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Key insights from
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
By
Seth Godin
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What you’ll learn
A linchpin is a pin passed through the axle to keep a wheel
in position. Without that piece in place, the machine cannot function. It
is indispensable, a sine qua non. In his book Linchpin,
bestselling author and business guru Seth Godin offers suggestions on how
to become an irreplaceable linchpin in an economic system that often turns
us into poorly paid, dispensable cogs.
Read on for key insights from Linchpin.
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1. There is genius
in each of us, but it is unrealistic to expect our genius in every moment
of every day.
What are linchpins? Linchpins are unassuming pieces that
hold a creation together, be it a machine, a building, or an organization.
Every organization has at least one. If it doesn’t, it won’t be an
organization much longer. If it has lots of linchpins throughout, it will
probably be around a lot longer. These are the people in a team about whom
we say, “That team or company wouldn’t be the same without that person.” If
you are a business owner, your job should be to find and cultivate those
linchpins. If you are an employee, learn to become one.
In a world full of factories and machines, we can become
machines ourselves: operating and producing mindlessly according to our
boss’ programming. If you think too mechanically, you will become a cog: a
taken-for-granted, replaceable piece. And because you are viewed as
replaceable, employers will get away with paying you very little, and may
not take you seriously. The linchpins in organizations can do the mundane,
mechanical tasks, but they are artists—capable of creating value in an
organization that employers would hate to lose.
The world used to want you to fit in and paid you pretty
well to do so. This was the economy of your parents’ generation, which
rewarded employees for staying with a company for decades. But now the
economy wants to see something different from you, that singular je ne
sais quoi that only you offer.
This is a call to your inner genius. Now, before you brush
aside that call and sell yourself short again, know that you do possess
genius, and that’s not wishful thinking. Bear in mind that no one’s genius
is online all the time, and our educational-industrial complex and
self-protective (but ultimately self-sabotaging) mechanisms are intent on
squashing it and producing average, compliant worker bees. But there is
genius inside you that even your surliest grade school teacher couldn’t
snuff out. You don’t have to do anything drastic to begin unlocking and
harnessing it. You can find ways to make yourself an asset even in your
cubicle. It’s less about dramatically quitting your job or becoming an
eccentric and more about reframing the way you see your job, less about
doing different work than working differently.
It begins with a choice, a committed “yes” to the process.
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2. The path of
(supposed) safety and stability is also the path of pain and mediocrity.
The workforce is mostly composed of people living for the
weekend, bureaucrats without imagination, fretfully following the rules and
waiting to be handed maps and manuals. This is the path of (apparent)
safety. It is also the path of pain and quiet desperation.
We’ve become sheep, bullied and intimidated into a pen of
mediocrity. This sounds great from an employer’s perspective. Who doesn’t
want cooperative sheep? The problem comes when these excellent sheep have
no idea what to do next. They are helpful until they can’t help because
they haven’t received orders yet.
Those who insist on being mediocre sign up for monotony,
pain, and uneasiness at work. Working as a cog will tire you out because
you are settling for minimal pay, trying to be just a little better than
your coworker. But it’s hard to deliver quality work while you are also
pricked by pain and insecurity about your job. It’s hard to gain the kind
of confidence that would motivate you to go above and beyond.
The problem and the opportunity is that the economic system
has tried to keep its PERL (percentage of replaceable labor) high. The more
labor you could easily replace, the easier it was to keep your systems
running and the less you needed to pay workers. Making yourself
irreplaceable is the best way to get out of the PERL trap, and it is
exactly what organizations need. They need those people who can provoke,
reimagine, and care enough to risk reconnecting the dots in a novel way if
they want to stay in business. And you need to be a person who does those
things, if you don’t want your soul sucked out of you.
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3. People start
becoming linchpins when they trust themselves enough to let go of the map
and their perfectionism.
Remembering that linchpins are not brilliant all the time
can relieve some pressure in the quest to become a linchpin. Einstein
developed the theory of relativity, but that same man could barely find his
way home from work most days. Even geniuses don’t create works of art all
the time. Genius creativity comes in bursts and those bursts come between
doing the more ordinary workaday tasks. You could probably do most of what
Bill Gates or Elon Musk or Richard Branson do on a daily basis, but there
are a few minutes each day where they do something remarkable that no one
else can do and they create value that tallies up to billions in very
little time.
You can become a linchpin wherever you are, whether that’s
on the sales floor or in the cubicle. Saying “yes” to becoming a linchpin
can feel daunting in a world swirling in information like never before.
With so many marketing methods and strategizing apps and tools available,
it’s no surprise that most people just ask for a map instead of charting
their own way forward. It requires emotional labor to do the latter. It
costs something. But this is where linchpins are willing to go. They learn
the systems and status quos well enough to find ways to upend them or tweak
them to benefit the company and make themselves irreplaceable.
