Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

by Seth Godin

In the face of an infinite sea of choices, it’s natural to put blinders on, to ask for a map, to beg for instructions, or failing that, to do exactly what you did last time, even if it didn’t work. Linchpins are able to embrace the lack of structure and find a new path, one that works.

Marissa is a linchpin. She applies artistic judgment combined with emotional labor. She makes the interfaces work (the user interface and the interface between the engineers and the rest of the world) and leads the people who get things done.

Google works because the way the site takes your query and returns your results has such discipline and a clarity of vision that people prefer it even when the search results aren’t any better than those provided by Yahoo or Microsoft.

If you could write Marissa’s duties into a manual, you wouldn’t need her. But the minute you wrote it down, it wouldn’t be accurate anyway. That’s the key. She solves problems that people haven’t predicted, sees things people haven’t seen, and connects people who need to be connected.

Assume before you start that you’re going to create something that the teacher, the boss, or some other nitpicking critic is going to dislike. Of course, they need to dislike it for all the wrong reasons.

You can’t abandon technique merely because you’re not good at it or unwilling to do the work. But if the reason you’re going to get a D is that you’re challenging structure and expectation and the status quo, then YES! Give yourself a D. A well-earned D.

Without your consent, they can’t hold on to the status quo, can’t make you miserable, can’t maintain their hold on power. It’s up to you. You can spend your time on stage pleasing the heckler in the back, or you can devote it to the audience that came to hear you perform.

Troubleshooting is an art, and it’s a gift from the troubleshooter to the person in trouble. The troubleshooter steps in when everyone else has given up, puts himself on the line, and donates the energy and the risk to the cause.

“In many cases, the individual Marine will be the most conspicuous symbol of American foreign policy and will potentially influence not only the immediate tactical situation, but the operational and strategic levels as well.”

Krulak’s law is simple: The closer you get to the front, the more power you have over the brand.

If you think the solution is more rules and less humanity, I fear you will be disappointed by the results. Organizations that can bring humanity and flexibility to their interactions with other human beings will thrive.

We’ve been eliminating machine operators and paint sprayers and other trades in order to lower costs.

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.

Emotional labor is available to all of us, but is rarely exploited as a competitive advantage. We spend our time and energy trying to perfect our craft, but we don’t focus on the skills and interactions that will allow us to stand out and become indispensable to our organization.

At the same time that France was embracing handmade luxury, Great Britain was embracing the anonymous factory. Looms that could turn out cotton cloth with minimal human labor, or pottery factories that could make cheap plates.

“Made in France” came to mean something (and still does, more than three hundred years later) because of the “made” part. Mechanizing and cheapening the process would have made it easy for others to copy. Relying on humanity made it difficult—it made the work done in France scarce, and scarcity creates value.

Fearless doesn’t really mean “without fear.” What it means in practice is, “unafraid of things that one shouldn’t be afraid of.” Being fearless means giving a presentation to an important customer without losing a night’s sleep. It means being willing to take intellectual risks and to forge a new path.

Reckless, on the other hand, means rushing into places that only a fool would go. Reckless leads to huge problems, usually on the boss’s dime. Reckless is what led us to the mortgage and liquidity crisis. Reckless is way out of style.

Feckless? Feckless is the worst of all. Ineffective, indifferent, and lazy.

it was clear that the key to success was dealing with fatigue.

When you got tired, you didn’t quit. If you quit, you lost (your job or the race).

The linchpin feels the fear, acknowledges it, then proceeds. I can’t tell you how to do this; I think the answer is different for everyone. What I can tell you is that in today’s economy, doing it is a prerequisite for success.

The problem with meeting expectations is that it’s not remarkable. It won’t change the recipient of your work, and it’s easy to emulate (which makes you easy to replace).

You want something remarkable, nonlinear, game changing, and artistic.

Almost anyone else would have seen this job as a grind, a dead end, a mind-numbing way to spend six years. David saw it as an opportunity to give gifts. He had emotional labor to contribute, and his compensation was the blessings he got from the customers (his customers). His art was the engagement with each person, a chance to change her outlook or brighten his day.

David refused to wait for instructions. He led with his art.

It’s unprofitable to establish a career around the idea of doing what the manual says.

The Internet shines a light on your projects.

The only way to prove (as opposed to assert) that you are an indispensable linchpin—someone worth recruiting, moving to the top of the pile, and hiring—is to show, not tell. Projects are the new résumés.

If your Google search isn’t what you want (need) it to be, then change it. Change it through your actions and connections and generosity. Change it by so over-delivering that people post about you. Change it by creating a blog that is so insightful about your area of experti...

A better plan: find a company that understands the value of the linchpin. Find a company that doesn’t use a computer to scan résumés, a company that hires people, not paper.

You are not your résumé. You are your work.

It’s easy to find a way to spend your entire day doing busywork. Trivial work doesn’t require leaning. The challenge is to replace those tasks with rule-breaking activities instead.

She looks for trouble; trouble gives her a chance to delight.

The cog is standing by, waiting for instructions.

The physical (and mental) posture of someone creating art both changes and causes change.

If you can, visualize the reluctant student, head on his shoulder, slumped on the desk, chewing on a pencil. This is student as employee, student as prisoner. The chances of great work or great learning occurring are zero.

But imagine an artist in the same situation. He’s barely restrained, chomping to get to work. He leans into the work, not away from it. His energy creates energy in those around him; his charisma turns into leadership. Art changes posture and posture changes innocent bystanders.

He works the cash register, and it seems as though every ounce of his being projects his dissatisfaction with his job. Steve won’t make eye contact. Steve takes a lot of breaks. Steve doesn’t start bagging until the last possible moment. Steve grumbles a lot.

The thing is, Steve spends as much time at work as Melinda. And Melinda is engaged and connected and enthusiastic. Steve has decided that he’s not being paid enough to bring his entire self to work, and he’s teaching all of us a lesson. Melinda has decided that she has a platform, and she uses it to make a tiny difference in every customer’s day.

The Stop & Shop has to accept part of the blame for Steve’s situation. First, they don’t do anything at all to reward people who are generous. I’ve never seen a manager there go out of his way to respect or acknowledge great...

“You’re a cog, you’re replaceable, there’s someone coming in right behind you. Hey, we don’t even have to meet you!”

If he waits for a job to be good enough to deserve his best shot, it’s unlikely that he’ll ever have that job.

Only one of these is a clearly extrinsic motivator (#4, money). The rest are either things we do for ourselves or things that we value because of who we are.

The interesting thing about money is that there’s no easy way for an employee to make it increase, at least not in the short run. Most of the other elements, though, can go through the roof as a result of our behavior, contributions, attitude, and gifts.

If you want a job where you are treated as indispensable, given massive amounts of responsibility and freedom, expected to expend emotional labor, and rewarded for being a human, not a cog in a machine, then please don’t work hard to fit into the square-peg job you found on Craigslist.

If you need to conceal your true nature to get in the door, understand that you’ll probably have to conceal your true nature to keep that job. This is the one and only decision you get to make. You get to choose. You can work for a company that wants indispensable people, or you can work for a company that works to avoid them.

The linchpin says, “I don’t want a job that a non-linchpin could get.”

Emotional labor is the task of doing important work, even when it isn’t easy.

Showing up unwilling to do emotional labor is a short-term strategy now, because over time, organizations won’t pay extra for someone who merely does the easy stuff.