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A genius looks at something that others are stuck on and gets the world unstuck.
By this definition, I am not a genius.
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.
I couldn’t have written this book ten years ago, because ten years ago, our economy wanted you to fit in, it paid you well to fit in, and it took care of you if you fit in. Now, like it or not, the world wants something different from you. We need to think hard about what reality looks like now.
the best future available to us is a future where you contribute your true self and your best work.
This choice doesn’t require you to quit your job, though it challenges you to rethink how you do your job. The system we grew up with is a mess. It’s falling apart at the seams and a lot of people I care about are in pain because the things we thought would work don’t. Every day I meet people who have so much to give but have been bullied enough or frightened enough to hold it back. They have become victims, pawns in a senseless system that uses them up and undervalues them. It’s time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map. Stop settling for what’s good enough and start
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For hundreds of years, the population has been seduced, scammed, and brainwashed into fitting in, following instructions, and exchanging a day’s work for a day’s pay. That era has come to an end and just in time.
You have brilliance in you, your contribution is valuable, and the art you create is precious. Only you can do it, and you must. I’m hoping you’ll ...
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If you learn how to be one of these workers, if you pay attention in school, follow instructions, show up on time, and try hard, we will take care of you. You won’t have to be brilliant or creative or take big risks. We will pay you a lot of money, give you health insurance, and offer you job security. We will cherish you, or at the very least, take care of you. It’s a pretty seductive bargain. So seductive that for a century, we embraced it. We set up our schools and our systems and our government to support the bargain.
We followed the instructions, we washed the bottles, we showed up on time, and in return, we got what we needed. It was the American Dream. For a long time, it worked. But in the face of competition and technology, the bargain has fallen apart. Job growth is flat at best.
Suddenly, quite suddenly in the scheme of things, it seems like the obedient worker bought into a sucker’s deal. The educated, hardworking masses are still doing what they’re told, but they’re no longer getting what they deserve.
This situation presents a wonderful opportunity. Yes, it’s an opportunity. An opportunity to actually enjoy 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.
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.
You have been brainwashed by school and by the system into believing that your job is to do your job and follow instructions. It’s not, not anymore.
Everyone has a little voice inside of their head that’s angry and afraid. That voice is the resistance—your lizard brain—and it wants you to be average (and safe).
If you’re not doing as well as you hoped, perhaps it’s because the rules of the game were ch...
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You can train yourself to matter.
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. —David Mamet
The problem is that the bureaucrats, note takers, literalists, manual readers, TGIF laborers, map followers, and fearful employees are in pain. They’re in pain because they’re overlooked, underpaid, laid off, and stressed out.
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.
For nearly three hundred years, that was the way work worked. What factory owners want is compliant, low-paid, replaceable cogs to run their efficient machines. Factories created productivity, and productivity produced profits. It was fun while it lasted (for the factory owners).
Our society is struggling because during times of change, the very last people you need on your team are well-paid bureaucrats, note takers, literalists, manual readers, TGIF laborers, map followers, and fearful employees. The compliant masses don’t help so much when you don’t know what to do next.
What we want, what we need, what we must have are indispensable human beings. We need original thinkers, pro...
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Every organization needs a linchpin, the one person who can bring it together and make a difference.
Some organizations haven’t realized this yet, or haven’t articulated it, but we need artists. Artists are people with a genius for finding a new answer, a new connection, or a new way of getting things done.
The essence of the problem: The working middle class is suffering. Wages are stagnant; job security is, for many people, a fading memory; and stress is skyrocketing. Nowhere to run, and apparently, nowhere to hide.
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.
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, ...
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Instead, you recognize the opportunity of becoming indispensable, highly sought after, and unique.
How was it possible to brainwash billions of people to bury their genius, to give up their dreams, and to buy into the idea of being merely an employee in a factory, following instructions?
The key piece of leverage was this promise: follow these instructions and you don’t have to think. Do your job and you don’t have to be responsible for decisions. Most of all, you don’t have to bring your genius to work.
People want to be told what to do because they are afraid (petrified) of figuring it out for themselves.
And you? Your résumé sits in a stack next to plenty of other résumés, each striving to fit in and meet the requirements. Your cubicle is next to the other cubes, each like the other. Your business card and suit and approach to problems—all designed to fit in. You keep your head down and you work hard and you hope you get picked.
So, the goal is to hire as many obedient, competent workers, as cheaply as you possibly can. If you can use your productivity advantage to earn five dollars in profit for every dollar you pay in wages, you win. Do it with a million employees and you hit a home run.
Consumers are not loyal to cheap commodities. They crave the unique, the remarkable, and the human. Sure, you can always succeed for a while with the cheapest, but you earn your place in the market with humanity and leadership.
Trader’s keeps growing, because the combination of engaged employees, cutting-edge products, and fun brings people back. Even people trying to save a buck.
The cheap strategy doesn’t scale very well, so the only way to succeed is to add value by amplifying the network and giving workers a platform, not by forcing them to pretend to be machines.
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.
The system we grew up with is based on a simple formula: 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. 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.
Wikipedia, on the other hand, is many times bigger, far more popular, and significantly more up-to-date, and it was built for almost free.
The Internet has turned white-collar work into something akin to building a pyramid in Egypt. No one could build the entire thing, but anyone can haul one brick into place.
Here’s the scary part: some bosses want their employees (you?) to become the next Mechanical Turk. Is that your dream job?
Weigh in: gve livelihood to less educated peoe in thid world countries
If we can measure it, we can do it faster. If we can put it in a manual, we can outsource it. If we can outsource it, we can get it cheaper. The end results are legions of frustrated workers, wasted geniuses each and every one of them, working like automatons, racing against the clock to crank out another policy, get through another interaction, see another patient. It doesn’t have to be this way.
It turns out that what we need are gifts and connections and humanity—and the artists who create them.
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.
In our rush to build, profit, acquire, and otherwise leverage our efforts, we almost always pick the fast and cheap alternative, particularly if it’s as good as (or better than) what it replaced.
There’s plenty of research that indicates that every time Wal-Mart enters a community, jobs disappear, businesses close, and the base of the town decays.
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.
What happens when the world cares more about unique voices and remarkable insights than it does about cheap labor on the assembly line?
The bourgeoisie has capital to invest and factories to run. Members of this class own the means of production, giving them considerable power over the workers. The hardworking “proletariat” are indebted to the bourgeoisie because they can’t build their own factories. They don’t have the capital or the organization to do
