Linchpin – A Early Release Book Review
Posted: January 21st, 2010 | | 1 Comment »
by Seth Godin
7/10
Elevator Pitch: Some people are valuable, but if you want to be invaluable, or even indispensable, you have to be a linchpin. Linchpins are so vital to the organization that you wouldn’t be able to replace them. They hold it all together.
Favorite Quotes: “Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient.”
“Change it by so over-delivering that people post about you.” – (Talking about your Google search results)
“And perfect is bad, because you can’t top perfect.”
“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).”
Overview: I never like to give too much of the book away, and trust me I haven’t. Almost all of those quotes are in the first third of the book. This is a fantastic read. Inspiring, motivating, and very challenging.
Without stealing his thunder, the moral of the story is you can settle for being a cog in the wheel of the organization where you work. A step in the process, part of the committee that resides over the committees, etc… OR you can be such an indispensable person in your organization that they couldn’t replace you if they wanted to.
You don’t get there with power plays, politics, or even by getting your MBA. You get there by being intentional and human in your interactions with people. (my words not his)
You won’t get ahead (for very long anyways) by playing games. You won’t enjoy work more by burning bridges with people that you work with… You will enjoy your work more when you make an intentional decision to lean into it (Tribes shoutout) and lead. Lead the people under you. Lead the people around you. AND lead the people that you report to…
If you want to check this book out… it will be on sale JAN 26th. Check it out on Amazon.
We are reading this at the office now. Just got through the first chapter, and things aren’t making sense to me.
Mr. Godin seems to overly demonize the production (factory) culture when the fact is we created this for ourselves. “Cog” jobs exist because of the demand to consume cheap goods. He strives to bring out the artisan within the reader — these jobs are the fulfilling ones, he says. Now, let’s say we all become these awesome creative indispensable “linchpins”. Will we be willing to accept owning one pair of $300 shoes versus six pairs of slave-wage sneakers? Will we be willing to eat humanely-raised eggs from the artisanal farmer at $3/dozen?
I have a bad feeling that the answer is no. So what exactly has “culturally brainwashed” us (as Mr. Godin says) into mindless assembly line jobs other than our addiction to consuming cheap stuff?