Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

by Seth Godin

A gift well received can lead to more gifts. But artists don’t give gifts for money. They do it for respect and connection and to cause change. So the best recipients are the ones who can reciprocate in kind. With honest gratitude. With clear reports about change that was created. With gifts that actually cost us, not just a tiny gratuity or faux appreciation.

And this is the challenge of becoming the linchpin. Not only must you be an artist, must you be generous, and must you be able to see where you can help, but you must also be aware. Aware of where your skills are welcomed.

Respect is the gift you can offer in return.

What does it take to lead? The key distinction is the ability to forge your own path, to discover a route from one place to another that hasn’t been paved, measured, and quantified. So many times we want someone to tell us exactly what to do, and so many times that’s exactly the wrong approach.

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

The linchpin understands that getting angry about the battery in the microphone isn’t going to make the battery come back to life. And teaching the stage-crew guy a lesson is senseless and not going to help much, either. So you deal with it. 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.

First, of course, you have to be able to see the truth. This takes experience and expertise and, most of all, a willingness to look.

The merest attempt at estimating, the slightest unconscious recording is shrugged off as an absurd association with some never-to-be-realized dream . . . as an exercise in futility . . . I manage to whisper my first thought (whisper, so the demons won’t hear): “I know it’s impossible. But I know I’ll do it.” At that instant, the towers become “my towers.” Once on the street, a new thought: Impossible, yes, so let’s get to work. —from Man on Wire, a must-read diary of tightrope walker Philippe Petit’s conquest of the World Trade Center

If your agenda is set by someone else and it doesn’t lead you where you want to go, why is it your agenda?

Someone will hire you because you fit the description, look right, have the right background, and don’t ruffle feathers, or because you are a dream come true, an agent of change sure to make a difference. I don’t think it’s possible to make this point too clearly. Being slightly remarkable is a losing strategy. Blander than bland can work, and it has. Indispensable linchpin works and it is the future. But the in-between spaces are scary.

One day a system works; the next, it’s underwater. The challenge here is that we can see the changes coming and we try to deal with them by making incremental changes, by being timid, by waiting to see what happens. So by the time what is going to happen happens, we’re toast.

Corporate coach Deanna Vogt challenged me to fill in the sentence, “I could be more creative if only . . .” “If only” is a great way to eliminate your excuse du jour. “If only” is an obligator, because once you get rid of that item, you’ve got no excuse left, only the obligation. I could see the situation more accurately if only . . . I could lead this tribe if only . . . I could find the bravery to do my art if only . .

The linchpin is able to invent a future, fall in love with it, live in it—and then abandon it on a moment’s notice.

Ishita Gupta wrote, Every day is a new chance to choose.

The work of getting over an emotional reaction, seeing a situation as it really is, and caring enough to provide a gift—that’s beyond the pale. Nothing about becoming indispensable is easy. If it’s easy, it’s already been done and it’s no longer valuable. What will make someone a linchpin is not a shortcut.

The only thing that separates great artists from mediocre ones is their ability to push through the dip. Some people decide that their art is important enough that they ought to overcome the resistance they face in doing their work. Those people become linchpins.

The self-hating artist burns out. The hypercritical lizard brain will pick apart anything we do in order to preserve its sense of short-term safety. The alternative is to develop a sense of loyalty to your mission and generosity to your work.

In the case of personality, most psychologists agree that there are five traits that are essential in how people look at us: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extra-version, Agreeableness, and Emotional Stability.

Do you know someone who is more open to new ideas or more agreeable than you? More stable or extroverted? More conscientious? If so, then you better get moving. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of focusing on using a spreadsheet or a time clock to measure your progress, but in fact, it’s the investment you make in your interactions that will pay off.

Here’s the key takeaway: dialogue is expensive. It takes an enormous amount of processing power to absorb all these signals, compose a response, and broadcast it back. Because interactions so overwhelm our processing ability, it’s almost impossible to fake your intent. Sure, you can probably fake the words, but the rest of you will give yourself away. Yes, it’s the lizard brain again. The fastest part of our brain is busy receiving and sending microsignals that may completely belie the words we’re using.

Linchpins do two things for the organization. They exert emotional labor and they make a map. Those contributions take many forms. Here is one way to think about the list of what makes you indispensable: 1. Providing a unique interface between members of the organization 2. Delivering unique creativity 3. Managing a situation or organization of great complexity 4. Leading customers 5. Inspiring staff 6. Providing deep domain knowledge 7. Possessing a unique talent

Creativity is personal, original, unexpected, and useful. Unique creativity requires domain knowledge, a position of trust, and the generosity to actually contribute. If you want to create a unique guitar riff, it sure helps if you’ve heard all the other guitar riffs on record. Unique implies that the creativity is focused and insightful. Delivering unique creativity is hardest of all, because not only do you have to have insight, but you also need to be passionate enough to risk the rejection that delivering a solution can bring. You must ship.

If you’re not the best in the world (the customer’s world) at your unique talent, then it’s not a unique talent, is it? Which means you have only two choices: 1. Develop the other attributes that make you a linchpin. 2. Get a lot better at your unique talent. It’s possible that no one ever pushed you to be brave enough to go this far out on a limb. Consider yourself pushed.

What happens when the conversation doesn’t happen, the product doesn’t sell, the consumer is not delighted, your boss is not happy, and the people aren’t moved? Make more art. It’s the only choice, isn’t it? Give more gifts. Learn from what you did and then do more.

1. Understand that there’s a difference between the right answer and the answer you can sell. Too often, heretical ideas in organizations are shot down. They’re not refused because they’re wrong; they’re refused because the person doing the selling doesn’t have the stature or track record to sell it. Your boss has a worldview, too. When you propose something that triggers his resistance, what do you expect will happen? 2. Focus on making changes that work down, not up. Interacting with customers and employees is often easier than influencing bosses and investors. Over time, as you create an environment where your insight and generosity pay off, the people above you will notice, and you’ll get more freedom and authority.