents, and planning and building

your future. This book is important for any leader to read because it improves many skills build a

plan weather for a project or understanding a past situation and how to avoid it.

The Past Lesson One

The first lesson is understanding our past, it is focus on seeing the past to understand

yourself as an individual. Weather it’s the mistake or right action you made that makes you a

leader today. This book is all about the Japanese ways of finding happiness through their history.

In Ancient Kyoto, the ancestries stated that “exercises for rediscovering where we come from

using our personal experience as a springboard.” (Page 112) What this mean in my point of view

is that your past will help guide your future and what chooses to make. I would recommend this

book to a student who is trying to learn about themselves. What I mean by that is when you are

young figuring out who you are and want to be for the rest of your life is crucial. This could be

what type of leader you want to be or what type of person you wish to be.
 3

As a leader there will be many lessons within that you learn this is for my first example

of having a comprehensive of your past. For myself I learned many of my leadership skills

overseas with having to organize many people together. A lesson of this section is all about

Connecting the Dots in Hindsight chapter eighteen. When you are a leader, and you are going

through a situation understanding your past or something you went through as an individuals can

help you for the future. “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect the

looking backward. So, you have to trust that dots will somehow connect in your future.” (Steve

Jobs page 130) This is stating that you need to trust yourself when you are a leader and its

important to understand your mistakes in the past. In OGL 481: Pro-Seminar II in chapter three

page fifty-one there is a four-step process to understanding your data. Step one is Coding your

Data this will give you rich understanding of all the information you have gathered in the past.

The second step is Grouping your Data now that you have all your information that you

understand and gather you need to group them. Grouping them by what was useful, how did you

fail, and what you need to work on as a leader. The third step was Assigning Tentative Themes

this is about having a last look as your data as a leader with what you have learned and what

makes sense. The fourth and final step Constructing the Final Theme with Supporting Data this

is focus on understand you strengthen and weakness. The reason this is so important to

understanding your past is for the reason it will help show you what you have learned as a leader.

If an individual plays their strengthen let’s say it is communication that when looking for a job

that will help you on your career than this can be a huge advantage over the competition. When I

go into an interview, I understand my strengths which are leadership skill, supporting others, and

teamwork. My weakness I understand its communication as well that right now is my focus point

on improving myself. As I stated that I work at Starbucks making sure I tell everyone the news is
 4

by writing it down for myself who I need to talk to and about what. This way I have a list of

actives I need to complete and what is accomplished. This will support me when I get a job at

Human Resources do achieve my career.

The Present Lesson Two

My next lesson is focusing and have knowledge of your present. In chapter twenty-one

there is a quote “if you aim at two ducks you will miss them both.” (Page 147 Garcia) The way I

view this statement is to focus on your current self and your weakness. This is not to worry about

your future self you cannot fix your current problems. My current problem as a leader is

procrastination on my work. If you try to fix several issues the problems will be completed on

partial worked. The reason I believe this is because I have delt with this issue for many years.

My first problems as a leader that I overcome was my rude attitude when someone asked for

help. That was my most current problem that I overcome, I just focused on helping others. The

reason I was able to conquer this issue was because I was solely focusing on that concern. I learn

from OGL 360 on what type of leader I wanted to be. In OGL 360 the different type of

leadership styles are Authority-Compliance, Country Club, Impoverished, Middle-of-the-

Road, Team Manager, and Authoritarian that I can choose from. The Authority-Compliance is

concentrating on mainly assignment orientation while not focusing on people relationship

skills. Country Club is primarily focusing on relationship with customers but low-task

assembly. Impoverished management something I do not want which is is low task

performance plus low relationship with customers and employees. The Middle of the Road

management is for weak leadership skills are all more about comprising with can be good

something. While I understood Team Management is heavily focus on task and

relationship with employees and customers. Then Authoritarians is a micromanager that is

 5

involved with every person task, policies, production and shows little trust to the employees.

