Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

by Seth Godin

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

The educated, hardworking masses are still doing what they’re told, but they’re no longer getting what they deserve.

Win by being more ordinary, more standard, and cheaper. Or win by being faster, more remarkable, and more human.

My heroes Roz and Ben Zander wrote an incredible book called The Art of Possibility.

Jeff Sexton points out that ten years ago, General Charles Krulak theorized that in an age of always-on cameras, cell phones, and social networks, the lowly corporal in the field would have far more leverage and impact than ever before. He wrote, “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. One errant minimum-wage cog in the machine can

Author Richard Florida polled twenty thousand creative professionals and gave them a choice of thirty-eight factors that motivated them to do their best at work. The top ten, ranked in order: 1. Challenge and responsibility 2. Flexibility 3. A stable work environment 4. Money 5. Professional development 6. Peer recognition 7. Stimulating colleagues and bosses 8. Exciting job content 9. Organizational culture 10. Location and community

The last element that makes it art is that it’s a gift. You cannot create a piece of art merely for money. Doing it as part of commerce so denudes art of wonder that it ceases to be art. There’s always a gift intent on the part of the artist. Organizations use human-created

The future of your organization depends on motivated human beings selflessly contributing unasked-for gifts of emotional labor. And worse yet, the harder you work to quantify and manipulate this process, the more poorly it will work.

Artists understand that they have the power, through gifts, innovation, and love, to create a new story, one that’s better than the old one.

that. Poet Bruce Ario said, “Creativity is an instinct to produce.”

It turns out that the three biological factors that drive job performance and innovation are social intelligence, fear response, and perception.

Bre Pettis wrote this manifesto on his blog: 1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion. 2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done. 3. There is no editing stage. 4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it. 5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it. 6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done. 7. Once you’re done you can throw it away. 8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done. 9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right. 10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes. 11. Destruction is a variant of done. 12. If you have an idea and publish it on the Internet, that counts as a ghost of done. 13. Done is the engine of more.

The result is sneaky and effective. When you haven’t set up a judge and jury for your work, you get to do art that doesn’t alert the resistance. And then you can leverage that art into the next thing.

There are three reasons why it’s now urgent to understand how gift culture works. First, the Internet (and digital goods) has lowered the marginal cost of generosity. Second, it’s impossible to be an artist without understanding the power that giving a gift creates. And third, the dynamic of gift giving can diminish the cries of the resistance and permit you to do your best work. The very fact that gift giving without recompense feels uncomfortable is reason enough for you to take a moment to find out why.

The magic of the gift system is that the gift is voluntary, not part of a contract. The gift binds the recipient to the giver, and both of them to the community. A contract isolates individuals, with money as the connector. The gift binds them instead.

Great bosses and world-class organizations hire motivated people, set high expectations, and give their people room to become remarkable.

The essential question of prajna is what to do about the ref. If you filter the calls through your partisan point of view, of course you’ll be upset. Who wouldn’t be? The challenge is determining if that filter is helping you thrive. If you’re able to look at what’s happening in your world and say, “There’s the pattern,” or “Wow, that’s interesting, I wonder why,” then you’re far more likely to respond productively than if your reaction is “How dare he!”

My response: Telling people leadership is important is one thing. Showing them step by step precisely how to be a leader is impossible. “Tell me what to do” is a nonsensical statement in this context. There is no map. No map to be a leader, no map to be an artist. I’ve read hundreds of books about art (in all its forms) and how to do it, and not one has a clue about the map, because there isn’t one.

The world just gave you control over the means of production. Not to master them is a sin.

Corporate coach Deanna Vogt challenged me to fill in the sentence, “I could be more creative 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.

If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not “studying a profession,” for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Discerning the difference between feedback that helps and criticism that degrades, though, will take some time.

Moby, multiplatinum recording artist with a great haircut, had this to say about art:

This concept gets to the heart of the chasm we’re facing. You want your pretty safe skill to be enough. Enough to make you valued, enough to make you fairly paid, enough to make your life stable. But it’s not. It’s not enough because in a very connected, very competitive marketplace, there are plenty of people with your pretty safe skill. The