Intrapreneurship

Permeability

Forever careers seem to be a thing of the past. Gone are the days of people working at one company their entire career. With rotating talent in high demand, scarcity can overshadow abundance. We fall back to reporting meaningless metrics, counting the keystrokes, and paying people just enough not to leave. Even the term talent retention feels desperate.

What if, instead of trying to trick talent, we create remarkable roles in an inclusive environment that gives agency to team members eager to keep a promise?

Seth Godin argues that enrollment can last when we invite people to leave. Instead of fighting to keep people in place, what if we optimize onboarding and welcome turnover while creating conditions to make this the best job someone has ever had? When people are invited to be indispensable, they feel significant, and the team will be led by those who aren’t just collecting rent for their time.

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“When you dance on the edge of infinity, there’s always enough… because you aren’t taking opportunity from anyone else, you’re creating it.” –Seth Godin

When we create a gratifying but more porous environment, more gyrations within the team means leaders must be intentional with how they guide a business, relationships, and the environment overall. Having the best people in the right role takes extra attention, while ongoing commitment helps leaders stay in-tune with team dynamics.

When departures occur, don’t blame the individual. Life happens, and talented people will always have new opportunities emerging. Responsive exits instill appreciation long after someone has left. This supports future hires, as modern leaders evaluate conditions, remain accountable, and nurture a performance-based culture made to stay… until it’s time to go.

Brewed From Within
#40 📖 Leadership

By Ben McDougal, ago

Significance

Most of us seek peace, love, and significance.
All can be achieved by offering each to others.

Visions, missions, and titles guide teams in a shared direction, but linchpins want work that matters, and culture outshines even the most thoughtful strategy.

The race to revenue makes it easy to see why we’ve been seduced by surveillance, predictable profit margins, and forced productivity. Too often, the easy metrics borrowed from such compliance are the ones that get measured. This leads to endless meetings geared toward delivering information, avoiding blame, and asserting authority for those in charge.

The illusion is that control will lead to predictable results thanks to a maximization of resources. The problem is, humans are not a resource.

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Are your meetings led by a few people talking and most pretending to pay attention? Perhaps it’s time to get real by inviting the team to lead together.

Leaders who make a difference welcome tension from those who make a ruckus. We nurture initiative, even when results aren’t perfect. This creates enrollment, where enthusiasm is met with consistent action. Promises that are kept lead to progress, which makes intentional permeability easier to execute. When everyone on a team is proud of the impact they make, roles are better understood, contributions last longer, and appreciated energy would be missed if it were gone. This is work worth doing, and it sounds like a symphonic choir when everyone on a team is given a voice to sing their own song of significance.

Brewed From Within
#39 📖 Leadership

By Ben McDougal, ago

Linchpin

We are often told that being extraordinary makes us special. We each write our own story in life, but as Neil deGrasse Tyson suggests, perhaps the sameness of our cosmic composition is what makes each of us fundamentally special from beginning to end. This eliminates the need for permission and actually invites us all to be remarkable.

The factory, which can be thought of as any existing organization with established systems, relies on profit margins and replaceable cogs that follow instructions to keep the vast machine churning. The factory was designed to maximize productivity during the Industrial Age, but in our connected era, factories are fading. Gone are the days of clocking in on time and keeping your head down just long enough to climb a ladder built to resist change. The factory worker’s willingness to play it safe may extend a sense of security, but this choice makes you easy to replace with cheaper labor, faster tools, and advancing technology.

In 2010, Seth Godin gave those who choose to be indispensable a name: linchpins. Linchpins are artists who go beyond mediocre. Linchpins solve interesting problems and make judgement calls without a map. They welcome weird. They are scientists who stay curious. They are generous and passionate about the art of connection. Through an inclusive, positive-sum lens, linchpins lead and let others lead without seeking credit. They are fearless in that they are unafraid of things they don’t need to be afraid of. Linchpins leave resumes behind by curating a body of work that transcends time. They keep building at the speed of trust and relentlessly #GiveFirst, knowing that accelerating others generates unmatched energy.

Cogs in a machine are replaceable and therefore can be paid less. When you are a linchpin, you leverage your own superpowers and get rewarded for creative expressions that are rooted in lasting purpose. The skills of a linchpin are hard to quantify with traditional metrics, but a willingness to bring your true genius to work is an open invitation. Over time, the linchpin’s art becomes meaningful to many, which makes work less about trading time for money. This also brews a centered state of indispensability, where nobody can compete with being you.

