Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

by Seth Godin

our culture has engaged in a Faustian bargain, in which we trade our genius and artistry for apparent stability.

the best future available to us is a future where you contribute your true self and your best work.

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

We need original thinkers, provocateurs, and people who care.

Every organization needs a linchpin, the one person who can bring it together and make a difference.

People want to be told what to do because they are afraid (petrified) of figuring it out for themselves.

Win by being more ordinary, more standard, and cheaper. Or win by being faster, more remarkable, and more human.

Do your job. Show up. Work hard. Listen to the boss. Stick it out. Be part of the system. You’ll be rewarded. That’s the scam. Strong words, but true. You’ve been scammed. You traded years of your life to be part of a giant con in which you are most definitely not the winner.

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.

“Not My Job” Three words can kill an entire organization.

When work becomes personal, your customers and coworkers are more connected and happier. And that creates even more value.

When your organization becomes more human, more remarkable, faster on its feet, and more likely to connect directly with customers, it becomes indispensable.

School expects that our best students will graduate to become trained trigonometricians. They’ll be hired by people to compute the length of the hypotenuse of a certain right triangle. What a waste.

The more value you create in your job, the fewer clock minutes of labor you actually spend creating that value.

Linchpins are able to embrace the lack of structure and find a new path, one that works.

If all you can do is the task and you’re not in a league of your own at doing the task, you’re not indispensable.

Innovative solutions to new problems don’t get old. Seek out achievements where there is no limit.

The opposite of being a cog is being able to stop the show, at will. What would it take for you to stop the show?

Things that are remarkable never meet spec, because that would make them standardized, not worth talking about.

If it wasn’t a mystery, it would be easy. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be worth much.

An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it personally.

The moment you are willing to sell your time for money is the moment you cease to be the artist you’re capable of being.

It’s okay to have someone you work for, someone who watches over you, someone who pays you. But the moment you treat that person like a boss, like someone in charge of your movements and your output, you are a cog, not an artist.

The job is not your work; what you do with your heart and soul is the work.

The temptation to sabotage the new thing is huge, precisely because the new thing might work.

People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.

Ship things that make change.

“No one washes a rental car before they return it.”

Great bosses and world-class organizations hire motivated people, set high expectations, and give their people room to become remarkable.

The diamond cutter doesn’t imagine the diamond he wants. Instead, he sees the diamond that is possible.

Abandoning your worldview in order to try on someone else’s is the first step in being able to see things as they are.

If you accept that human beings are difficult to change, and embrace (rather than curse) the uniqueness that everyone brings to the table, you’ll navigate the world with more bliss and effectiveness. And make better decisions, too.

The ability to see the world as it is begins with an understanding that perhaps it’s not your job to change what can’t be changed. Particularly if the act of working on that change harms you and your goals in the process.

Scarcity creates value, and what’s scarce is a desire to accept what is and then work to change it for the better, not deny that it exists.

compliance deprives you of your superpower; it robs you of the chance to make something better.

If all employees are nothing but a résumé, and résumés can be scanned, then why are we surprised that our computers end up finding us anonymous average people to fill our anonymous average jobs?