My Reading Notes for:

Linchpin

By Seth Godin

You are a genius. Geniuses find non-obvious solutions to problems.

A genius looks at something that others are stuck on, and finds a way to gets the world unstuck.

Find the shortcut that others couldn’t find.

We often trade our ability to be genius with stability.

Stop complying with the system and start drawing your own map.

Adam Smith in Wealth Of Nations talked businesses into breaking down everything into smaller tasks that lower paid people could do. Then turn into assembly line. Which then got automated to replace the people. Factory owners want low paid, compliant, replaceable cogs to run their efficient machines.

But the compliant masses aren’t much good when you don’t know what to do next. We need original thinkers. Provocateurs who can lead. Artists who know how to get things done.

There is no longer a clear path for those who are merely obedient.

There is no longer a clear path for those who are merely obedient.

Who “work for the man”. Those jobs are being sent overseas, or replaced by machines.

Workers have been scammed. For over a century. The idea was that repetitive hard work done to the specifications of the rule book or the foreman was the key to our prosperity. That game is over. There are no jobs left where people tell you precisely what to do.

When labor is dependent upon management for the factory to work in – the relationship is fraught with issues over power and control. It was easier for the factory to find new labor than it was for labor to find new factories. Today the formula has changed. The means of production can be a laptop and cell phone. This is a fundamental shift in power.

The people who interact and work with you (or you work for) are busier and have more choices than ever before. For a business: The difference between what an employee is paid and how much value she produces is profit.

If a business is doing better than you- they are probably doing better at finding cheap and competent workers. They ship overseas or use machines. Plus consumers are not loyal to cheap commodities. They crave the unique and remarkable. Sure you can withstand for a while based on price. But you earn your place long-term with humanity and leadership

A great school experience probably won’t prepare you to be a linchpin. Lousy schools will prevent it from happening.  Schools aren’t built to produce artists. Everyone has an artist within them. It’s generally just buried.

We need Artistic leadership instead of mediocre obedience.

Anxiety is practicing failure in advance.

Anything that is keeping you from shipping work is the resistance.

Anxiety doesn’t actually protect you from failure though. It protects you from doing great things. Which is putting you in danger.

It is impossible to be a linchpin if you continue to feed your anxiety.

In this new economy, you have to for your own path. You have to find your route that has not been paved, map, and quantified.

Worldview and attachments always color perception.   The Artist can’t get attached to the object of their affection.  A worldview changes an artist’s interpretation of what is actually happening.

A negotiator has to see both sides of the argument in order to negotiate effectively.  It’s very easy for us to get attached to our feelings, memories, and expectations of the system we work in.

That attachment and our response to it forces us to wish for a different outcome then we can reasonably expect to get.

A good scientist is surprised often.  It’s part of their job. They should be doing things that surprised them. The lab assistant is probably rarely surprised.

People who are the first to do something great can’t rely on other people to tell them how to do it.