Linchpin, p.4
Linchpin, page 4
If you want a job where you take intellectual risks all day long, don’t be surprised if your insights get you promoted.
Limited or Unlimited?
You can see your marketplace as being limited, a zero-sum game, a place where in order for one person to win, another must lose.
Or you can see it as unlimited. A place where talent creates growth and the market increases in size.
Consider Kim Berry, who runs the Programmers Guild, a nonprofit that lobbies Congress to limit or ban H-1B visas for talented computer programmers from overseas. He has said that for every person from India or China who gets a job programming in the United States, someone who was born here loses a job. It’s win/lose, in his view, not win/win.
It’s very difficult to be generous if you have this point of view. In a zero-sum game, the generous among us are fools, easily taken advantage of.
On the other hand, if you believe that great talent leads to more innovation and more productivity, which then lead to more demand, generosity is the very best strategy. If every great programmer were given the best tools, the best marketing, and the best technology, imagine how much more work that would create for the members of the Programmers Guild. If we enlarged the pie by bringing in the best programmers from around the world, it’s inevitable that tons of jobs would be created for local talent as well.
It seems to me that your outlook is completely due to your worldview. If you believe that all programmers are fairly average, then the pie is limited. If you believe that your job is to do your job (follow the map) and go home, then of course it’s a zero-sum game.
The linchpin sees the world very differently. Exceptional insight, productivity, and generosity make markets bigger and more efficient. This situation leads to more opportunities and ultimately a payoff for everyone involved. The more you give, the more the market gives back.
Abundance is possible, but only if we can imagine it and then embrace it.
Will You Still Be Loved?
This is a more powerful question, and a difficult one. It’s entirely possible that once you choose to become indispensable, you will no longer be loved. Not by the same people who love you now, perhaps, nor for the same reasons.
But (and I know it’s a big but) either those people will come around, or they never loved you in the first place, did they?
Special Circumstances
It’s easy to argue that this genius stuff is for other people, not you. Those other people have gifts, or genes, or education or background or connections. It’s easy to fool yourself into believing that genius works for them, but it won’t work for you.
Of course. Except Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs were raised by adoptive parents, and Nelson Mandela changed the world from a jail cell. Except that Jill Sobule struggled just as much as every other acoustic singersongwriter but didn’t give up. Except that Cathy Hughes dropped out of the University of Nebraska at Omaha and ended up as the first black woman running a public company in the United States. I don’t have room to list all the less famous people who had the same resources you do, but were willing to accept the genius label and make a choice.
You Can’t?
At the age of four, you were an artist.
And at seven, you were a poet.
And by the time you were twelve, if you had a lemonade stand, you were an entrepreneur.
Of course you can do something that matters. I guess I’m wondering if you want to.
There may be a voice in your head that is ready to announce that you can’t possibly do what I’m describing. You don’t have what it takes; you’re not smart enough or trained enough or (sheesh) gifted enough to pull this off.
I’d like to ask for a simple clarification.
You can’t—or you don’t want to?
I’ll accept the second. It’s quite possible that you don’t want to. It’s possible that making this commitment is too scary or too much work. It’s possible that it appears too risky to put yourself on the line and make a commitment to becoming indispensable. A commitment like this raises the bar, and for some people, that might be too high.
Perhaps you don’t want to because it feels financially irresponsible. I think that’s an error in judgment on your part, since becoming a linchpin is in fact the most financially responsible choice you can make. But that’s your call, and if you decide you don’t want to, fine with me.
But can’t?
I don’t buy that for a second.
The New American Dream
Do you remember the old American Dream?
It struck a chord with millions of people (in the United States and in the rest of the world, too). Here’s how it goes:
Keep your head down
Follow instructions
Show up on time
Work hard
Suck it up
. . . you will be rewarded. As we’ve seen, that dream is over.
The new American Dream, though, the one that markets around the world are embracing as fast as they can, is this:
Be remarkable
Be generous
Create art
Make judgment calls
Connect people and ideas
. . . and we have no choice but to reward you.
What Would Make You Impossibly Good at Your Job?
If your organization wanted to replace you with someone far better at your job than you, what would they look for? I think it’s unlikely that they’d seek out someone willing to work more hours, or someone with more industry experience, or someone who could score better on a standardized test.
No, 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.
“Not My Job”
Three words can kill an entire organization.
