Brewed From Within

Triangulation

Cross-checking helps to determine distance, maneuver around obstacles, and identify rogue objects. Alongside the math, a triangulated team increases dependability.

Diversity of thought, talent, and real skills add synergy to accelerate progress and increase a team’s confidence when a problem is attacked from multiple angles. This nimbleness is leveraged as co-founders create a culture that makes each person feel significant.

Extra Shot

Building alone is easy.

Team up to make it fun.

On the prowl for co-founders? Consider triangulating a hipster (customer experience), hacker (technology), and hustler (business development). When these complimenting archetypes also blend hints of founder-market-fit, a timely curation gives any team exponential capacity.

To find missing links, connectors become connected. So show up and be quick to make interesting introductions. When the first degree of contact lacks obvious opportunity, remember it’s the second and third degree of connectivity that delivers precision. Over time, generosity in an entrepreneurial ecosystem expands and tightens engaged networks. Instead of forcefully recruiting co-founders, the open-ended activity of a serendipitist will have us colliding with friends we simply haven’t met yet.As teamwork begins, bonds that have formed naturally will support lasting collaboration with people you respect. That said, established trust is not an excuse to get complacent.

To nurture the power of triangulation be honest and transparent from start to finish. Every story ends, so don’t avoid difficult discussions. When structuring a business, agree on the terms, leave space for change over time, and maintain an operating agreement to ensure clarity with less tension. A commitment to abundant communication helps each team member remain attentive to details.

Professionals will take it further—inviting responsibility, then keeping the promise. For any idea maze, we take the blame, willingly give credit, and celebrate in style.

Lone wolves move fast but the expanded capacity of a team helps an odyssey go far. When a fun, long-term cast plays long-term games together, the chemical reaction can be an affinity toward work that feels like play. Cheers!

By Ben McDougal, ago

Echoes

The echo of an idea is always fading. How can we extend ideation long enough to activate early moves, blow through barriers, and maintain enrollment?

This is clearly a loaded question. Much goes into enabling ideas into reality, and the rate of an idea’s degradation depends on a kabillion factors. Still, let’s sip on the artistry of pushing without being pushy.

Start easy. Personally think through the various angles that might make an idea interesting. This private contemplation requires thought and time. Time is precious, and yet we waste it. The ease of your own thoughts will soon meet the hardships that await those who don’t let ideas breathe. This makes stealth mode precarious and early moves confusing, which makes ongoing customer discovery more important.

Extra Shot

Will you spend time or money?

When we share a new idea with someone else, the situation becomes complicated and complex. That is the moment we put our idea on a hook. It’s also when leaders push past fear and invite doubt. Connecting dots within such complexity is difficult, takes time, and is never straightforward. When the sacrifice is made, research builds confidence and adds clarity to how opportunities are articulated.

As thought through in the Isochronal riff, this makes the efficiency of blunt repetition tempting but ineffective. More of the same without execution—whether by co-founders, mentors, early adopters, or investors—only chases interest.

To avoid the fade, find diverse ways to motivate movement. For a fun visualization, imagine a glass pond. If one pebble drops in, the lonely ripple is loud and obvious but also fades fast. It makes a splash and is soon forgotten. Now, imagine many pebbles thrown in different ways, all around the pond, from every angle, and over time. The pond is now alive! The echo of each pebble is magnified, and the abundance of rippled collisions leaves a more lasting song.

Like a pond of pebbles singing together, leaders can nudge progress long enough to activate action. Conversation in different environments, inquisitive questioning, active listening, creative analogies, talking about anything else, releasing reluctance, and letting others lead are all ways you can keep building without getting too frantic. Intentional diversity allows each different echo of one idea to feel distinct and yet all bounce on a shared wavelength.

Brewed From Within
📖 Entrepreneurship

By Ben McDougal, ago

Playforce Principles

People within a startup community and organizations throughout an entrepreneurial ecosystem often discuss the “future of work” together. As leaders transition today’s workforce into tomorrow’s playforce, the CIRKA equation helps us talk less and do more.

Curiosity is what drives us to appreciate what goes into the answers. It keeps us asking how and why. Curiosity has always driven ingenuity, but as knowledge and solutions become so easy to find, it will be the curious who avoid mediocrity by exploring the edges.

Initiative is a signal that shows you care. It’s showing up, raising our hand, keeping a promise, and sticking with it. The earlier initiative is shown, the faster trust builds. This allows initiative to stack, which increases impact over time.

Real Skills help us all connect, communicate, and collaborate. First curated by Seth Godin, this evolving encyclopedia is an expansive list of modern credentials that go beyond our natural talents. Real skills shine through self control, productivity, wisdom, perception, and influence.

Knowledge is foundational, specific proficiency required to do the work. For example, DJs need to know what knobs to turn, while doctors must understand human anatomy. Vocational knowledge may require formal education, but autodidacticism (being self-taught) is also an assessable path to transform anyone’s personal interests into know-how.

Adaptability is knowing how to learn. It keeps us nimble, even when systems try to force rigidity. When change is constant, adaptability is what helps leaders remain versatile and relevant while also avoiding the pull toward mediocre.

EXTRA SHOT

Life is too short not to enjoy our time.

