Linchpin Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Introduction

  THE NEW WORLD OF WORK - We Are Surrounded by Bureaucrats, Note Takers, ...

  THINKING ABOUT YOUR CHOICE

  INDOCTRINATION: HOW WE GOT HERE - Mediocre Obedience

  BECOMING THE LINCHPIN

  IS IT POSSIBLE TO DO HARD WORK IN A CUBICLE?

  THE RESISTANCE

  THE POWERFUL CULTURE OF GIFTS

  THERE IS NO MAP

  MAKING THE CHOICE

  THE CULTURE OF CONNECTION

  THE SEVEN ABILITIES OF THE LINCHPIN

  WHEN IT DOESN’T WORK

  SUMMARY - The System Is Broken

  Acknowledgements

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  BESTSELLING BOOKS BY SETH GODIN

  Tribes

  Meatball Sundae

  The Dip

  Small Is the New Big

  All Marketers Are Liars

  Free Prize Inside!

  Purple Cow

  The Big Red Fez

  Survival Is Not Enough

  Unleashing the Ideavirus

  Permission Marketing

  AND CHECK OUT THESE FREE E-BOOKS (GOOGLE ’EM):

  Knock Knock

  Who’s There

  Everyone’s an Expert

  The Bootstrapper’s Bible

  There are more than three thousand free articles by Seth on his blog. Visit www.SethGodin.com for more information . . . click on Seth’s head to read them.

  PORTFOLIO

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in 2010 by Portfolio, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © Do You Zoom, Inc., 2010 All rights reserved

  Chart on page 62 by the author. Illustration on page 232 by Hugh MacLeod. All other illustrations by Jessica Hagy.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Godin, Seth.

  Linchpin : are you indispensable? / Seth Godin ; illustrations by Jessica Hagy and Hugh MacLeod. p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-19631-1

  1. Employee motivation. 2. Employees—Attitudes. 3. Creative thinking.

  4. Value added. 5. Work—Psychological aspects. I. Title.

  HF5549.5.M63.G.1—dc22 2009036957

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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  for Helene

  INTRODUCTION

  You Are a Genius

  If a genius is someone with exceptional abilities and the insight to find the not so obvious solution to a problem, you don’t need to win a Nobel Prize to be one. A genius looks at something that others are stuck on and gets the world unstuck.

  So the question is: Have you ever done that?

  Have you ever found a shortcut that others couldn’t find?

  Solved a problem that confounded your family?

  Seen a way to make something work that wasn’t working before?

  Made a personal connection with someone who was out of reach to everyone else?

  Even once?

  No one is a genius all the time. Einstein had trouble finding his house when he walked home from work every day. But all of us are geniuses sometimes.

  The tragedy is that society (your school, your boss, your government, your family) keeps drumming the genius part out. The problem is that our culture has engaged in a Faustian bargain, in which we trade our genius and artistry for apparent stability.

  Reality

  A guy is riding in the first-class cabin of a train in Spain and to his delight, he notices that he’s sitting next to Pablo Picasso. Gathering up his courage, he turns to the master and says, “Señor Picasso, you are a great artist, but why is all your art, all modern art, so screwed up? Why don’t you paint reality instead of these distortions?”

  Picasso hesitates for a moment and asks, “So what do you think reality looks like?”

  The man grabs his wallet and pulls out a picture of his wife. “Here, like this. It’s my wife.”

  Picasso takes the photograph, looks at it, and grins. “Really? She’s very small. And flat, too.”

  This book is about love and art and change and fear. It’s about overcoming a multigenerational conspiracy designed to sap your creativity and restlessness. It’s about leading and making a difference and it’s about succeeding. I couldn’t have written this book ten years ago, because ten years ago, our economy wanted you to fit in, it paid you well to fit in, and it took care of you if you fit in. Now, like it or not, the world wants something different from you. We need to think hard about what reality looks like now.

  What if you could learn a different way of seeing, a different way of giving, a different way of making a living? And what if you could do that without leaving your job?

  This is not a book for the wild-haired crazies your company keeps in a corner. It’s a book for you, your boss, and your employees, because the best future available to us is a future where you contribute your true self and your best work. Are you up for that?

  One promise: the world to come (and this book) is neither small nor flat.

