Book Review: Linchpin

I just finished reading Linchpin: Are you Indispensable? by Seth Godin.  Just like anything Godin ever writes, this book will leave you fired up and ready to conquer the world.  His books always amaze me because of the simplicity of the concepts he introduces.  As an educator, I really appreciate the chapters that talk about the process we currently have in education and the product we are seeing in the corporate world.  Very challenging and sobering commentary!

This book is a great read for anyone that is tired of just being a cog in the machine.  Are you ready to stop the “color by number” lifestyle and run headlong into the opportunities that your blank canvas present for your life?

Here are the things I highlighted in Linchpin…

• Becoming a linchpin is a stepwise process, a path in which you develop the attributes that make you indispensable. You can train yourself to matter.
• Every organization needs a linchpin, the one person who can bring it together and make a difference.
• If a Purple Cow is a product that’s worth talking about, the indispensable employee-I call her a linchpin-is a person who’s worth finding and keeping.
• The difference between what an employee is paid and how much value she produces leads to profit. If the worker captures all the value in her salary, there’s no profit.
• Leaders don’t get a map or a set of rules. Living life without a map requires a different attitude. It requires you to be a linchpin. Linchpins are the essential building blocks of tomorrow’s high-value organizations. They don’t bring capital or expensive machinery, nor do they blindly follow instructions and merely contribute labor. Linchpins are indispensable, the driving force of our future.
• The only way to get what you’re worth is to stand out, to exert emotional labor, to be seen as indispensable, and to produce interactions that organizations and people care deeply about.
• The competitive advantage the marketplace demands is someone more human, connected, and mature. Someone with passion and energy, capable of seeing things as they are and negotiating multiple priorities as she makes useful decisions without angst. Flexible in the face of change, resilient in the face of confusion. All of these attributes are choices, not talents, and all of them are available to you.
• When work becomes personal, your customers and coworkers are more connected and happier.
• Letting people in the organization use their best judgment turns out to be faster and cheaper-but only if you hire the right people and reward them for having the right attitude. Which is the attitude of a linchpin.
• The launch of universal (public and free) education was a profound change in the way our society works, and it was a deliberate attempt to transform our culture.
• The sign in front of your local public school could say: Maplemere Public School WE TRAIN THE FACTORY WORKERS OF TOMORROW. OUR GRADUATES ARE VERY GOOD AT FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS. AND WE TEACH THE POWER OF CONSUMPTION AS AN AID FOR SOCIAL APPROVAL.
• Studies show us that things learned in frightening circumstances are sticky.
• Classrooms become fear-based, test-based battlefields, when they could so easily be organized to encourage the heretical thought we so badly need.
• Great teachers strive to create linchpins.
• Depth of knowledge combined with good judgment is worth a lot.
• Expertise gives you enough insight to reinvent what everyone else assumes is the truth.
• Emotional labor is the hard work of making art, producing generosity, and exposing creativity. Working without a map involves both vision and the willingness to do something about what you see.
• One errant minimum-wage cog in the machine can cripple an entire brand, or at the very least, wreck the lifetime value of a customer.
• Organizations that can bring humanity and flexibility to their interactions with other human beings will thrive.
• Organizations seek out people who are fearless, but go out of their way to weed out the reckless.
• Personal interactions don’t have asymptotes.
• An asymptote is a line that gets closer and closer and closer to perfection, but never quite touches.
• You are not your résumé. You are your work.
• Art changes posture and posture changes innocent bystanders.
• But the most visceral art is direct. One to one, mano a mano, the artist and the viewer. It’s the art of interaction. It’s what you do. The art of running a meeting, counseling a student, conducting an interview, and calming an angry customer. The art of raising capital, buying a carpet at a souk, or managing a designer. If art is a human connection that causes someone to change his mind, then you are an artist.
• The moment you are willing to sell your time for money is the moment you cease to be the artist you’re capable of being.
• Where it’s made or how it’s made or how difficult it was to make is sort of irrelevant. That’s why emotional labor is so much more valuable than physical labor. Emotional labor changes the recipient, and we care about that.
• Art, at least art as I define it, is the intentional act of using your humanity to create a change in another person.
• The economy is ruthlessly punishing the fearful, and increasing the benefits to the few who are brave enough to create art and generous enough to give it away.
• Successful people are successful for one simple reason: they think about failure differently.
• One way to become creative is to discipline yourself to generate bad ideas. The worse the better. Do it a lot and magically you’ll discover that some good ones slip through.
• It’s not an accident that successful people read more books.
• When I put myself on an Internet diet (only five checks a day, not fifty), my productivity tripled. Tripled.
• Keller Williams is a maestro, a genius, and a guitarist for a new era.
• Thomas Hawk is the most successful digital photographer in the world.
• Great bosses and world-class organizations hire motivated people, set high expectations, and give their people room to become remarkable.
• Successful people are able to see the threads of the past and the threads of the future and untangle them into something manageable.
• You can either fit in or stand out. Not both.
• If you get a chance, Google “More Cowbell” and you’ll find what is certainly the most relevant Saturday Night Live skit of all time.
• Ishita Gupta wrote, Every day is a new chance to choose.
• What will make someone a linchpin is not a shortcut. It’s the understanding of which hard work is worth doing.
• Linchpins make their own maps, and thus allow the organization to navigate more quickly than it ever could if it had to wait for the paralyzed crowd to figure out what to do next.
• If you want to be a linchpin, the power you bring to the table has to be very difficult to replace. Be bolder and think bigger. Nothing stopping you.