Linchpin_ Are You Indispensable_ - Seth Godin [22]
something else. In 1996, Fred Wilson and Jerry Colonna founded a venture capital firm in
New York City. Flatiron was the largest and most important Internet investment firm in
New York, and for five years, they returned profits and created companies like few other
funds in history. After the fact, it seems obvious that this was a special moment in time,
and that taking advantage of it was smart. But right there, right then, it wasn't obvious, it
wasn't easy, and there certainly wasn't a manual. Anyone could have done it, but anyone
didn't. They did.
It takes art. Our economy now rewards artists far more than any other economy in history
ever has.
People who tell you that they don't have any good ideas are selling themselves short.
They don't have ideas that are valued because they're not investing in their art.
People who tell you that "I could paint a painting like that" are missing the point. The
craft of the painting, the craft of writing that e-mail, the craft of building that PowerPoint
presentation--those are the easy parts. It's the art and the insight and the bravery of value
creation that are rewarded.
Massive Shift in the Leverage of Productivity
In a rigid, mechanized system (a factory!), the difference between a pretty good
employee and a great employee is small.
A punch press operator might have a range of twenty to twenty-four units made in an
hour. The best punch press operator in the world delivers about 20 percent more output
than a pretty good punch press operator does.
On the other hand, the freestyle world of idea creation and idea manipulation offers
dramatic differences between the merely good and the truly great. A great designer like
Jonathan Ive is worth a hundred times as much as a good one. Where does Apple add
value? If all MP3 players play the same music, why is an iPod worth so much more than
a generic one? It's the breakthrough design that Ive pushed through at Apple. In fact, if
you consider the relative stock prices and profits of Apple versus companies that hire
standard designers to do ordinary work, there's really no comparison.
A great salesperson might deliver a thousand times as much productivity as a mediocre
one. It's the great salesperson who opens an entire region or an account in a new industry,
while the ordinary one merely goes down the call list, doing quite average work.
This is an astonishing piece of news. A very good senior programmer (who might get
paid $200,000) gets paid about the same as a great programmer, who delivers $5 million
worth of value for the same price. That's enough of a difference to build an entire
company's profit around. Do it with ten programmers and you're rich.
Organizing around the average, then, is too expensive. Organizing around average means
that the organization has exchanged the high productivity of exceptional performance for
the ease and security of an endless parade of average performers.
The Tedium, Pain, and Insecurity of Being Mediocre
Not only do organizations benefit from linchpin employees, but employees also benefit
once they become linchpins.
Finding security in mediocrity is an exhausting process. You can work only so many
hours, fret only so much. Being a slightly better typist or a slightly faster coder is
insufficient. You're always looking over your shoulder, always trying to be a little less
mediocre than the guy next to you. It wears you out.
It's impossible to do the work at the same time you're in pain. The moment-to-moment
insecurity of so many jobs robs you of the confidence you need to actually do great work.
On top of this, if you do great work you gain the reward of knowing you're doing great
work. Your day snaps into alignment with your dreams, and you no longer have to
pretend you're mediocre. You're free to contribute.
Does Every Organization Need Linchpins?
Do I want airline pilots and air traffic controllers making up new policies on the fly?
Do we want the hamburger flippers at McDonald's demanding more pay because their