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him navigate an e-mail system. If you're a marketer unable to leverage your skills by

using online tools, you're merely linked to the machines owned by the corporation. That's

power they don't deserve.

The world just gave you control over the means of production. Not to master them is a

sin.

On Strike for a Better Future

Jacqui Brown asked me what would have happened if, in 1990, the UAW had gone on

strike against the auto companies.

What if, she wondered, the unions had gone on strike, not over wages or work rules but

because the car companies weren't being innovative enough? What if they had walked out

not over a contract dispute but because the industry refused to challenge the status quo

and reinvent itself?

Hard to imagine, isn't it?

The work-hard mindset, combined with the us/them mindset, is so baked into the way

that labor (that's most of us) deals with management (that's the boss) that it's

inconceivable to us that organized labor would care enough about management's

unwillingness to think differently that they would strike over it.

But what if they had? What if the culture of Detroit had been jolted twenty years ago and

the parties involved had not set out to maximize return on machines but instead had

focused on creating interactions and innovations that people would have chosen to pay

for?

Obviously, it's too late to pull that off with the same power that it could have had then.

But what about your boss or your industry? What happens when we acknowledge that the

indispensable job is the only one worth doing, that the remarkable product is the only one

worth paying extra for?

If your organization won't live without a map, can you change it? If you can't, should you

leave?

A Timid Trapeze Artist Is a Dead Trapeze Artist

When big change hits, it is rarely gradual.

A hurricane hits but the levee holds.

Then another one hits and the levee holds.

There's no change from a normal day.

Then a big one hits and the levee breaks.

One day a system works; the next, it's underwater. The challenge here is that we can see

the changes coming and we try to deal with them by making incremental changes, by

being timid, by waiting to see what happens. So by the time what is going to happen

happens, we're toast.

In the circus, the only way to make it as a trapeze artist is to leap. And what the linchpin

who leads change is able to do is just that: leap.

When industries make transitions, 90 percent of the people squander their momentum,

waste their resources, and grudgingly tiptoe from the perfect sector/job/market they were

in and try to make their way over to the new opportunity. And along the way, those 90

percent are outfoxed, outgunned, and outwitted by the brave few.

This new American Dream I'm talking about, this revolution in relevance, in mattering, in

interacting--there isn't room for everyone, not yet anyway. Instead, we'll keep slots open

until we have enough indispensable people, until we have found the few people willing to

abandon their resumes, throw out the rule book, and make a difference.

Then we'll get back to work.

How Big Is Your Badge?

I gave a talk to one hundred top people at the Food and Drug Administration. If you think

that the ideas in this book are only for small start-ups and that big companies are exempt,

consider the vast bureaucracy that we call the Federal Government.

The best people in government are working desperately to find and challenge and

leverage their linchpins. They understand that the FDA's slow-approval, bureaucratic,

nongenomic map is long gone, that innovation is desperately needed and they have to

hurry.

During the Q&A after my talk, an enforcement officer raised his hand and said, "They

want us to invent a new future and to lead tribes and to make a difference, but we don't

have any authority. I can't get anything done without authority."

This from a man who wears a uniform and carries a badge.

I said, "How much bigger do you need your badge to be?"

The fact is,