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Linchpin (Seth Godin)

If you're not indispensable yet, it's because you have yet to make the choice to make an indispensable contribution to something you care about.
tags: contribution
Revolutions are frightening because the new benefits sometimes lag behind the old pain.
tags: pain revolution
If you have a job where you wait for someone to tell you what to do next, you've just given up the chance to create value.
tags: creativity value work
Linchpins don't work in a vacuum. Your personality and attitude are more important than the actual work product you create, because indispensable work is work that is connected to others.
tags: work art indispensability connection
The problem is that our culture has engaged in a Faustian bargain, in which we trade our genius and artistry for apparent stability.
page: 1
tags: stability art genius culture
Stop asking what's in it for you and start giving gifts that change people.
page: 3
tags: give
The educated, hardworking masses are still doing what they're told, but they're no longer getting what they deserve.
page: 4
tags: work
Everyone has a little voice inside their head that's angry and afraid. That voice is the resistance--your lizard brain--and it wants you to be average (and safe).
page: 5
tags: resistance comfort
You weren't born a cog in the giant industrial machine. You were __trained__ to become a cog.
page: 6
tags: cog industrial machine
"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."
page: 6
tags: candor
We need original thinkers, provocateurs, and people who care. We need passionate change makers willing to be shunned if it is necessary for them to make a point.
page: 8
tags: passion change
Artists are people with a genius for finding a new answer, a new connection, or a new way of getting things done.
page: 8
tags: art answers connections
The type of low-risk, high-stability jobs that three-quarters of us crave have turned into dead-end traps of dissatisfaction and unfair risk.
page: 8
tags: satisfaction
The key piece of leverage to get people to work factory jobs was this promise: follow these instructions and you don't have to think. In every corporation in every country in the world, people are waiting to be told what to do.
page: 9
tags: leverage people work instructions
If you build a business filled with rules and procedures that are designed to allow you to hire cheap people, you will have to produce a product without humanity or personalization or connection.
page: 11
tags: humanity business rules procedures
The people you're hoping will hire you, buy from you, support you, and interact with you have more choices and less time than ever before.
page: 12
tags: choice interaction
You can always succeed for a while with the cheapest, but you earn your place in the market with humanity and leadership.
page: 13
tags: success leadership humanity
These are the only two choices. Win by being more ordinary, more standard, and cheaper. Or win by being faster, more remarkable, and more human.
page: 13
tags: human
There are no longer any great jobs where someone else tells you precisely what to do.
page: 14
tags: work
First you have interchangeable parts, then you have interchangeable workers.
page: 17
tags: interchangeability
We were all hunters. Then we invented farming, and we became farmers. And we were all farmers. Then they invented the factory, and we all became factory workers. Factory workers who followed instructions, supported the system, and got paid what they were worth. Then the factory fell apart. And what's left for us to work with? Art. Now, success means being an artist.
page: 18
tags: art
It's easy to buy a cookbook filled with instructions to follow, but really hard to find a chef book.
page: 18
tags: instructions
All your other employees are getting paid less to make up for the ones who contribute the least. The exceptional performers are getting paid a __lot__ less, which is why they should (and will) leave.
page: 26
tags: contribution performance
The only way to be indispensable is to be different. That's because if you're the same, so are plenty of other people.
page: 27
tags: indispensability
Take the risk that you might make someone upset with your initiative, innovation, and insight--it turns out that you'll probably delight them instead.
page: 29
tags: shipping
If you want a job where you get to do more than follow instructions, don't be surprised if you get asked to do things they never taught you in school.
page: 30
tags: challenge
You can't--or you don't want to?
page: 32
tags: can't
"Not my job" can kill an entire organization. Doing a job that's not getting done is essential.
page: 34
tags: work
Linchpins do more than they're paid to, on their own, because they value quality for its own sake, and they want to do good work. They __need__ to do good work. Anything less feels intellectually dishonest, and like a waste of time. In exchange, you're giving them freedom, responsibility, and respect, which are priceless.
page: 36
tags: work quality honesty
What the boss really wants is someone who can see the reality of today and describe a better tomorrow.
page: 38
tags: vision worldview truth
The network effect of schools helped create the consumer culture. Once one person had a second or third pair of shoes, you needed more, too.
page: 41
tags: networking consumerism
The difference between cogs and linchpins is largely one of attitude, not learning.
