Linchpin_ Are You Indispensable_ - Seth Godin [80]
scheduling snafus. Others completely melt down. And the result of the emotional crash is
that these travelers do a poor job of making new plans.
The woman in front of me isn't going to make it to her flight to Florida. Planes leave,
planes don't leave. There's nothing she can do about this. But she's unable to accept the
world as it is, so she has a meltdown. Instead of calmly looking at the situation, quickly
switching to a different airline, and moving on (which would have led to her arriving in
Palm Beach only ten minutes late), she needs to deny the truth about her flight and the
motivation of the person who canceled it. Then she needs someone to blame. Her
emotional connection to the outcome blinds her to the choices that are available to her.
In this moment, she had a choice. She could remain attached to the outcome she was in
hate with, or she could have a moment of prajna, an acceptance of the world as it is,
regardless of how she wants it to be.
Forty years ago, Richard Branson, who ultimately founded Virgin Air, found himself in a
similar situation in an airport in the Caribbean. They had just canceled his flight, the only
flight that day. Instead of freaking out about how essential the flight was, how badly his
day was ruined, how his entire career was now in jeopardy, the young Branson walked
across the airport to the charter desk and inquired about the cost of chartering a flight out
of Puerto Rico.
Then he borrowed a portable blackboard and wrote, "Seats to Virgin Islands, $39." He
went back to his gate, sold enough seats to his fellow passengers to completely cover his
costs, and made it home on time. Not to mention planting the seeds for the airline he'd
start decades later. Sounds like the kind of person you'd like to hire.
The Quadrants of Discernment
On one axis is passion. The other, attachment.
Each corner represents a different kind of person and the way he responds to situations at
work.
In the bottom right is the Fundamentalist Zealot. He is attached to the world as he sees it.
There is no prajna here, no discernment. Change is a threat. Curiosity is a threat.
Competition is a threat. As a result, it's difficult for him to see the world as it is, because
he insists on the world being the way he imagines it. At the same time, he has huge
reservoirs of effort to invest in maintaining his worldview. Fundamentalist zealots always
manage to make the world smaller, poorer, and meaner.
The RIAA's campaign to sue people for listening to music online is the work of the
fundamentalist zealot. The organization spent hundreds of millions of dollars suing
people around the world, despite clear evidence that their efforts weren't working and
couldn't possibly succeed. The combination of attachment (to the world as they wanted it
to be) and passion (to spend time and money to ensure this) was both risky and wasteful.
The top left belongs to the Bureaucrat. He's certainly not attached to the outcome of
events, and he definitely won't be exerting any additional effort, regardless. The
bureaucrat is a passionless rules follower, indifferent to external events and gliding
through the day. The clerk at the post office and the exhausted VP at General Motors are
both bureaucrats.
The bottom left is the corner for the Whiner. The whiner has no passion, but is extremely
attached to the worldview he's bought into. Living life in fear of change, the whiner can't
muster the effort to make things better, but is extremely focused on wishing that things
stay as they are. I'd put most people in the newspaper industry in this corner. They stood
by for years, watching the industry crumble while they resolutely did nothing except
whine about unfairness. Almost all the positive change in this industry (like The
Huffington Post and YouTube) is coming from outsiders.
And that leaves the top right, the quadrant of the Linchpin. The linchpin is enlightened
enough to see the world as it is, to understand that this angry customer is not about