Name: Linchpin
Rating: 4.4 (181 reviews)
Author: Seth Godin

Today, if your job involves just following instructions, you are replaceable.

Hector has it tough. As a day laborer, he and many others wait on a street corner in Queens every morning for contractors to drive by and choose a few of them to do a day’s work at minimum wage. From the contractors’ point of view, all these workers are the same – they have no differentiating skills – so there is no special reason to pick Hector over any of the other laborers there. Hence, Hector will be lucky to get chosen.

The industrial revolution was sparked by the discovery that highly skilled people are not necessarily needed to manufacture complicated products. Instead, almost any production process can be split into steps so simple that relatively unskilled workers can do them. Adam Smith wrote that ten barely trained – and hence poorly paid – factory workers could produce a thousand times more pins than one highly skilled pin maker.

This is why many manufacturing jobs are simple, requiring only that employees show up and follow instructions precisely – like cogs in a machine. If you are such a worker, the problem is that you are easily replaceable and certainly in no position to negotiate a raise. Consider how manufacturing jobs in the West are being outsourced to China and India, where people are equally capable of following instructions but for a fraction of the cost.

Today, even supposedly outsourcing-proof, white-collar jobs are under threat. Stock brokers, travel agents, secretaries and other professionals who were used to just showing up at work and doing what they were told are all finding themselves more and more replaceable and outsourceable. Jobs that involve purely following instructions can be done by anyone, anywhere.

Today, if your job involves just following instructions, you are replaceable.

Linchpins are indispensable, so they get the best jobs.

There’s a big, grey mass of people out there for whom work means showing up for X hours a day in return for a monthly paycheck. They see their work as a frustrating and tedious chore, a necessary evil in their lives. And guess what? Their lack of motivation does not go unnoticed by management, and when times get tough, they are the first to be fired.

This army of drones provides an opportunity for those who refuse to be unremarkable: the so-called linchpins, who are indispensable to their company.

The lizard brain generates fear to stop you becoming a linchpin.

Becoming a linchpin means being brave enough to stand out of the crowd. But why is this so difficult? Why do most of us shy away from the limelight?

The human brain evolved in stages, and one of the earliest parts to develop was the so-called lizard brain. It generates primal emotions like fear, hunger and anger, and it used to play a very important part in our survival; for example, by telling us to run away from saber-toothed tigers. Because this role was so important for our ancestors’ survival, the lizard brain still exerts a great deal of influence on our higher thinking.

Don’t let your fear stop you – make the choice to be a linchpin.

In many ways, we are brought up to fit in. Consider school: we’re taught to prepare for exams, keep our heads down and follow instructions like, “Use #2 pencils.” Coloring outside the lines gets you a D, and not doing as you’re told gets you detention. Is it any wonder that by the time we reach a working age, we are afraid of doing anything that might make us stand out from the crowd?

This is why most people are content to just show up at work and do what they are told. They are afraid of being special and afraid of ruining the safe and secure status quo.

Pour emotional labor into your job and make it a platform for your art.

Not all artists are painters, sculptors or composers. Anyone who changes other people by giving them an emotional gift is an artist.

A customer service person who uses his smile and charm to change an angry customer into a delighted fan of the company is just as much an artist as Picasso is. Similarly, the founder of online shoe store Zappos, Tony Hsieh, is an artist of great customer service. You can be an artist at your job, too, but not if you just show up and grudgingly do the bare minimum until it’s time to go home at the end of the day.

To succeed today, you must give people genuine gifts.

For a long time, the economy has been based on equitable trades, preferably enforced by a contract: “You can listen to my music if you pay me twenty dollars.”

Genuine gifts – as in giving someone something with no expectation of getting anything in return – were practically unheard of. In fact, if you tried to give a stranger a genuine gift, for example by offering a shared cab ride to someone going in the same direction as you, they would have probably refused, because they were nervous about how they should reciprocate the favor.

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