Once I read this type of leadership skills tried to fix my attitude and to be more focus this solely.

If I tried to fix all my problems at once I could get overwhelmed. In this chapter its discussions

limited attention that we can devote to an issue. This is important to understand that is why you

should only focus on one aspect and Ikigai states that human cannot multitask in effective way.

In my Organizational Leadership Degree, one has very told me that I need to focus on

one area of task before starting others. I really identify myself with understand that I cannot do

my job at its best and multitask on many tasks. After reading the book and understanding how I

am as a leader. I also understand my mistakes and how I can help others grow as individuals. I

can show individuals how to stop doing job at intermediate done by methods I have learn

through experience myself. This book can make a huge difference in my career why understand

where I am currently as a leader. What are my strengths and weaknesses in that moment to see

where or if I need improvement. If I must ask one question is why focus on the Japanese way so

much. There are many other countries that have the key to happiness.

The Future Lesson Three

The third and final lesson will be the future. This is all about where an individual desires

to accomplish in career and how to achieve it. The first part of this lesson will be chapter four

New Habits which focuses on the 21-day rule. Charles Duhigg has an interested on the way habit

forms. Duhigg no matter if he was hungry or not at 3pm very day he wanted a chocolate chip

cookie. “Habits are the subconscious option and invisible decision that surround us on a daily

basis.” (Duhigg page 48) So Duhigg wanted to change for this behavior for the better and

healthier lifestyle. His research stated that if you want to cement something as a daily habit than

it takes 21-days before it become automatic. The first set to changing your habit is to identify
 6

Duhigg habit is having a cookie at 3 pm but instead drank water to help him with the void. The

second step is to experiment with new reward what Duhigg did was reward himself by going to

talk to a co-worker for ten minutes instead. The third step is to establish the routine and how it

makes you feel. This is how he was able to break his habits in 21-days. For myself I can identify

with my Instagram and being addicted. This habit puts much of my time into not focusing on my

task at hand and wait for the last minute. Step one is identity the problem which is Instagram and

wanting to spend less time on it to focus on improving myself. Step two would be rewarding

myself when I stay inside my time limit which I pet at 15 minutes. My reward would have to be

watching an extra hour of TV or a cup of coffee. Once I do this for 21 days my habit should be

broken.

How I connect this with my classes in OGL 482: Org Leadership Pro-Seminar II “Career

Management & Work-Life Integration” by Brad Harrington and Douglas T. Hall chapter two the

section discussing Lifestyle. Lifestyle is focus on a person relationship with different actives.

Some of these actives are what kind of work one does, the hours one works per day, the number

of people that work and many other actives that makes use. Work style is important for any21-

day change and the reason is its important to understand how you want your future to look like.

This will help you improve your career in the future with many unique approaches. One would

be to see what you need help with and understand how to improve on it. Another way to see how

this will help your future is creating good habits for yourself. Waking up early everyday instead

of sleeping into until 10 am. Understanding how a leadership role works in important because a

leader should show by example not just words. That is how you get respect for work and other

will want to follow in your footsteps.

Conclusion
 7

The biggest lesson you can learn from all three is that you can see how you have grown

as a leader from your past then where you want to go as a leader in the future. Of course my

question is the author would be why focus solely on the Japanese way when studies have shown

other countries that are happier and their purpose. This book is different in many methods that

were not discuss in any organizational leadership classes. For instance, taking about having

happiness as a leader was never discuss. After reading the book a leader needs to reflect on their

happiness and how it can affect the team. Being happy can affect your future the reasoning I state

this is people want to be around happy people. When a leader is happy it affects the whole team,

its similar to a getting high. All three-lessons weather it understands your pass, present and

future will continue to help a leader grow as an individual.

 8

Reference

Brad Harrington and Douglas T. Hall (2007) Career Management & Work-Life

Integration

Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles (2019) The Ikigai Journey ‘A Practical Guide to Finding

Happiness and Purpose the Japanese Way’