Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

by Seth Godin

The only way to get what you’re worth is to stand out, to exert emotional labor, to be seen as indispensable, and to produce interactions that organizations and people care deeply about.

Nobody Cares How Hard You Worked It’s not an effort contest, it’s an art contest. As customers, we care about ourselves, about how we feel, about whether a product or service or play or interaction changed us for the better. Where it’s made or how it’s made or how difficult it was to make is sort of irrelevant. That’s why emotional labor is so much more valuable than physical labor. Emotional labor changes the recipient, and we care about that.

The easier it is to quantify, the less it’s worth.

Optimism is for artists, change agents, linchpins, and winners. Whining and fear, on the other hand, are largely self-fulfilling prophecies in organizations under stress.

It turns out that the three biological factors that drive job performance and innovation are social intelligence, fear response, and perception.