page: 43
tags: attitude learning
We teach people to stay within a tiny range. We don't want the lows to be too low, so we limit the highs as well.
page: 44
tags: mediocrity
The answer to worker unrest was a limited amount of education. Teach them just enough to get them to cooperate.
page: 46
tags: education
Schools should teach only two things: how to solve interesting problems, and how to lead.
page: 47
tags: problems leadership
Imagine an organization with an employee who can accurately see the truth, understand the situation, and understand the potential outcomes of various decisions. And now imagine that this person is also able to make something happen.
page: 50
tags: truth potential
Doesn't matter if you're always right. It matters that you're always moving.
page: 51
tags: progress
The law of linchpin leverage: the more value you create in your job, the fewer clock minutes of labor you actually spend creating that value. In other words, most of the time, you're not being brilliant. Most of the time, you do stuff that ordinary people do.
page: 51
tags: leverage work
If you've got no choice but to move the bricks, your opportunity is to think hard about how you can do even this mundane task, because almost any job can be humanized or transformed.
page: 52
tags: opportunity
The craft of the painting, the craft of writing that email, the craft of building that PowerPoint presentation--those are the easy parts. It's the art and the insight and the bravery of value creation that are rewarded.
page: 53
tags: craft art insight bravery creativity rewards
People who tell you that they don't have any good ideas are selling themselves short. They don't have ideas that are valued because they're not investing in their art.
page: 53
tags: ideas investment art
Organizing around average means that the organization has exchanged the high productivity of exceptional performance for the ease and security of an endless parade of average performers.
page: 54
tags: organization productivity performance security
Depth of knowledge is rarely sufficient, all by itself, to turn someone into a linchpin.
page: 55
tags: knowledge
Expertise gives you enough insight to reinvent what everyone else assumes is the truth.
page: 56
tags: expertise insight
Every interaction you have with a coworker or customer is an opportunity to practice the art of interaction.
page: 57
tags: art interaction
Linchpins are able to embrace the lack of structure and find a new path, one that works.
page: 58
tags: structure work path
If you can write a linchpin's duties into a manual, you wouldn't need them. But the minute you write them down, they wouldn't be accurate anyway. That's the key. Linchpins solve problems that people haven't predicted, sees things people haven't seen, and connect people who need to be connected.
page: 59
tags: art connection problem-solving
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. But you can't abandon technique merely because you're not good at it or unwilling to do the work. But if the reason they don't like it is that you're challenging structure and expectation and the status quo, do it anyway.
page: 59
tags: status quo expectation challenge
When you start down the path of beating the competition based on something that can be easily measured, you're betting that with practice and determination, you can do better than everyone else doing the same thing. Not just a little better, but a league-of-your-own better. And you can't.
page: 63
tags: competition determination practice
Fearless means unafraid of things one shouldn't be afraid of, the imagined threats. Avoiding that fear allows you to actually accomplish something. Put it aside. Doing this is a prerequisite for success.
page: 64
tags: success fear
As you get closer to perfect, it gets more and more difficult to improve, and the market values the improvements a little bit less. Perfection is not sufficient. Personal interactions don't have asymptotes. Innovative solutions to new problems don't get old. Seek out achievements where there is no limit.
page: 66
tags: perfection improvement interaction solutions problems achievements
There is no map, no step-by-step plan, and no way to avoid blame now and then.
page: 68
tags: planning
Good is bad, if bad means "not a profitable thing to aspire to." Good is repeatable and easy. Repeatable and easy is replaceable. Perfect is bad, because you can't top perfect. There's no room for growth. Either you're perfect or you're not. The solution lies in seeking out something that is neither good nor perfect. You want something remarkable, nonlinear, game changing, and artistic.
page: 70
tags: perfect art
It's damaging to have to put on a new face for work, the place we spend our days. It's damaging to build organizations around repetitive faceless work that brings no connection and no joy.
page: 71
tags: connection joy work
The very system that produced standardized tests and the command-and-control model that chokes us also invented the resume. If you don't have more than a resume, you've been brainwashed into compliance. Great jobs don't get filled by people emailing in resumes. Projects are the new resumes. Build a blog, a reputation, software that solves a problem. You are not your resume, you are your work.
page: 72
tags: work reputation compliance
If the rules are the only thing between me and becoming indispensable, I don't need the rules. 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.