Unquantifiable depth in each of these variables power the simplicity of the CIRKA equation. Energy guided by these playforce principles move us beyond loops that limit progress and ignite action on the timeline of now.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Real Skills

Talent is natural.
Skills are learned.

Instead of abstracting, even nerfing the value of what makes us indispensable by using terms like soft skills or power skills, “real skills” invite the new reality. Knowledge, action, and persistence are still required, but real skills help us connect, communicate, and collaborate as we pursue peculiar work fueled by significance in our connected era.

As Seth Godin writes about, real skills help students, founders, intrapreneurs, and people-centric organizations activate humans working toward shared understandings. This updated term removes the optional vibes out of subtle superpowers that help us go beyond the status quo. To close his 2023 manifesto for teams, The Song of Significance, Godin shares this working encyclopedia of categorized real skills.

SELF-CONTROL

Adaptability to changing requirements
Agility in the face of unexpected obstacles
Alacrity and the ability to start and stop quickly
Authenticity and consistent behavior
Bouncing back from failure
Coach-ability and the desire to coach others
Collaborative mindset
Compassion for those in need
Competitiveness
Conscientiousness in keeping promises
Customer service passion
Eagerness to learn from criticism
Emotional intelligence
Endurance for the long haul
Enthusiasm for the work
Ethics even when not under scrutiny
Etiquette
Flexibility
Friendliness
Honesty
Living in balance
Managing difficult conversations
Motivated to take on new challenges
Passionate
Posture for forward motion
Purpose
Quick-wittedness
Resilience
Risk-taking
Self-awareness
Self-confidence
Sense of humor
Strategic thinking taking priority over short-term gamesmanship
Stress management
Tolerance of change & uncertainty

PRODUCTIVITY

Attention to detail
Crisis management skills
Decision-making with effectiveness
Delegation for productivity
Diligence and attention to detail
Entrepreneurial thinking and guts
Facilitation of discussion
Goal-setting skills
Innovative problem-solving techniques
Lateral thinking
Lean techniques
Listening skills
Managing up
Meeting hygiene
Planning for projects
Problem-solving
Research skills
Technology savvy
Time management
Troubleshooting

WISDOM

Artistic sense and good taste
Conflict resolution instincts
Creativity in the face of challenges
Critical thinking instead of mere compliance
Dealing with difficult people
Diplomacy in difficult situations
Empathy for customers, co-workers, and vendors
Intercultural competence
Mentoring
Social skills
Supervising with confidence

PERCEPTION

Design thinking
Fashion instinct
Judging people and situations
Mapmaking
Strategic thinking

INFLUENCE

Ability to deliver clear, useful criticism
Assertiveness on behalf of ideas that matter
Body language (reading and delivering)
Charisma and skills to influence others
Clarity in language and vision
Dispute-resolution skills
Giving feedback without ego
Influence
Inspiring to others
Interpersonal skills
Leadership
Negotiation skills
Networking
Persuasive
Presentation skills
Public speaking
Reframing
Selling skills
Storytelling
Talent management
Team building
Writing for impact

What a provoking collection of conversation starters! This encyclopedia is a guiding light for when we are being honest with our own abilities, filling gaps on the team, considering session topics for an event, or working to reform educational curriculum. Special thanks to Seth Godin for granting permission to share these real skills as they were written. Real skills are regularly updated to meet emerging demands as well.

Let’s add inclusivity, curiosity, showing up, content creation, systems thinking, accelerating others through the art of connection, identifying founder-market fit, thinking big, mindfulness, following up, pure wonder, and having fun.

What will you brew into the mix?

By Ben McDougal, ago

Uncharted

Building without a map is a bold art form.
It’s challenging, dangerous, and rewarding.

It’s challenging because these expeditions call for initiative to show up but also an unknown amount of resources to stay persistent. All seven capitals (intellectual, human, financial, institutional, physical, network, cultural) can each be hard to find, but celebrating what we have attracts more of what we want. As different types of capital connect, staying balanced with your personal bandwidth requires attention. But when we care and remain realistic, we give ourselves the permission to keep building.

Uncharted crusades can also be dangerous. This quest will not go as anticipated and the opportunity cost is high, with endless ways to spend our time. Even when odds are against us, a healthy obsession paired with a willingness to succeed or learn cultivates a potent mix of curiosity, optimism, and righteous recklessness. Those willing to try have a huge advantage over everyone else willing to wait.

Extra Shot

What might you regret not doing?

When exploring the unknown for the first time, be clever, collaborative, and patient. Also, remember that winners quit all the time. They simply quit the right things at the right time. So, get passionate without falling in love with impossible and don’t be afraid to ask for help. There’s much to learn from heroes, mentors, and those you seek to serve. Success and failure leave clues, so speed up progress and avoid pitfalls by leaning into tribes you trust.

When you’ve built without a map, the highs and lows strengthen decision-making. Practice also makes the unknown less intimidating. Experienced wayfinders gather feedback faster, measure the right metrics, and appreciate the hardships without allowing pride from the past to mislead them.

We know how rewarding it can be to build an event, business, or relationship you’re proud of.

To dance toward the unknown, be thoughtful with early moves but don’t get paralyzed by perfection. Sustain growth with sequenced storytelling. Be urgent but not frantic by activating trust channels that stimulate accountability. Welcome feedback like a scientist, listen with concentration, and savor metrics beyond the money.

By Ben McDougal, ago