Linchpin

Linchpin is all about you – your choices, your future and your potential to make a huge difference in whatever field you choose.

There used to be two teams in every workplace: management and labour. Now there’s a third team: the linchpins. These people invent, lead (regardless of title), connect others, make things happen and create order out of chaos……… And in today’s world, they get the best jobs and the most freedom.

Notes:

• Introduction
  • You weren’t born to be a cog in the giant industrial machine. You were trained to be a cog.
• The new world of work
  • There are no longer any great jobs where someone else tells you precisely what to do.
  • The Internet has turned white-collar work into something akin to building a pyramid in Egypt. No one could build the entire thing, but anyone can haul one brick into place.
  • There are fewer and fewer good jobs where you can get paid merely for showing up. Instead, successful organizations are paying for people who make a difference and are shedding everyone else.
  • You don’t become indispensable merely because you are different. But the only way to be indispensable is to be different.
• Thinking about your choice
  • 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.
• Indoctrination: How we got here
  • The problem lies with the system that punishes artists and rewards bureaucrats instead.
  • What they should teach in school. Only two things: 1) solve interesting problems; 2) lead.
• Becoming the linchpin
  • The linchpin is the essential element, the person who holds part of the operation together.
  • Doesn’t matter if you’re always right. It matters that you’re always moving.
  • The law of linchpin leverage: The more value you create in your job, the fewer clock minutes of labor you actually spend creating that value.
  • Every product you make represents an opportunity to design something that has never been designed.
  • The linchpin feels the fear, acknowledges it, then proceeds.
• Is it possible to do hard work in a cubicle? (**A lot to learn from this chapter)
  • Emotional labor is the task of doing important work, even when it isn’t easy.
  • Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient.
  • An artist is an individual who creates art. The more people you change, the more you change them, the more effective your art is.
  • Art is the product of emotional labor.
  • Art is any original idea that can be a gift.
  • A day’s work is your chance to do art, to create a gift, to do something that matters.
  • The combination of passion and art is what makes someone a linchpin.
  • Once the word spread, Twitter became the fastest-growing communications medium in history. Not because it followed a model, but because it broke one.
  • It’s okay to have someone you work for, someone who watches over you, someone who pays you. But the moment you treat that person like a boss, like someone in charge of your movements and your output, you are a cog, not an artist.
• The resistance
  • The only purpose of starting is to finish, and while the projects we do are never really finished, they must ship.
  • The reason the resistance persists in slowing you down and prevents you from putting your heart and soul and art into your work is simple: you might fail.
  • Successful people learn from failure, but the lesson they learn is a different one. They learn that the tactics they used didn’t work or that the person they used them on didn’t respond.
  • One way to become creative is to discipline yourself to generate bad ideas.
  • Fear of living without a map is the main reason people are so insistent that we tell them what to do.
  • The goal is to strip away anything that looks productive but doesn’t involve shipping.
  • It takes crazy discipline to do nothing between projects. It means that you have to face a blank wall and you can’t look busy. It means you are alone with your thoughts, and it means that a new project, perhaps a great project, will appear pretty soon, because your restless energy can’t permit you to only sit and do nothing.
  • It’s impossible to be a linchpin if you agree to feed your anxiety.
  • By separating the hard work of preparation from the scary work of insight, you can build an environment in which you’re more likely to ship.
• The powerful culture of gifts (**A lot to learn from this chapter)
  • Inventing a gift, creating art — that is what the market seeks out, and the givers are the ones who earn our respect and attention.
  • For the last five hundred years, the best way to succeed has been to treat everyone as a stranger you could do business with.
  • When art is created solely to be sold, it’s only a commodity. A key element for the artist is the act of giving the art to someone in the tribe.
  • The gift of art instantly creates a bond between the artist and the recipient.
  • The most successful givers aren’t doing it because they’re being told to. They do it because doing it is fun. It gives them joy.
  • Great bosses and world-class organizations hire motivated people, set high expectations, and give their people room to become remarkable.
• There is no map
  • The linchpin is enlightened enough to see the world as it is, to understand that this angry customer is not about me, that this change in government policy is not a personal attack, that this job is not guaranteed for life. At the same time, the linchpin brings passion to the job.
  • Most people who see the truth refuse to acknowledge it.
  • Lab assistants do what they’re told. Scientists figure out what to do next.
• Making the choice
  • You can either fit in or stand out. Not both. You are either defending the status quo or challenging it.
  • These are internal choices, not external factors. How we respond to the opportunities and challenges of the outside world now determines how much the outside world values us.
  • Creating a career where you are seen as the indispensable linchpin may at first seem to be a selfish goal on your part, but you will achieve this goal by giving selfless gifts, and those benefit everyone.
• The culture of connection
  • There are five traits that are essential in how people look at us: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extra-version, Agreeableness, and Emotional Stability.
  • The communication of enthusiasm and connection and leadership starts with the gift you give, not with the manipulation you attempt.
• The seven abilities of the linchpin
  • Providing a unique interface between members of the organization
  • Delivering unique creativity
  • Managing a situation or organization of great complexity
  • Leading customers
  • Inspiring staff
  • Providing deep domain knowledge
  • Possessing a unique talent
• When it doesn’t work
  • Make more art. Give more gifts. Learn from what you did and then do more.
  • Do your art. But don’t wreck your art if it doesn’t lend itself to paying the bills.
  • Dignity + Humanity + Generosity = Indispensable
  • Conformity + Compliance + Obedience = Surrender