New York Social Media Week was full of interesting little nuggets of wisdom – several of them delivered during an hour and a half chat by Seth Godin, hosted by PSFK as part of their Good Ideas Salon. Mr. Godin is the author of such books as The Purple Cow, The Dip, Tribes, and, most recently, Linchpin. I was one of the lucky folks who nabbed a comfy seat at Soho House at an hour that was clearly far too early for most of the ad creative types who were in attendance. Nonetheless, no one dozed – Mr. Godin has a way of keeping your attention when he talks.
The theme of the talk was what he terms the Linchpin – that person who is crucial to an organization, thus making her position unoutsourceable (did I just coin a word?) – and how to become one. Basically, this is the tale of pushing aside your fears, pushing the envelope, and pushing your boundaries. It’s also about breaking through the traditional model of owner/boss and worker/employee, because today you can be your own factory AND your own boss. With a laptop, an internet connection, and some ever-decreasingly-expensive software, an individual can now do – relatively inexpensively – what companies used to charge an arm and a leg for.
In other words, it’s not just factory work that can be outsourced, it’s white collar work too. He pointed to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk as a case in point.
So – how to make ourselves into linchpins? How to be unfireable, unoutsourceable, incredibly hireable (though likely as a freelancer)? Mr. Godin’s three simple steps:
1. “Reject the map.” Don’t follow the rules. Don’t do think the way you’ve been told just because someone told you to. Trust yourself and your skills enough to make a new map. And if you don’t have the skills, get them!
2. “Give people art.” In this age of automation, where every company seems (to consumers) to be just like the next, you have to stand out by finding the art in what you do. Maybe you’re a waiter – find the art in it. Make yourself the best waiter you can possibly be. Customer service is an art. (My three years living in Spain leads me to think the whole country’s service industry could do with a chat from Mr. Godin.) Negotiation is an art. Selling is an art. There’s an art to pretty much everything, or at least there can be – we must create it and use it.
3. “Ship.” Deliver! And deliver at a higher level than you think possible. Don’t allow yourself to get bogged down in reasons why your invention or business won’t work. Just go for it. Do it as artfully as possible of course. But don’t let your great idea just sit collecting dust on the shelf simply because you’re too scared to put it out there.
Sounds easy, right? So get to it!