As the world moves faster and engagements become more fluid, the category of “not my job” keeps getting bigger and bigger.
Amazon had a cataloguing glitch on a Friday. Because of an honest mistake, thousands of books with adult homosexual content were banned from their index. Over the weekend, tens of thousands of people blogged and tweeted about “censorship” on Amazon’s part. It wasn’t until the end of Sunday that the company responded. On the Internet, thirty-six hours is like a month. Why did it take so long? Probably because it was no one’s job to monitor the Internet and respond with authority on behalf of Amazon.
The bathroom at New York’s Museum of Natural History has insufficient wastepaper bins, so the one that’s there is always overflowing. It’s the janitor’s job to empty the can as often as he can, but who has the job of installing a second can?
In a factory, doing a job that’s not yours is dangerous. Now, if you’re a linchpin, doing a job that’s not getting done is essential.
More Obedience
Would your organization be more successful if your employees were more obedient?
Or, consider for a second: would you be more successful if your employees were more artistic, motivated, connected, aware, passionate, and genuine?
You can’t have both, of course.
Would your career advance if you could figure out a way to do an even better job of following your boss’s instructions?
Or, just maybe, would you be more successful if you were more artistic, motivated, aware, and genuine?
That’s the choice. Your choice.
Secret Memo for Employees
Given the chance, you should choose to be indispensable.
After all, if you’re the linchpin, the company has to treat you better. Pay you fairly. You won’t be the first to be shown the door in a slow period; in fact, you’ll be the last.
Not only do you have security, but you also have confidence. The confidence to make a difference in your organization and to do work that matters.
If you can be human at work (not a machine), you’ll discover a passion for work you didn’t know you had. When work becomes personal, your customers and coworkers are more connected and happier. And that creates even more value.
When you’re not a cog in a machine, an easily replaceable commodity, you’ll get paid what you’re worth. Which is more.
Secret Memo for Employers
You want your employees to be indispensable.
Really? After all, if they’re the linchpins, you have to treat them better. Pay them fairly. You won’t be able to quickly fire them for any reason, knowing how easy they will be to replace with all those folks lining up at the door. The linchpin represents a threat to the orderly execution of your agenda, because the linchpin is necessary. The linchpin has power!
No one is irreplaceable, of course, because over time someone can be trained to fill the shoes of your linchpin employee. But right now, knowing you have to depend on someone is a scary feeling. Not only does he have power, but he might leave you hanging. This isn’t what you were taught in school.
Here’s the win (actually, there are two):
First, understand that your competition has been building a faceless machine exactly like yours. And when customers have the choice between faceless options, they pick the cheapest, fastest, more direct option. If you want customers to flock to you, it’s tempting to race to the bottom of the price chart. There’s not a lot of room for profit there, though. You can’t out-Amazon Amazon, can you?
In a world that relentlessly races to the bottom, you lose if you also race to the bottom. The only way to win is to race to the top.
When your organization becomes more human, more remarkable, faster on its feet, and more likely to connect directly with customers, it becomes indispensable. The very thing that made your employee a linchpin makes YOU a linchpin. An organization of indispensable people doing important work is remarkable, profitable, and indispensable in and of itself.
Second, the people who work for you, the ones you freed to be artists, will rise to a level you can’t even imagine. When people realize that they are not a cog in a machine, an easily replaceable commodity, they take the challenge and grow. They produce more than you pay them to, because you are paying them with something worth more than money. They 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.
As a result of these priceless gifts, expect that the linchpins on your staff won’t abuse their power. In fact, they’ll work harder, stay longer, and produce more than you pay them to. Because everyone is a person, and people crave connection and respect.
This Is No Time for Dumb Tools
The architecture of our systems is set up so that the people at the top know more. The goal is to hire as many cheap but talented people as possible, give them a rule book, and have them follow instructions to the letter.
Go to a McDonald’s. Order a Big Mac. Order a chocolate milkshake.
Drink half the milkshake.
Eat half the Big Mac.
Put the Big Mac into your milkshake and walk up to the counter.
Say, “I can’t drink this milkshake . . . there’s a Big Mac in it.”
The person at the counter will give you a refund. Why? Because it’s easier to give her a rule than it is to hire people with good judgment. The rule is, “When in doubt, give a refund.”
Multiply this by millions of jobs at millions of organizations and you see what you end up with: systems everywhere, manuals, rules, and a few people at the top working hard to dream up new ones.