  This Time It’s Personal

  This is a personal manifesto, a plea from me to you. Right now, I’m not focused on the external, on the tactics organizations use to make great products or spread important ideas. This book is different. It’s about a choice and it’s about your life. This choice doesn’t require you to quit your job, though it challenges you to rethink how you do your job.

  The system we grew up with is a mess. It’s falling apart at the seams and a lot of people I care about are in pain because the things we thought would work don’t. Every day I meet people who have so much to give but have been bullied enough or frightened enough to hold it back. They have become victims, pawns in a senseless system that uses them up and undervalues them.

  It’s time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map.

  Sto
p settling for what’s good enough and start creating art that matters. Stop asking what’s in it for you and start giving gifts that change people. Then, and only then, will you have achieved your potential.

  For hundreds of years, the population has been seduced, scammed, and brainwashed into fitting in, following instructions, and exchanging a day’s work for a day’s pay. That era has come to an end and just in time.

  You have brilliance in you, your contribution is valuable, and the art you create is precious. Only you can do it, and you must. I’m hoping you’ll stand up and choose to make a difference.

  Making the Choice

  My goal is to persuade you that there is an opportunity available to you, a chance to significantly change your life for the better. Not by doing something that’s easy or that you’ve been trained to do, but by understanding how the rules of our world have fundamentally changed and by taking advantage of this moment to become someone the world believes is indispensable.

  It starts by making a simple choice.

  I know that you can do this and I hope you will. And once you do, if you do, I’m hoping you’ll share the idea with someone you care about.

  The Take-Care-of-You Bargain

  Here’s the deal our parents signed us up for:

  Our world is filled with factories. Factories that make widgets and insurance and Web sites, factories that make movies and take care of sick people and answer the telephone. These factories need workers.

  If you learn how to be one of these workers, if you pay attention in school, follow instructions, show up on time, and try hard, we will take care of you. You won’t have to be brilliant or creative or take big risks.

  We will pay you a lot of money, give you health insurance, and offer you job security. We will cherish you, or at the very least, take care of you.

  It’s a pretty seductive bargain.

  So seductive that for a century, we embraced it. We set up our schools and our systems and our government to support the bargain.

  It worked. The Fortune 500 took care of us. The teachers’ union took care of us. The post office and the local retailer took care of us. We followed the instructions, we washed the bottles, we showed up on time, and in return, we got what we needed. It was the American Dream. For a long time, it worked.

  But in the face of competition and technology, the bargain has fallen apart.

  Job growth is flat at best.

  Wages in many industries are in a negative cycle.

  The middle class is under siege like never before, and the future appears dismal. People are no longer being taken care of—pensions are gone; 401(k)s have been sliced in half; and it’s hard to see where to go from here. You might be the hardworking secretary, the one with institutional knowledge, the person who has given so much and deserves security and respect. And while you might deserve these things, your tenure is no guarantee that you’re going to get them.

  Suddenly, quite suddenly in the scheme of things, it seems like the obedient worker bought into a sucker’s deal. The educated, hardworking masses are still doing what they’re told, but they’re no longer getting what they deserve.

  This situation presents a wonderful opportunity.

  Yes, it’s an opportunity. An opportunity to actually enjoy what you do, to make a difference to your colleagues and your customers, and to unlock the genius you’ve been hiding all these years.

  It’s futile to work hard at restoring the take-care-of-you bargain. The bargain is gone, and it’s not worth whining about and it’s not effective to complain. There’s a new bargain now, one that leverages talent and creativity and art more than it rewards obedience.

  Where Does Success Come From?

  Every day, bosses, customers, and investors make hard choices about whom to support and whom to eliminate, downsize, or avoid.

  For the last twenty years, I’ve been studying eighteen varieties of that simple question. Some variations:

  Why do some tactics work better than others? Why are some employees so much more productive than others? Why do some organizations wilt and fade in the face of a tumultuous market while others thrive? How come some ideas spread far and wide and others are ignored?

  This book is my answer to that question.

  Where Does Average Come From?

  It comes from two places:

  1. You have been brainwashed by school and by the system into believing that your job is to do your job and follow instructions. It’s not, not anymore.

  2. Everyone has a little voice inside of their head that’s angry and afraid. That voice is the resistance—your lizard brain—and it wants you to be average (and safe).

