Linchpin_ Are You Indispensable_ - Seth Godin [10]
into who we are as people.
(You Are What You Do)
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote, "By producing their means of subsistence men are
indirectly producing their actual material life." They went on to argue that what we do all
day, the way money is made, drives our schooling, our politics, and our community.
For our entire lives, the push has been to produce, to conform, and to consume.
What will you do if these three pillars change? What happens when the world cares more
about unique voices and remarkable insights than it does about cheap labor on the
assembly line?
Marx also traced our evolution from a single-class world (tribe members) to a world with
two levels: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
The bourgeoisie has capital to invest and factories to run. Members of this class own the
means of production, giving them considerable power over the workers. The hardworking
"proletariat" are indebted to the bourgeoisie because they can't build their own factories.
They don't have the capital or the organization to do so.
Makes sense to me. For two centuries or more, the gulf was distinct. You were on one
side or the other.
Now, though, the proletariat owns the means of production. Now, the workers are selforganized online. Now, access to capital and the ability to find one another are no longer
problems.
If the factories are our minds--if the thing the market values is insight or creativity or
engagement--then capital isn't nearly the factor it used to be. There's a third layer to the
economy now--call them the linchpins. These are people who are not proles (waiting for
instructions and using someone else's machines), nor are they princes or barons of
industry. The linchpins leverage something internal, not external, to create a position of
power and value.
Remember Adam Smith's pin-making machine? Now, each of us owns our own machine,
if we choose. Now, each person, working solo or in a team, already possesses the means
of production. They are indispensable, if they want to be.
(Karl Marx and Adam Smith Agreed)
Both great social economists said the same thing: There are two teams, management and
labor. Management owns the machines, labor follows the rules.
Management wins when it can get the most work for the least pay, and the more
controlled the output, the better. Smith thought this was a good thing. Marx saw this as a
lousy deal for labor and insisted that the entire structure be forcibly abandoned.
What if there were no longer only two sides? Not just capital versus labor, but a third
team, one that straddled elements of both? I think there's a huge opportunity for a third
kind of participant, a linchpin, and now there is an opportunity to change all the rules that
we've lived with all our lives. There is a shortage of this third kind of worker, and that
shortage means that the market needs you desperately. The con game is ending, at least
for people passionate enough to do something about it.
The End of ABC and the Search for the Difference Maker
Thornton May correctly points out that we have reached the end of what he calls
attendance-based compensation (ABC). 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.
Just about anyone can be trained to show up. Anyone can unlock the door of the local
coffee shop in the morning or monitor the dials at the power plant.
What does it mean to make a difference?
Some jobs are likely to remain poorly paid, low in respect, and high in turnover. These
are jobs where attendance (showing up) is all that really matters. Other jobs, the really
good jobs, are going to be filled with indispensable people, people who make a difference
by doing work that's really hard to find from anyone else.
Owning the Means of Production
This changes everything.
When labor is dependent on management for the factory and the machines and the
systems