Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

by Seth Godin

Have you ever found a shortcut that others couldn’t find? Solved a problem that confounded your family?

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

It’s about overcoming a multigenerational conspiracy designed to sap your creativity and restlessness.

that matters. Stop asking what’s in it for you and start giving gifts that change people. Then, and only then, will you have achieved your potential.

Not by doing something that’s easy or that you’ve been trained to do, but by understanding how the rules of our world have fundamentally changed and by taking advantage of this moment to become someone the world believes is indispensable.

what you do, to make a difference to your colleagues and your customers, and to unlock the genius you’ve been hiding all these years. It’s futile to work hard at restoring the take-care-of-you bargain. The bargain is gone, and it’s not worth whining about and it’s not effective to complain. There’s a new bargain now, one that leverages talent and creativity and art more than it rewards obedience.

Becoming a linchpin is a stepwise process, a path in which you develop the attributes that make you indispensable. You can train yourself to matter. The first step is the most difficult, the step where you acknowledge that this is a skill, and like all skills, you can (and will) get better at it. Every day, if you focus on the gifts, art, and connections that characterize the linchpin, you’ll become a little more indispensable.

Do not internalize the industrial model. You are not one of the myriad of interchangeable pieces, but a unique human being, and if you’ve got something to say, say it, and think well of yourself while you’re learning to say it better.

The first chapter of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations makes it clear that the way for businesses to win is to break the production of goods into tiny tasks, tasks that can be undertaken by low-paid people following simple instructions. Smith writes about how incredibly efficient a pin-making factory is compared to a few pin artisans making pins by hand.

Artists are people with a genius for finding a new answer, a new connection, or a new way of getting things done. That would be you.

The cause of the suffering is the desire of organizations to turn employees into replaceable cogs in a vast machine. The easier people are to replace, the less they need to be paid. And so far, workers have been complicit in this commoditization.

This is your opportunity. The indispensable employee brings humanity and connection and art to her organization. She is the key player, the one who’s difficult to live without, the person you can build something around.

Instead, you recognize the opportunity of becoming indispensable, highly sought after, and unique. If a Purple Cow is a product that’s worth talking about, the indispensable employee—I call her a linchpin—is a person who’s worth finding and keeping.

PERL (Percentage of Easily Replaced Laborers) In the factory era, the goal was to have the highest PERL. Think about it. If you can easily replace most of your workers, you can pay them less. The less you pay them, the more money you make.

The business model should be such that the employees needed possess the lowest possible level of skill necessary to fulfill the functions for which each is intended.

can’t make this stuff up. His point was that you want a cookie-cutter business that you can scale fast, without regard for finding, nurturing, and retaining linchpin talent. He goes on to coin the “Rule of Ordinary People.”

Those are the only two choices. Win by being more ordinary, more standard, and cheaper. Or win by being faster, more remarkable, and more human.

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.

If you’ve been playing that game, it’s no wonder you’re frustrated. That game is over. There are no longer any great jobs where someone else tells you precisely what to do.

In other words, first you have interchangeable parts, then you have interchangeable workers.

Having a factory job is not a natural state. It wasn’t at the heart of being a human until recently. We’ve been culturally brainwashed to believe that accepting the hierarchy and lack of responsibility that come with a factory job is the one way, the only way, and the best way.

It’s factory work because it’s planned, controlled, and measured. It’s factory work because you can optimize for productivity. These workers know what they’re going to do all day—and it’s still morning.

Our world no longer fairly compensates people who are cogs in a giant machine.

Leaders don’t get a map or a set of rules. Living life without a map requires a different attitude. It requires you to be a linchpin.

Linchpins are the essential building blocks of tomorrow’s high-value organizations. They don’t bring capital or expensive machinery, nor do they blindly follow instructions and merely contribute labor. Linchpins are indispensable, the driving force of our future.

Abstract macroeconomic theories are irrelevant to the people making a million tiny microeconomic decisions every day in a hypercompetitive world. And those decisions repeatedly favor fast and cheap over slow and expensive.

They went on to argue that what we do all day, the way money is made, drives our schooling, our politics, and our community. For our entire lives, the push has been to produce, to conform, and to consume.

The linchpins leverage something internal, not external, to create a position of power and value.

There are two teams, management and labor. Management owns the machines, labor follows the rules.

Some jobs are likely to remain poorly paid, low in respect, and high in turnover. These are jobs where attendance (showing up) is all that really matters. Other jobs, the really good jobs, are going to be filled with indispensable people, people who make a difference by doing work that’s really hard to find from anyone else.

This change is a fundamental shift in power and control. When you can master the communication, conceptual, and connectivity elements of the new work, then you have more power than management does. And if management attracts, motivates, and retains great talent, then it has more leverage than the competition.

These individuals have all the technical, manufacturing, and distribution support they need, so they are both capitalists and workers. The organizations they work for have a very low PERL. In fact, for solely owned organizations, there aren’t any easily replaced laborers.

“The web has made kicking ass easier to achieve, and mediocrity harder to sustain. Mediocrity now howls in protest.”

Of course, mediocrity isn’t going to go away. Yesterday’s remarkable is today’s really good and tomorrow’s mediocre. Mediocre is merely a failed attempt to be really good.

There are always more people at the bottom of the stairs, doing hard work that’s easy to learn. As you travel up the hierarchy, the work gets easier, the pay gets better, and the number of people available to do the work gets smaller.

Lots of people can lift. That’s not paying off anymore. A few people can sell. Almost no one puts in the work to create or invent. Up to you.

Now, the only way to grow is to stand out, to create something worth talking about, to treat people with respect and to have them spread the word.

The only way to succeed is to be remarkable, to be talked about. But when it comes to a person, what do we talk about? People are not products with features, benefits, and viral marketing campaigns; they are individuals. If we’re going to talk about them, we’re going to discuss what they do, not who they are.

Can You Become Indispensable? Yes, you can. This is an important question and it deserves a thoughtful answer. The first thing to realize is that other people have done this before you. Other people have survived the corporate school system, have survived their first job, have survived a mother-in-law telling them what to do—and have still done the challenging work it takes to become indispensable.

Take the risk that you might make someone upset with your initiative, innovation, and insight—it turns out that you’ll probably delight them instead.

If you want a job where you take intellectual risks all day long, don’t be surprised if your insights get you promoted.

On the other hand, if you believe that great talent leads to more innovation and more productivity, which then lead to more demand, generosity is the very best strategy.

The linchpin sees the world very differently. Exceptional insight, productivity, and generosity make markets bigger and more efficient. This situation leads to more opportunities and ultimately a payoff for everyone involved. The more you give, the more the market gives back. Abundance is possible, but only if we can imagine it and then embrace

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.

An organization of indispensable people doing important work is remarkable, profitable, and indispensable in and of itself.

What the boss really wants is an artist, someone who changes everything, someone who makes dreams come true. What the boss really wants is someone who can see the reality of today and describe a better tomorrow. What the boss really wants is a linchpin.

Teaching people to produce innovative work, off-the-chart insights, and yes, art is time-consuming and unpredictable.

The problem lies with the system that punishes artists and rewards bureaucrats instead.

What They Should Teach in School Only two things: 1. Solve interesting problems 2. Lead

But then we should move on, relentlessly seeking out new problems, ones even more interesting than that one. The idea of doing it by rote, of relentlessly driving the method home, is a total waste of time.