  If you’re not doing as well as you hoped, perhaps it’s because the rules of the game were changed, and no one told you.

  The rules were written just over two hundred years ago; they worked for a long time, but no longer. It might take you more than a few minutes to learn the new rules, but it’s worth it.

  Developing Indispensability

  You weren’t born to be a cog in the giant industrial machine. You were trained to become a cog.

  There’s an alternative available to you. Becoming a linchpin is a stepwise process, a path in which you develop the attributes that make you indispensable. You can train yourself to matter. The first step is the most difficult, the step where you acknowledge that this is a skill, and like all skills, you can (and will) get better at it. Every day, if you focus on the gifts, art, and connections that characterize the linchpin, you’ll become a little more indispensable.

  Do not internalize the industrial model. You are not one of the myriad of interchangeable pieces, but a unique human being, and if you’ve got something to say, say it, and think well of yourself while you’re learning to say it better.

  —David Mamet

  THE NEW WORLD OF WORK

  We Are Surrounded by Bureaucrats, Note Takers, Literalists, Manual Readers, TGIF Laborers, Map Followers, and Fearful Employees

  The problem is that the bureaucrats, note takers, literalists, manual readers, TGIF laborers, map followers, and fearful employees are in pain. They’re in pain because they’re overlooked, underpaid, laid off, and stressed out.

  The first chapter of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations makes it clear that the way for businesses to win is to break the production of goods into tiny tasks, tasks that can be undertaken by low-paid people following simple instructions. Smith writes about how incredibly efficient a pin-making factory is compared to a few pin artisans making pins by hand. Why hire a supertalented pin maker when ten barely trained pin-making factory workers using a machine and working together can produce a thousand times more pins, more quickly, than one talented person working alone can?

  For nearly three hundred years, that was the way work worked. What factory owners want is compliant, low-paid, replaceable cogs to run their efficient machines. Factories created productivity, and productivity produced profits. It was fun while it lasted (for the factory owners).

  Our society is struggling because during times of change, the very last people you need on your team are well-paid bureaucrats, note takers, literalists, manual readers, TGIF laborers, map followers, and fearful employees. The compliant masses don’t help so much when you don’t know what to do next.

  What we want, what we need, what we must have are indispensable human beings. We need original thinkers, provocateurs, and people who care. We need marketers who can lead, salespeople able to risk making a human connection, passionate change makers willing to be shunned if it is necessary for them to make a point. Every organization needs a linchpin, the one person who can bring it together and make a difference. Some organizations haven’t realized this yet, or haven’t articulated it, but we need artists.

  Artists are people with a genius for finding a new answer, a new connection, or a new way of getting things done.

  That would be you.

  Where Were You When the World Changed?

  I grew up in a w
orld where people did what they were told, followed instructions, found a job, made a living, and that was that.

  Now we live in a world where all the joy and profit have been squeezed out of following the rules. Outsourcing and automation and the new marketing punish anyone who is merely good, merely obedient, and merely reliable. It doesn’t matter if you’re a wedding photographer or an insurance broker; there’s no longer a clear path to satisfaction in working for the man.

  The factory—that system where organized labor meets patient capital, productivity-improving devices, and leverage—has fallen apart. Ohio and Michigan have lost their “real” factories, just as the factories of the service industries have crumbled as well. Worse still, the type of low-risk, high-stability jobs that three-quarters of us crave have turned into dead-end traps of dissatisfaction and unfair risk.

  The essence of the problem: The working middle class is suffering. Wages are stagnant; job security is, for many people, a fading memory; and stress is skyrocketing. Nowhere to run, and apparently, nowhere to hide.

  The cause of the suffering is the desire of organizations to turn employees into replaceable cogs in a vast machine. The easier people are to replace, the less they need to be paid. And so far, workers have been complicit in this commoditization.

  This is your opportunity. The indispensable employee brings humanity and connection and art to her organization. She is the key player, the one who’s difficult to live without, the person you can build something around.

  You reject whining about the economy and force yourself to acknowledge that the factory job is dead. Instead, you recognize the opportunity of becoming indispensable, highly sought after, and unique. If a Purple Cow is a product that’s worth talking about, the indispensable employee—I call her a linchpin—is a person who’s worth finding and keeping.