Linchpin_ Are You Indispensable_ - Seth Godin [70]
forever. Now, the tribe is composed of our coworkers or our best customers, not only our
family or our village or religious group.
This double shift means that the best professional entanglements aren't with strangers;
they are with the tribe. Given a choice between an insider or an outsider, we choose to
work with insiders. But tribe members are family, and we shouldn't be charging them
interest! Tighter bonds produce better results, and so the gift culture returns. Full circle,
from gift to usury and back to gift.
A loan without interest is a gift. A gift brings tribe members closer together. A gift can
make you indispensable.
The Forgotten Act of the Gift
For five hundred years, since the legalization of usury and the institutionalization of
money, almost every element of our lives has been about commerce.
If you did something, you did it for money, or because it would lead to money. Sure, you
still don't charge your kids for dinner, but you also don't encourage your kids to sweep up
at the supermarket for free. Why should they? It's someone's job.
Example: I'm going downtown by cab from the airport. There are forty fellow travelers in
the cab line. If I call out, "Anyone want to share a cab to the Marriott?" people look at me
funny. They don't want to owe me for the ride, don't want to interact, don't want to open
themselves up to the connection that will occur from taking my gift of a ride. They'd
rather pay for it, clean and square, and stay isolated. It's hard to imagine two Bedouin
tribespeople isolating from each other with such enthusiasm.
Gifts have been relegated to cash substitutes. If I give you a gift, the only apparent reason
is to get you to reciprocate. It's like giving you cash, but with social cover. The studio
chief thinks, "I can give Seth Rogen a pinball machine for Christmas, because then he'll
owe me and the next negotiation might go better."
The first problem, of course, with these sorts of gifts is that it ruins true gifts, while the
second problem is that they are poor cash substitutes. They create misunderstandings and
confusion because if Seth Rogen doesn't value the pinball machine the way the studio
head does, one side or the other is going to be upset.
Real gifts don't demand reciprocation (at least not direct reciprocation), and the best
kinds of gifts are gifts of art.
Alcoholics Anonymous and Gifts
A critical underpinning at AA is that no money changes hands. There's no central
organization collecting dues, no fee to attend a meeting, no payments from one member
to another. The act of helping a fellow alcoholic for free has two effects: First, it brings
the giver and the recipient closer together, creating a tribe. And second, it creates an
obligation for the recipient. Not an obligation to reciprocate, because she really can't and
it's not expected, but an obligation to help the next person.
And so the movement grows.
The Difference Between Debt and Equity
When someone invests in your business and takes some founder's stock, he gets closer to
you. He is on your side, because when you win, he wins.
When a bank loans you money for college, it becomes the Other. The bank is opposed to
you, sapping your resources and taking money first, not last. College loans are the ones
you can't discharge, even in bankruptcy. The bank that made the loan usually sells it, so
there's no connection to you any longer. The bank doesn't offer counseling or peer
support or even check in with you about your career choices. They just demand to be
paid. No equity investor would act this way.
There are many forms of equity, and few of them involve cash. When you invest time or
resources into someone's success or happiness, and your payment is a share of that
outcome, you become partners.
What Does All This Have to Do with You?
Are you giving gifts? Really and truly? Or are you so beaten down by the system, so
indoctrinated by it that you can't imagine creating art and getting closer to the people who