Linchpin_ Are You Indispensable_ - Seth Godin [53]
fail. And no doubt, many of us lie awake, filled with anxiety about big failures. Consider
the argument that it's just as likely you hold back out of fear that something might work.
If it works, then you have to do it. Then you have to do it again. Then you have to top it.
If it works, your world changes. There are new threats and new challenges and new risks.
That's world-class frightening.
Duncan Hines built an empire that ended up being worth more than half a billion dollars
when his partner finally died in 1993. When Hines was building his brand, he used
nothing more than some postage stamps and a printing press. He was a door-to-door
salesman who wrote a restaurant guide in his spare time.
It took at least ten years for Duncan Hines the man to become Duncan Hines the worldfamous brand. Any time during those ten years, a better-organized, better-capitalized
competitor could have wiped him out. Your grandparents could have done it. By that
time, there was no doubt that what Hines was doing was going to work. He wasn't hiding
his success, it was well chronicled. No, the risk for someone challenging him was that he
might compete and actually win. That would change everything.
Fast forward fifty years and the very same inclinations and fears are at work. Why didn't
the countless smart people running newspapers around the country see what was
happening online and actually organize to take advantage of it? Why is Carolyn Reidy,
the publisher of fabled book publisher Simon & Schuster, fighting against the Kindle
tooth and nail?
The temptation to sabotage the new thing is huge, precisely because the new thing might
work.
When Did the Resistance Take Over Your Life?
When you were a kid, beautiful art--questions, curiosity, and spontaneity--poured out of
you. The resistance was only starting to figure out how to shout out the art coming from
the rest of your brain. Then, thanks to disorganized hazing by friends, raised eyebrows
from the family, and well-meaning, well-organized, but toxic rules at school, the
resistance gained in strength.
Do you think it's an accident that the powers that be wanted the disobedient and creative
part of your brain to sit down and shut up?
If you were unlucky enough to get a job in a factory, the resistance was officially put in
charge. I've met executives at insurance companies, assembly-line workers, and customer
service people who have the resistance so thoroughly entrenched they don't even realize
it's there. For them, this is normal. They think they're being mature and realistic when
they're actually cowering in fear.
Our society has carved out some professions where one is expected to be creative for a
living. And yet, even in the movies, visual arts, and book publishing, the systems we have
in place make it far easier to fake the act of creativity than to actually embrace it. The art
each of us is capable of creating is relentlessly whittled away. Ask editors and agents in
these industries for horror stories, and they're sure to tell you about someone who "went a
little too far" and ended up getting laughed out of a job. The thing is, it's always the same
story about the same guy, because examples are few and far between.
Our economy has reached a logical conclusion. The race to make average stuff for
average people in huge quantities is almost over. We're hitting an asymptote, a natural
ceiling for how cheaply and how fast we can deliver uninspired work.
Becoming more average, more quick, and more cheap is not as productive as it used to
be.
Manufacturing a box that can play music went from $10,000 for a beautiful Edison
Victrola to $2,000 for a home stereo to $300 for a Walkman to $200 for an iPod to $9 for
an MP3 memory stick. Improvements in price are now so small they're hardly worth
making.
Shipping an idea went from taking a month by boat to a few days by plane to overnight
by Federal Express to a few minutes by fax to a moment by e-mail to instantaneous by
Twitter. Now what? Will it arrive