Linchpin_ Are You Indispensable_ - Seth Godin [27]
what wealthy consumers around the world wanted, and he helped French companies
deliver it. Let other countries find the raw materials; the French would fashion it, brand it,
and sell it back to them as high-priced goods.
A critical element of this approach was the work of indispensable artisans. Louis Vuitton
made his trunks by hand in a small workshop behind his house outside of Paris. Hermes
would assign a craftsperson to work on a saddle for as long as it might take. The famous
vintners of Champagne relied on trained professionals--men who had worked their whole
lives with wine--to create a beverage that could travel around the world.
At the same time that France was embracing handmade luxury, Great Britain was
embracing the anonymous factory. Looms that could turn out cotton cloth with minimal
human labor, or pottery factories that could make cheap plates.
"Made in France" came to mean something (and still does, more than three hundred years
later) because of the "made" part. Mechanizing and cheapening the process would have
made it easy for others to copy. Relying on humanity made it difficult--it made the work
done in France scarce, and scarcity creates value.
Fearless, Reckless, and Feckless
Organizations seek out people who are fearless, but go out of their way to weed out the
reckless. What's the difference?
Fearless doesn't really mean "without fear." What it means in practice is, "unafraid of
things that one shouldn't be afraid of." Being fearless means giving a presentation to an
important customer without losing a night's sleep. It means being willing to take
intellectual risks and to forge a new path. The fear is about an imagined threat, so
avoiding the fear allows you to actually accomplish something.
Reckless, on the other hand, means rushing into places that only a fool would go.
Reckless leads to huge problems, usually on the boss's dime. Reckless is what led us to
the mortgage and liquidity crisis. Reckless is way out of style.
Feckless? Feckless is the worst of all. Ineffective, indifferent, and lazy.
Where Do You Put the Fear?
When men were building the railroads or when Mary Decker was setting records in the
mile or ten thousand meters, it was clear that the key to success was dealing with fatigue.
When you got tired, you didn't quit. If you quit, you lost (your job or the race). No one
honestly asked, "Where do you put the tired?" but it's a fine question. Where did it go?
The fatigue was there, but some people understood that putting it aside was the single
most important factor in succeeding.
If you seek to become indispensable, a similar question is worth asking: "Where do you
put the fear?" What separates a linchpin from an ordinary person is the answer to this
question. Most of us feel the fear and react to it. We stop doing what is making us afraid.
Then the fear goes away.
The linchpin feels the fear, acknowledges it, then proceeds. I can't tell you how to do this;
I think the answer is different for everyone. What I can tell you is that in today's
economy, doing it is a prerequisite for success.
The Problem with (Almost) Perfect
Asymptotes are sort of boring. An asymptote is a line that gets closer and closer and
closer to perfection, but never quite touches.
If you make widgets and one out of ten is defective, improving quality has a huge amount
of value, to you and to your customers.
Now, if one in a hundred is defective, an increase in quality is welcome, but not
overwhelming.
Once you get to one defect in a thousand, that's pretty sweet, but certainly not perfect.
An increase to one in ten thousand as a defect rate is good enough for most things, except
perhaps pacemakers.
An increase in quality to one in a hundred thousand is incredibly difficult to achieve, and
it will get you a small raise.
An increase to one in a million, though, is so close to perfect that it's unlikely you'll even
make a million units, so it's unnoticeable by anyone.
The chart of the asymptote looks like this:
As