page: 75
tags: busywork rules activities
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.
page: 79
tags: nature work
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.
page: 80
tags: emotional labor
Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. If it's easy and risk free, it's unlikely that it's art. It is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another. The medium doesn't matter. The intent does.
page: 83
tags: art intent
The artist does not feel complete until they give a gift. This is more than refusing to do lousy work. It's an insistence on doing important work.
page: 87
tags: gifts art work
When you create a new use of a traditional system or technology, that's art.
page: 92
tags: art
You can say your lines and get away with it, or you can touch someone and make a difference in their lives forever
page: 93
tags: impact
Pinpoint your audience, or your end up making your art for the loudest, crankiest critics. Trying to please everyone results in mediocrity.
page: 94
tags: audience criticism mediocrity
What do I want to see in the world? Create that.
page: 95
tags: creativity
The moment you work for someone who not only pays you, but also tells you what to do, is the moment you stop being an artist.
page: 95
tags: work
The easier it is to quantify, the less it's worth.
page: 96
tags: worth
Artists think along the edges of the box, because that's where things get done. That's where the audience is, that's where the means of production are available, and that's where you can make an impact.
page: 102
tags: art thinking
The discipline of shipping is essential to the long-term path to becoming indispensable. Not shipping on behalf of your goal of changing the world is often a symptom of the resistance. Call its bluff, ship always, and __then__ change the world. The only purpose of starting is to finish.
page: 103
tags: shipping indispensability goals resistance finishing
Thrashing. Steve McConnell. Thrashing is the productive brainstorming and tweaking we do for a project as it develops. Every software project that has missed its target date is a victim of late thrashing. Thrashing is essential, but do it early. Involve everyone. At the end, don't thrash, involve few people.
page: 104
tags: thrashing brainstorming
Every time you find yourself following the manual instead of writing the manual, you're avoiding the anguish and giving in to the resistance.
page: 107
tags: resistance art
The resistance makes people avoid learning to be more productive, because they're afraid that then maybe they'd actually have to do something. Same goes to the folks filling up notebooks with tips and tasks.
page: 115
tags: productivity note-taking resistance
You become a winner because you're good at losing. Successful people learn from the failure that the tactics they used didn't work or that the person they used them on didn't respond.
page: 115
tags: failure
The road to comfort is crowded and it rarely gets you there.
page: 116
tags: comfort
All creative people generate a slew of laughable ideas for every good idea. Solving the problem of finding bad ideas will make finding good ideas surprisingly easy.
page: 117
tags: ideas
The freedom of the new kind of work is that tasks are vague and difficult to measure. We can spend an hour surfing the internet because no one knows if surfing the internet is going to help us make progress or connections. Freedom like this makes it easy to hide, easy to find excuses, easy to do very little.
page: 118
tags: work progress freedom
Don't fit in. Don't follow the score (music). Know the rules, but break them. Don't let the system and your resistance indoctrinate you into following instructions.
page: 119
tags: rules
The temptation to sabotage the new thing is huge, precisely because the new thing might work.
page: 122
tags: resistance
We're hitting a natural ceiling for how cheaply and how fast we can deliver uninspired work. Becoming more average, more quick, and more cheap is not as productive as it used to be.
page: 123
tags: efficiency
Public speaking involves three biological factors that work against us: we need to make an emotional connection, we are the focus of attention, and our perceptions are exposed to judgment.
page: 124
tags: emotion attention judgment
Fear of living without a map is the main reason people are so insistent that we tell them what to do.
page: 125
tags: fear direction
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.
page: 126
tags: criticism cynicism resistance
Once you're done you can throw it away. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes. Destruction is a variant of done. Done is the engine of more.
page: 130
tags: failure shipping
What's the point of overcoming the pain the lizard brain inflicts if all you're doing is something that doesn't matter much anyway? Trivial art isn't worth the trouble it takes to produce it.
page: 133
tags: art
Zen Habits by Leo Babauta. Attempt to create only one significant work a year. Break that into smaller projects, and every day, find three tasks to accomplish that will help you complete a project.
page: 135
tags: project management progress
Reassurance doesn't address the issue of anxiety, it exacerbates it.
page: 138
tags: anxiety
Anxiety/shenpa: The very thing you are afraid of occurs, precisely because you are afraid of it, which of course makes the shenpa cycle even worse.
