Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

by Seth Godin

You were trained to become a cog.

Outsourcing and automation and the new marketing punish anyone who is merely good, merely obedient, and merely reliable.

Consumers are not loyal to cheap commodities. They crave the unique, the remarkable, and the human.

It’s easy to buy a cookbook (filled with instructions to follow) but really hard to find a chef book.

No, the competitive advantage the marketplace demands is someone more human, connected, and mature. Someone with passion and energy, capable of seeing things as they are and negotiating multiple priorities as she makes useful decisions without angst. Flexible in the face of change, resilient in the face of confusion.

That’s because we teach people to stick within a tiny range. We don’t want the lows to be too low, so we limit the highs as well.

Leading is a skill, not a gift. You’re not born with it, you learn how. And schools can teach leadership as easily as they figured out how to teach compliance.

Wikipedia and the shared knowledge of the Internet make domain knowledge on its own worth significantly less than it used to be.

Krulak’s law is simple: The closer you get to the front, the more power you have over the brand.

No one honestly asked, “Where do you put the tired?” but it’s a fine question. Where did it go? The fatigue was there, but some people understood that putting it aside was the single most important factor in succeeding.

You are not your résumé. You are your work.

Appoint one person (a linchpin) to run it. Not to co-run it or to lead a task force or to be on the committee. One person, a human being, runs it. Her name on it. Her decisions.

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. The resistance is afraid. Afraid of what will happen to you (and to it) if the ideas get out, if your gifts are received, if the magic happens.

So we churn out very good second violinists and very competent timpani players. We have a surplus of them, in fact, and that’s why it’s a dicey way to make a living, with only a few talented (and lucky) musicians making good money or holding steady jobs. Often guest conductors don’t even know the names of the people who make up the bulk of the orchestra.

Fear of living without a map is the main reason people are so insistent that we tell them what to do.

nice isn’t the point. Effort gets you to this nice spot; effort and planning are tools to beat the resistance before it beats you.

Don’t listen to the cynics. They’re cynics for a reason.

themselves. And as every successful person will tell you, the ideas aren’t the hard part. It’s shipping that’s difficult.