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“Leaders don’t get a map

or a set of rules. Living life

without a map requires a

different attitude. It requires

you to be a linchpin.” –Seth Godin

If indispensability is accessible to anyone, why doesn’t everyone accept the invitation to be wonderfully weird?

One primal reason is the indoctrination of an education system that was designed to produce factory workers. From an early age, we are brainwashed to pursue perfection, to color within the lines, to follow instructions, to care what others think, and to define success by worldly consumption.

Fortunately, progressive teachers are activating modern students to go beyond the system. Instead of molding obedient factory workers who hope to be taken care of by factories built on promises of the past, we can teach people to take initiative. To honestly assess Playforce Principles. To invite doubt and to solve interesting problems while leading with reverse charisma and confident humility.

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What makes you indispensable?

Whether fueling innovative action as an intrapreneur, diversifying your career portfolio with an inventive side hustle, or building as an entrepreneur, we may only live once, and life is too short not to enjoy your work.

Brewed From Within
#38 📖 Leadership

By Ben McDougal, ago

Feedback is Data

Customer discovery paves the path to profitability.

This really is the work for entrepreneurs starting a new business. Customer discovery requires trust in your early moves, obsessive curiosity, patience, thick skin, humility, an interest in being wrong, discernment, and a willingness to adapt. No problem, right?

For many entrepreneurs, impartial feedback can be scary. Customer discovery puts ideas on the hook, and colliding new conversations may contradict past assumptions. That’s the point! Interacting with the market you seek to serve allows us to learn from no in a way that gets us to yes.

As you collaborate with those who criticize what you’re building, learn why naysayers debate your hypotheses. Be humble. Either attack the massive lift to change the product and even the target customer or make your concept more compelling to win over those who care.

The more you learn from others, the more you’ll recognize supply and be able to meet true demand. Collecting real-world data is human and intellectual capital that attracts more network and financial capital. 

Beyond the psychology of it all, customer discovery can feel like a drag because it is often a protracted process. The time commitment is real. This market exploration can be slow at first and may seem less necessary as signals of traction emerge. The potential need to rethink ideas makes feedback scary too. As always, if the entrepreneurial lifestyle was easy, career nirvana would not be so fleeting. Knowing this, we can seek honest feedback that strengthens our value proposition to eventually go further in the right direction.

When learning from the perspective of others, it’s imperative to remember that feedback is data.

Collect, organize, and examine data from feedback like a scientist. Inference is more informed with data. Decisions that are made become more in tune with reality as you continue to collect and learn with data.

As you translate decisions into action, you must also find your own way. Even with good intent, people who provide you with feedback are doing so based on their experience. The experience of others is based on their own past, and no feedback is likely to fully harmonize with your vision. There are many ways to navigate the idea maze. Gather feedback like power-ups in a video game and use diversified data to guide your quest toward product-market fit.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Adaptability

As leaders prepare others for an unpredictable future, an interest in understanding answers and an eagerness to claim confidence is essential. A vital element to both qualities is an ability to constantly adapt.

When technology makes answers easy to find, adaptability makes the human touch unmistakable and more resilient. As students traverse problem-solving activities, they learn to appreciate what goes into the answer. This leads to deeper understanding and boosts adaptability as assumptions are tested and unplanned obstacles are conquered.

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This contribution was written by Nancy Mwirotsi. She is a leader from Kenya who empowers underserved youth through technology education.

Imagine a young student, standing in front of a packed room to pitch her first startup idea. Something unexpected is bound to happen. When it does, real-time adaptability keeps her calm and her voice grows stronger as the crowd responds to her ability to execute despite the disturbance. Outside the classroom, similar manifestations occur when leaders reward team members who adapt to stay ahead of innovation curves and we all know how unpredictable entrepreneurship is, which makes adaptability an ongoing requirement for founders building without a map.

Adaptability strengthens confidence as we then let students lead. When young people are trusted to take the stage, make decisions, or shape solutions, they begin to own their success and claim a confidence that can’t be taught.

As students claim confidence, adults stop underestimating their capacity. This fosters a two-way exchange for students that see themselves in leaders who motivate them to explore, make mistakes, and yet, always remain valued. A shared interest in how things work can then amplify potential as technology is introduced to create awareness, multiply real skills, and actuate ideas. This experience encourages students to go beyond just using technology to find the easy answer. It elevates those who understand how technology works, which continues to shape courageous innovators that avoid the temptation to be mediocre.

Within the unknowns of constant change, adaptability keeps us curious. Enduring curiosity can then activate initiative supported by real skills and expanded through lifelong learning. Leaders who create environments that help others build proficiency in the dynamic elements of playforce principles, prepare us all for the future of work.

By Ben McDougal, ago