page: 140
tags: anxiety
People don't want to be around those in frequent cycles of pain and fear.
page: 142
tags: negativity
Sprint: go as fast as you possibly can. You can't sprint every day, but it's probably a good idea to sprint regularly. It keeps the resistance at bay.
page: 144
tags: sprinting
Set up a database for your project. Include words, images, sketches, and links to other items in the project. Write down every single notion, plan, idea, sketch, and contact. This is the very last chance you have to make the project better. Then, go through the database and build a complete description of the project. Then get sign-off, and DO. Ship it.
page: 146
tags: project planning
When we agree to define our success on others' terms, especially other people who don't particularly like us and aren't inclined to root for us, we're giving in to the resistance.
page: 147
tags: resistance success
Linchpin thinking is about delivering gifts that can never be adequately paid for.
page: 152
tags: gifts
Artists can't be easily instructed, predicted, or measured, and that's precisely what you are taught to do in business school.
page: 153
tags: art business
Any time you can say "(insert well-known style)-style", it has ceased to be art and started to be a process.
page: 153
tags: process art
An artist paints his painting without knowing if someone is going to buy it.
page: 154
tags: art
Gifts have been relegated to cash substitutes. If you give a gift, the only apparent reason is to get you to reciprocate. This ruins true gifts, since people always think you're expecting something in return.
page: 159
tags: reciprocation gifts
I will give you this __and__ you will do something for someone else. I will give you this __and__ my expectation is that you will change the way you feel. Change 'if' to 'and', and a trade becomes a gift.
page: 162
tags: gifts
Seeing the thing, hearing the thing, understanding the thing--that's enough for it to be art.
page: 163
tags: art
Metcalfe's Law: the value of a network is equal to the square of the number of nodes on the network.
page: 166
tags: networking
Artists don't give gifts for money. They do it for respect and connection and to cause change. They don't want a tiny gratuity or faux appreciation.
page: 167
tags: art gifts appreciation
The most successful and happiest artists embrace their art, they don't look for someone to applaud them. Great bosses and world-class organizations hire motivated people, set high expectations, and give their people room to become remarkable.
page: 168
tags: art motivation
The challenge of being the linchpin is to be aware of where your skills and gifts are welcomed.
page: 171
tags: skills gifts
If you want to repay a gift, do something difficult. Don't just circle the three 5s on the review sheet.
page: 172
tags: gifts
You have to know where you are and know where you're going before you can figure out how to go about getting there.
page: 174
tags: mindfulness self-assessment
Nobody has a transparent view of the world. We all carry around a personal worldview--the biases and experiences and expectations that color the way we perceive the world.
page: 174
tags: worldview
Seeing clearly means being able to do a job interview as though you weren't the interviewer or the applicant, but someone watching dispassionately from a third chair.
page: 175
tags: vision
Abandoning your worldview in order to try on someone else's is the first step in being able to see things as they are.
page: 176
tags: worldview
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.
page: 176
tags: human uniqueness effectiveness decision-making
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.
page: 177
tags: change work
A sign of attachment is how you handle bad news. If bad news changes your emotional state or what you think of yourself, then you'll be attached to the outcome you receive. The alternative is to ask, "Isn't that interesting?" Learn what you can learn; then move on.
page: 178
tags: attachment bad news
Interactions in the real world often feel more complex than they actually are. We assign motivations and plots and vendettas where there are none. But it's not personal and it's not rational and it certainly isn't about whether or not you deserve it. It just is.
page: 178
tags: stoicism
When our responses turn into reactions and we set out to teach people a lesson, we lose, because 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.
page: 178
tags: work reaction response people
Attachment to an outcome combined with the resistance and fear of change are the two reasons seeing the future is so difficult. If you are deliberately trying to create a future that feels safe, you will willfully ignore the future that is likely.
page: 178
tags: attachment fear safety comfort
horizontal axis: passion (passive - to passionate +); vertical axis: attachment (attachment - to discernment +j). Q1: Linchpin, Q2: Bureaucrat, Q3: Whiner, Q4: Fundamentalist Zealot. One axis asks 'Can you see it?' the other asks 'Do you care?'
page: 181
tags: discernment passion attachment
When you defend your position, what are you defending? Are you defending your past, your present, or the future you are nostalgic about? Just because you want something to be true doesn't make it so.