When machines came along, we replicated this process. Teach that robot arm how to spray paint, and have it follow specific rules. Et cetera.
Then something fascinating happened. Kevin Kelly first wrote about this ten years ago: it turns out that GM saves $1.5 million a year by letting the robot arms think for themselves! The more GM enables the swarm of dumb machines to make decisions, bid against each other, network, and interact, the better they work.
The world works too fast for centralized control. These systems can’t be run by a supervisor at the top of the organizational chart.
Bullet trains in Japan run fast and on schedule without a centralized switchboard. It turns out that pushing decision making down the chart is faster and more efficient.
So now, having learned from machines, organizations are applying the same logic to people. 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 Boss’s Lie
“What I want is someone who will do exactly what I tell them to.”
“What I want is someone who works cheap.”
“What I want is someone who shows up on time and doesn’t give me a hard time.”
So, if this is what the boss really wants, how come the stars in the company don’t follow these three rules? How come the people who get promoted and get privileges and expense accounts and are then wooed away to join other companies and get written up in the paper and have servants and coffee boys . . . how come those guys aren’t the ones who do this stuff?
What the boss really wants is an artist, someone who changes everything, someone who makes dreams come true. What the boss really wants is someone who can see the reality of today and describe a better tomorrow. What the boss really wants is a linchpin.
If he can’t have that, he’ll settle for a cheap drone.
INDOCTRINATION: HOW WE GOT HERE
Mediocre Obedience
We’ve been taught to be a replaceable cog in a giant machine.
We’ve been taught to consume as a shortcut to happiness.
We’ve been taught not to care about our job or our customers.
And we’ve been taught to fit in.
None of these things helps you get what you deserve.
We’ve bought into a model that taught us to embrace the system, to spend for pleasure, and to separate ourselves from our work. We’ve been taught that this approach works, but it doesn’t (not anymore). And this disconnect keeps us from succeeding, cripples the growth of our society, and makes us really stressed.
It seems “natural” to live the life so many of us live, but in fact, it’s quite recent and totally manmade. We exist in a corporate manufacturing mindset, one so complete that anyone off the grid seems like an oddity. In the last few years, though, it’s becoming clear that people who reject the worst of the current system are actually more likely to succeed.
Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote, “Violence, sexism, and general nastiness are biological since they represent one subset of a possible range of behaviors. But peacefulness, equality and kindness are just as biological—and we may see their influence increase if we can create social structures that permit them to flourish.”
To his thoughts I’d add that mediocre obedience is certainly something we’re capable of, but if we take initiative and add a little bravery, artistic leadership is something that’s equally (or more) possible and productive. We’ve been trained to believe that mediocre obedience is a genetic fact for most of the population, but it’s interesting to note that this trait doesn’t show up until after a few years of schooling.
Description of the Factory
“Factory” is a loaded term. It brings to mind car assembly lines or sweat-shops. I’m talking about something much broader than that.
The Prudential Insurance offices in Newark are a factory, and so is the Department of Motor Vehicles office near your house. Each McDonald’s franchise is quite deliberately set up as a factory, and so is the Goodwill distribution center that processes clothes to be sent overseas to raise money for a good cause.
I define a factory as an organization that has figured it out, a place where people go to do what they’re told and earn a paycheck. Factories have been the backbone of our economy for more than a century, and without them we wouldn’t have the prosperity we have today.
That doesn’t mean you want to work in one.
You Get What You Focus On
Today, our leaders worry about things like global warming, security, limited resources, and maintaining our infrastructure. And boomers worry about getting old and finding a doctor they can afford.
A hundred years ago, our leaders worried about two things that seem truly archaic to us now:
How to find enough factory workers; and
How to avoid overproduction.
FACTORY WORKERS
Factories convert natural resources into salable products. They turn iron ore into steel and corn into Twinkies. A surplus of natural resources cuts your costs and increases your productivity.
If human beings are a natural resource for factories, then your goal as a factory owner is to get good ones, cheap. So captains of industry and government reorganized our society around this goal.
Does this sound like a conspiracy theory? Where do you think engineering colleges and nursing schools come from? Why else would we spend so much time and money creating a nationwide system of schools and push so hard for a factory-like command and control system for managing and producing students?
Yes, we need facts and rigor and systems. Yes, we need people to learn certain skills. But this isn’t enough. It’s the preliminary first step.
