The Song of Significance: A New Manifesto for Teams

by Seth Godin

Real value is no longer created by traditional measures of productivity. It’s created by personal interactions, innovation, creative solutions, resilience, and the power of speed.

35. Kinko and Sleepy There’s an alternative to the top-down regime of compliance. When Paul Orfalea was building Kinko’s (which he sold to FedEx for more than two billion dollars), he said that his best technique for growing the business was simple: he would walk into one of their stores and ask someone there to tell him about an innovation they’d implemented that was working (and then he’d tell all the other stores about it). If you didn’t have an innovation to share, Paul let you know you needed to do better. When Harry Acker was building Sleepy’s (which his son sold to Mattress Firm for nearly a billion dollars), his best technique for growing the business was to call every store every day and ask, “What’s wrong?” and then fix the problem. The store manager who told me this story made it clear that if you didn’t have a problem to share, you were in trouble. Two sides of the same coin. It’s possible your team knows what’s up.

The Significance Commitments We’re here to make change happen We are acting with intention Dignity is worth investing in Tension is not the same as stress Mistakes are the way forward Take responsibility, give credit Criticize the work, not the worker Turnover is okay Mutual respect is expected Do the reading Get to vs. have to Standards instead of obedience Show your work Make it better Celebrate real skills

We make decisions. We find problems and solve them. We ship the work and make change happen. None of this is preordained, none of it is in the manual, and none of it has been done before. That’s precisely why it’s valuable.

If you’re not doing things that don’t work, you’re not trying hard enough.

Centralized decision-making is usually slow and ineffective when it’s time to offer action and solutions to local, decentralized customer needs, particularly in fast-moving environments. If employees are unable to act without direction, they won’t act without direction.

We know how to measure typing speed. We have a lot more trouble measuring passion or commitment.

90. Real Skills Are a Way Forward If an employee at your organization took home a brand-new laptop every day, you’d have them arrested or at least fired. If your bookkeeper were embezzling money every month, you’d do the same thing. But when an employee demoralizes the entire team by undermining a project, or when a team member checks out and doesn’t pull his weight, or when a bully causes future stars to quit the organization—too often we shrug and point out that this person has tenure, or key vocational skills, or really isn’t so bad. But they’re stealing from us. The “us” is the key word. Not from the boss, not from the company. From us, together. Once we agree to get real, then the work changes. It begins by celebrating, amplifying, and rewarding real skills as a standard for all.

Imagine a team member with all the traditional vocational skills: productive, skilled, experienced. A resume that can prove it. That’s a fine baseline. Now add to it. Perceptive, charismatic, driven, focused, goal-setting, inspiring, and motivated. Generous, empathic, and consistent. A deep listener, with patience. What happens to your organization when someone like that joins your team?

Survivor’s relief rarely leads to powerful innovation and resilience. It’s simply a shortcut that only works when the world stays the same. “The beatings will continue until morale improves” has never been a useful slogan.

Our relationships are a result of our ability to listen. And when we listen, we earn trust and create connection.

if you make the slices thin enough, job satisfaction, insight, innovation, and yes, even customer satisfaction decrease.

Significance is where high trust meets high stakes. Significant work leads to impact and change.

By this point in our rant, many managers are saying, “We’re doing pretty well at building a significant organization, under the circumstances.” But you’re not under the circumstances. You are the circumstances.

122. Toward a Zoom Agreement If you promise not to check your email while we’re talking, we promise to not waste your time. If you agree to look me in the eye and try to absorb the gist of what I’m saying, I agree to be crisp, cogent, and on point. If you are clear about which meetings are a waste of time for you to attend, we can be sure to have them without you. If you can egg me on and bring enthusiasm to the interaction, I can lean into the work and reflect back even more energy than you’re contributing. The purpose of a meeting is not to fill the allocated slot on the Google Calendar invite. The purpose is to communicate an idea and the emotions that go with it, and to find out what’s missing via engaged conversation. If we can’t do that, let’s not meet. Multitasking (especially during meetings) isn’t productive, respectful, or healthy. Being present in real time is a waste unless we interact. Reaffirming your status and control isn’t worth an hour of my day.

Al Pittampalli wrote a bestseller called Read This before Our Next Meeting.

You don’t need more time. You simply need to decide.

We don’t apologize for change because the change is the point.

127. Management Is Not the Same as Leadership Management is the hard work of getting people who work for you to do what they did yesterday, but faster and cheaper. It requires authority—a hierarchy that gives the manager the power to insist. Leadership is voluntary. Voluntary to perform and voluntary to follow. It’s the work of imagining something that hasn’t happened before and inviting people to come along for the journey. Without voluntary enrollment, it’s not leadership, it’s only management.

128. Enrollment Is More Powerful Than Coercion The most skilled and committed people are participating voluntarily. They have options. As a result, managing for compliance via coercion is never as effective as coordinating the work of passionate, enrolled individuals. Creating an intentional culture that focuses on finding, empowering, and amplifying enrolled individuals is the work of a skilled leader.

Work gets done because it’s important and desired, not because a surveillance system insisted.

The mythology of the lone genius undermines our ability to show up and contribute enough to make things better.

“Here, I made this, please make it better.”

Start with a problem, and make it as simple as possible. Then clarify the goal. This work you’re doing, the change you seek to make—who is it for and what is it for? Most recalcitrant problems are caused by a lack of clarity about what change is being sought. Triage is the work of figuring out what to work on next. Sort the incoming and work on the important, difficult, influential parts first. As the essential gets done, the rest follows naturally. And finally, decide. Decide to move on. Decide to focus on the critical parts. Decide to ship the work. It ships when you’re out of time or out of money. You don’t need more time, and you don’t need more money. You simply need to decide.

The only honest statement we can make about the future is that we’re not certain. If we can use this as a tool, we’re more likely to create the change we seek.

Once we name it, we know precisely how to handle it.

it’s easier to coach someone for the Olympics than it is to train someone to be a nurse. If we can measure performance with a stopwatch, there’s not a lot of room for discussion.