Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? How to drive your career and create a remarkable future

by Seth Godin

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.

People want to be told what to do because they are afraid (petrified) of figuring it out for themselves. So we take the deal. We agree to do a job in exchange for a set of instructions.

When the washing machine was introduced, the only way to power it was to unscrew your light bulb and screw in the cord of your washing machine. Hundreds of people a year died using washing machines, because the new system wasn’t particularly well organized or understood.

When people realize that they are not a cog in a machine, an easily replaceable commodity, they take the challenge and grow. They produce more than you pay them to, because you are paying them with something worth more than money. They do more than they’re paid to, on their own, because they value quality for its own sake, and they want to do good work. They need to do good work. Anything less feels intellectually dishonest,

It’s difficult to train people to be Mark Cuban or Richard Branson or Madeleine Albright. It’s easy to train people to do the slog stuff because there’s a clear process and a manual.

This is controversial, but here goes: if you’re remarkable, amazing, or just plain spectacular, you probably shouldn’t have a résumé at all.

thirty-eight factors that motivated them to do their best at work. The top ten, ranked in order: 1. Challenge and responsibility 2. Flexibility 3. A stable work environment 4. Money 5. Professional development 6. Peer recognition 7. Stimulating colleagues and bosses 8. Exciting job content 9. Organizational culture 10. Location and community

Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artist who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances.

Your lizard brain, the part that the daemon has no control over, is working overtime to get you to shut up, sit down, and do your (day) job. It will invent stories, illnesses, emergencies, and distractions in order to keep the genius bottled up.

Why is it that so many bosses shy away from useful criticism or substantive leadership? Why is it so easy to hide behind an office door or a title instead of looking people in the eye and making a difference? Same answer. The amygdala resists looking people in the eye, because doing so is threatening and exposes it to risk.

Monet gave paintings to friends (the first circle) or sold them to collectors (the second circle). These in turn were sold for very high prices, sometimes after his death. The paintings were resold to people who needed to possess them, or who wanted to resell them or to some way control them. Those paintings hang in museums, where they can be seen for free (or a small donation) by the masses (the third circle).