Book Club: Linchpin by Seth Godin

: Cover of Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

My wife is in a true book club where once a month a group gets together and talks about the latest book they read. The books are chosen by the hostess and my wife has probably not enjoyed every selection though she still reads through them.

On the other hand I am part of a book club on Twitter. There are four of us currently and the rules are we can read anything we want and report it back the group. I happen to drive two hours a day so audiobooks are fair game for me. I’m a month late on this review and in that time I’ve got another book down so it’s time to get one report out.

Seth Godin, marketing philosopher, is the author of several books including Tribes, Meatball Sundae, The Dip and his blog. He recently released a new book called Linchpin. I’ve read several of Seth’s books and find them very interesting. I like the ideas and the delivery of those ideas in his printed words. I am yet to see Seth live at one of his speaking engagements but you can bet I’ll be excited when I do.

Seth’s Book Linchpin: Are you indispensable is about learning to become the indispensable person is whatever you do. Seth starts by pointing out that companies, schools and society teach people to be a cog in the wheel of life. Don’t think, don’t stand out and don’t strive for something more. Being a cog makes you replaceable and for companies racing to be the lowest common denominator they replace the replaceable everyday. Linchpins however are different. They stand out and are indispensable to their employers.

Seth lays out through the book the six premises of becoming a LinchPin. These six things include being an artist, give gifts, have bad ideas, fight the resistance, fail and ship solutions. Now it would be too much of a spoiler for me to go into all the details but I will give my thoughts on the subject.

First some of the things that I love that Seth says. The first is that anyone can do this. We just don’t say that enough for people to understand. So many people around us are don’t understand this and need to hear it. Next in one of six things he says have bad ideas. I know this doesn’t sound right but as Seth says you can’t have good ideas without bad ones so why be afraid of bad ideas. Lastly give gifts but don’t expect anything in return. I’m not sure our society truly can understand this since we always seem to be looking for something in return. So try it, give without the expectation of receiving.

Next I want to touch on the motivating ideas that I took from this book and those are fight the resistance, fail and ship solutions. First Seth takes his time talking about the reactive and primative reptilian brain or as he calls it the lizard brain. The idea is that brain is always trying to keep you out of danger by the use of fear. It also is what keeps us from doing what we want to be doing. It is the part of the brain that tells you shut-up and go with the flow. It is the part of the brain you must fight and overcome to do great things. The next motivating idea stems from this when Seth tells us to fail but don’t let the lizard brain control the reaction. So fail, it’s OK just don’t let it stop you from trying again. Last piece of motivation is “ship solutions”. This is the one that I will be working on the hardest is seeing my ideas through no matter if they fail or not. I constantly write in my notebook ideas and thoughts but rarely do they go somewhere. My goal is start making them go somewhere though I may not always know where that place will be.

The rest of the book does a great job talking about the how and what Linchpins do to succeed. Basically linchpins spend emotional labor and make maps to their future. Linchpins find the honest signals that humans give and learn to react to those signals using a complete set of skills.They create unique interfaces to communicate, delivery unique creativity based on domain knowledge, manage complexity, lead customers, inspire staff and provide domain knowledge to others. They obtain skills and are not born with unique talents and practice humility but not compliance.

The disagreement that I would have with Seth is his bashing of MBAs. OK for the most part I agree with him and for someone that is graduating in two semesters that does make me a bit concerned. So here’s my thought. A degree is what you make of it, sure some of my classes make me feel like I’m learning how to be a stuffy conservative business executive that would kill a kitten if it profited my shareholders. However there is another side of my program that strives to teach us to care for our dreams, our employee dreams and do what is right not just what is profitable. Yes some MBA course teach us create cogs in the wheel but a lot more course are teach us to build beautiful new machines of business. Businesses not based around cogs but around people doing awesome things. I’ve never had a professor use the term “awesome things” but I thought it fit.

Seth Godin will probably make money off of me buying his books for quite sometime so I admit I am a fan. Though if you are looking for a book that is a good read with interesting ideas then pick this book up. At worst it will give you something to think about but at best it could change the way you live and work. My recommendation is pick it up, read it, absorb it and then ship solutions from some of your best ideas.