Another piece of becoming a linchpin is risking the
occasional grade of “D” to create something brilliant. You can jump through
all the hoops and get an “A,” but if that paper or project has no soul,
then what is it really worth? If your boss gives it a “D” rating simply
because you did not follow the map, it’s still a risk well taken—assuming
it was creative and involved emotional labor. Mollifying your boss’
momentary anxieties is a small price to pay if the risks help you get your
soul back and forge a path toward linchpin status.
Remember that people can’t hold you to the map without your
permission. If you submit to the factory-like industrial mindset and stay
within the preset grooves, that is your decision, but it is never too late
to try something different.
Becoming a linchpin also means learning to troubleshoot.
Problem solving is rarely an explicit part of any job description, but the
one who can do it has much better job security than the one who can’t—even
if the one who can’t is diligent and industrious.
Becoming a linchpin means learning to regulate emotions. The
average person feels fear and pulls back from what he was doing, but the
linchpin acknowledges fear when it comes up and then presses in.
Linchpins also learn to let go of perfectionism.
Perfectionists aren’t even after perfection most of the time—they just want
to be perfectly free of mistakes. But this is cog thinking—not linchpin
thinking. It keeps you tied to a map and unwilling to try something new.
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4. Emotional labor
will cost you something, but it will make your work more meaningful for you
and indispensable to your employer.
Emotional labor is tough to expend—it is labor after all.
Moreover, it is tempting to view that extra emotional labor as optional, as
a flowery superfluity that makes no real difference. We can sympathize with
the flight attendant who rushes through the pre-flight instructions script
without an ounce of passion or humanity. She might not think of it as an
opportunity because she’s read the same thing hundreds of times and most of
the time nobody listens. But when the airline’s finances are tight, she
will be viewed as a replaceable cog. Her script is an opportunity
to volunteer emotional effort beyond a monotonous bare minimum. People feel
they are not paid to put forth extra emotional labor, but they are. Every
industry involves some kind of customer, and it is your job to make their
experience exceptional—even if you are not paid extra to be extra kind,
generous, creative, and so on.
JetBlue is an excellent example of an airline that harnesses
the power of linchpins. The company saw friendly and engaged flight
attendants as the key to brand building, but Amy Curtis-McIntyre, who built
JetBlue’s program, decided against giving a manual or map. She simply
looked for affable candidates whom she could inspire to expend emotional
energy to make passengers’ experiences memorable. She refused to make it
too cookie cutter or corporate.
Investing emotional labor in your work not only benefits the
customer—it benefits you, too. Making someone smile or even laugh—that
feeling of connecting—is a gift that comes back to you and energizes. In
our everyday lives we do this often, but we have been conditioned to switch
back into a humdrum work mode when we clock in. We do what we are told, put
on our blinders, and miss opportunities to bring originality into our work
life.
At least initially, emotional labor will earn you little
recognition or compensation in terms of pay, but there is a gratification
to creating and giving the gift. By choosing to give it, you will also change
the atmosphere of your work environment. Colleagues will loosen up and
become more genuine with you. Bosses will trust you more and cut you more
slack when you color outside the lines of protocol. Moreover, your
customers will become more attached to you and associate you with their
enjoyable experiences.
If you think you lose by giving, you are operating in a
zero-sum poverty mindset and you will hold back your genius and gifts from
others—and yourself. Bring the gift of who you are to work and you will be
surprised by the returns on that emotional investment.
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5. Artists are not
just people who draw well, and there is plenty of art that is not on
canvas.
Sixty percent of all the world’s paintings come from the
small Chinese village of Defen, not far from the city of Shenzhen. The town
is teeming with painters, but not artists. These painters are extremely
hardworking and gifted, but their gift is mimicry—not creativity. They
traffic in paintings, but they paint as they have been taught to paint, and
produce the same pieces over and over and over. If you order a piece of art
from Defen, you will not be able to trace the piece back to its source. And
it hardly matters who did make it.
Far more artistic were the people who developed the system
of painting production, but their painters are replaceable cogs who get
paid very little for their talent of rendering the same patterns on a
canvas with staggering consistency.
Most artists can’t draw to save their life, but they
creatively defy the status quo in ways that are inspiring and beautiful,
full of passion and deeply personal. According to Godin, “art is a personal
gift that changes the recipient.” You don’t need a canvas to do that.
Whatever the medium, art is human-to-human. Human interaction itself is an
art, and we know those moments when we witness social grace become an art:
that manager who skillfully deescalates a conflict with a livid customer,
the hotel receptionist who makes the weary traveler feel utterly at home,
the journalist who knows how to guide an interview, the fundraiser who
somehow convinces people to donate generously to a cause, the therapist
whose counseling is tailor-made for the client.
If you can interact with people in a way that changes them,
then you are an artist. But do you see yourself that way? Part of becoming
a linchpin is changing the way you see yourself and your contributions. If
you see yourself as an artist, the way you approach your job will change,
too. This artistic capacity is in you, waiting for you to trust yourself
enough to give it a chance.
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