Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

by Seth Godin

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

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.

There are no longer any great jobs where someone else tells you precisely what to do.

Have you chosen to shop at Wal-Mart? 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. That’s okay, though, because you can get a jar of pickles the size of a Volkswagen for three dollars.

Great teachers are wonderful. They change lives. We need them. The problem is that most schools don’t like great teachers. They’re organized to stamp them out, bore them, bureaucratize them, and make them average.

They need shortcuts in order to successfully process millions of students a year, and they’ve discovered that fear is a great shortcut on the way to teaching compliance.

Classrooms become fear-based, test-based battlefields, when they could so easily be organized to encourage the heretical thought we so badly need.

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

Six Sigma approach to quality. Six Sigma refers to the quest for continuous improvement, ultimately leading to 3.4 defects per million units.

The problem with meeting expectations is that it’s not remarkable.

I saw him greet people, help without asking, offer to watch a table or get something for someone. In a coffee shop! I asked him about his attitude. He smiled, stopped for a second, and told me, “I work for blessings.” 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. Not everyone can do this, and many who can, choose not to. David refused to wait for instructions. He led with his art.

It’s damaging to build organizations around repetitive faceless work that brings no connection and no joy.

The system, the industrialists, the factory . . . they want us to be cogs in their machine—easily replaceable, hopeless, cheap cogs.

http://jasonzimdars.com/svn/highrise.html.

If the game is designed for you to lose, don’t play that game. Play a different one.

The linchpin understands that this choice of posture is the critical step. Consider the customer service troubleshooter, the dervish who walks into any situation and makes it better. Her posture is forward; she’s looking for opportunities. She wants to mix it up. She looks for trouble; trouble gives her a chance to delight.

The cog is standing by, waiting for instructions.

Art changes posture and posture changes innocent bystanders.

Emotional labor is difficult and easy to avoid.

“Most artists can’t draw.” We need to add something: “But all artists can see.”

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

His art is part of him, and he feels compelled to share it with you because it’s important, not because he expects you to pay him for it.

Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn’t matter. The intent does.

Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creat...

An artist is an individual who creates art. The more people you change, the more you change them, the more effective your art is.

Every time you find yourself following the manual instead of writing the manual, you’re avoiding the anguish and giving in to the resistance.

The lizard isn’t listening and the lizard doesn’t care.

There are entire corporations filled with people like this, people who work overtime to stamp out any insight or art.

Don’t listen to the cynics. They’re cynics for a reason. For them, the resistance won a long time ago. When the resistance tells you not to listen to something, read something, or attend something, go. Do it. It’s not an accident that successful people read more books.

“Teamwork” is the word bosses and coaches and teachers use when they actually mean, “Do what I say.”

Great work is not created for everyone. If it were, it would be average work.

No one ever says, “I’m glad I spent hours turning this situation over and over in my mind last night, because it prepared me for today’s meeting.”

We assign motivations and plots and vendettas where there are none. Those angry customers didn’t wake up this morning deciding to ruin your day, not at all. They’re just angry. It’s not personal and it’s not rational and it certainly isn’t about whether or not you deserve it. It just is. So now what are you going to do about it?

the act of teaching someone a lesson rarely succeeds at changing them, and always fails at making our day better, or our work more useful.

The same mindset that drives someone to stay in their home during a hurricane is at work. Just because you want something to be true doesn’t make it so.

The linchpin has figured out that we get only a certain number of brain cycles to spend each day. Spending even one on a situation out of our control has a significant opportunity cost.

You can either fit in or stand out. Not both.

Either you are embracing the drama of your everyday life or you are seeing the world as it is. These are all choices; you can’t have it both ways.

You’ve fallen in love with a described outcome, and at every stage along the way, it appears that hope and will and effort on your part might be able to maintain the future quo.

Most of what people do all day is roach stomping.

Nothing about becoming indispensable is easy. If it’s easy, it’s already been done and it’s no longer valuable.

When you’re lying, we can tell.

Not according to Malcolm Gladwell I his book talking to strangers. In fact, the research he cites indicates that most of us aren't very good at spotting liars at all!

Wal-Mart wins because it’s cheap and close. Everyone else who wins must do it by being generous.

Humility is our antidote to what’s inevitably not going to go according to plan. Humility permits us to approach a problem with kindness and not arrogance.

The challenge, then, is to be the generous artist, but do it knowing that it just might not work. And that’s okay.

The act of deciding is the act of succeeding.