page: 183
tags: truth defensiveness nostalgia
Scarcity creates value, and what's scarce is a desire to accept what is and then work to change it for the better, not deny that it exists.
page: 184
tags: scarcity
Artists can't get attached to the object of their attention. The attachment to a worldview changes an artist's relationship to what's happening and prevents him from converting what he sees or interacts with into something that belongs to him, that he can work with and change.
page: 184
tags: attachment worldview
It's human nature to defend our worldview, to construct a narrative that protects us from uncomfortable confessions.
page: 186
tags: worldview comfort human
We only get 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.
page: 186
tags: opportunity control
The reason that art (writing, engaging, leading, all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can't tell you how to do it. If there were a map, there'd be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map.
page: 188
tags: art
If you are working only for the person you report to according to the org chart, you may be sacrificing your future. It may cause you to alienate customers (internal and external), hide your best work, fit in, and become merely a cog in the system.
page: 193
tags: work
If your agenda is set by someone else and it doesn't lead you where you want to go, why is it your agenda?
page: 193
tags: agenda
You are either defending the status quo or challenging it. Playing defense and trying to keep everything "all right", or leading and provoking and striving to make everything better.
page: 191
tags: status quo
There's no doubt that environment plays a huge role. The right teacher or the right family support or the accidents of race or birth location are still significant factors. But the new rules mean that even if you've got all the right background, you won't make it unless you choose to.
page: 195
tags: environment
If you're going to go to all the trouble of learning how to play the guitar, and perform it, then SING IT. Sing it loud and with feeling and like you mean it. Deliver it, don't just hand it over like a bank teller.
page: 197
tags: deliver
The world given us control of the means of production (internet, personal computing, smart phones.) Not to master them is a sin. This also applies to software engineers and tools like vim, the command line in general, and git.
page: 198
tags: tools
A timid trapeze artist is a dead trapeze artist.
page: 199
tags: timidity bravery gusto
The stressful part is hoping. Hoping that the future will be what you wish it to be. The reason is your nostalgia for the future. You've fallen in love with a desired outcome. You're attached.
page: 204
tags: stress hope nostalgia attachment
Corporations are tempted to squeeze as much apparent productivity as the can out of each employee. This is fine for the assembly line, since it doesn't work without your presence. But the model has changed. The assembly line is gone.
page: 207
tags: productivity
If it's easy, it's already been done and is no longer valuable. What makes someone a linchpin is not a shortcut. It's the understanding of __which__ hard work is worth doing.
page: 207
tags: work
"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."
page: 208
tags: ralph waldo emerson
Five traits that are essential in how people look at us: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Emotional Stability.
page: 210
tags: traits
Virtually all of us make our living engaging directly with other people. When the interactions are genuine and transparent, they usually work. When they are artificial or manipulative, they fail.
page: 214
tags: interactions relationships
We can read between the lines and understand exactly when a boss is lying to us and when someone is disrespecting us, regardless of the words being used.
page: 214
tags: authenticity
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.
page: 224
tags: humility kindness
Linchpin list: 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
page: 218
tags: creativity complexity knowledge talent
What happens when your art doesn't work? Learn from it. Make more. Give more gifts. The only alternative is to give up.
page: 224
tags: failure
In most non-cog jobs, the boss's biggest lament is that her people won't step up and bring their authentic selves to work.
page: 226
tags: authenticity work
A cornerstone of your job is selling your boss on your plans, behaving in a way that gives her cover with __her__ boss, being unpredictable in predictable ways. You have to earn the confidence of the company.
page: 226
tags: work impact influence confidence
Poets who try to get paid end up writing jingles and failing and hating it at the same time.
page: 227
tags: motivation extrinsic
The pitfalls of monetizing the thing you love: 1. In order to monetize your work, you'll probably corrupt it, taking out the magic, in search of dollars; 2. Attention doesn't always equal significant cash flow. Do your art. But don't wreck your art if it doesn't lend itself to paying the bills. That would be a tragedy.
page: 227
tags: attention art work
The hardest part of being creative is getting used to it.
page: 232
tags: creativity
Repetitive, but has a worthy message. Break free of the indoctrination society thrusts upon us: get a degree, get a job, do your time, follow the instructions, don't make waves, stay safe, stay comfortable, retire. Instead, be indispensable. Forge connections. Create art. Give gifts. Rail against the rulebooks. Re-write the rulebooks. Draw your own map.
tags: review