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It turns out that what we need are gifts and connections and humanity--and the artists

who create them.

Leaders don't get a map or a set of rules. Living life without a map requires a different

attitude. It requires you to be a linchpin.

Linchpins are the essential building blocks of tomorrow's high-value organizations. They

don't bring capital or expensive machinery, nor do they blindly follow instructions and

merely contribute labor. Linchpins are indispensable, the driving force of our future.

The rest of this book is about changing your posture, and doing it right away.

One last favor before you start: At some point, you may get frustrated and decide to stop

reading. Before you do that, I'm begging (begging!) you to read my short chapter, "The

Resistance," on page 101. It will explain why you're frustrated.

When the New System Replaces the Old

Revolutions are rare, which is why they always seem to take us by surprise. Electricity

was revolutionary. No one had any idea how it would change everything, including the

ancient system of domestic labor. A house like yours would have taken half a dozen

servants to maintain before electricity.

When electricity showed up in people's homes, it never occurred to builders or

electricians that perhaps people would want electrical outlets. Every home with electricity

had a few light fixtures and that was it. When the washing machine was introduced, the

only way to power it was to unscrew your light bulb and screw in the cord of your

washing machine. Hundreds of people a year died using washing machines, because the

new system wasn't particularly well organized or understood.

It's hard to describe how significantly different the postindustrial rules are, but I'll try.

The good news is that it probably isn't as fatal as a washing machine.

Who Wins?

When John Jantsch uses the Mechanical Turk to get an interview transcribed for 30

percent of the old-school price, it's pretty clear who wins. He does. He keeps the money

that would have gone to a well-(or at least fairly well-) paid professional.

And the transcriber who used to make a living at this? He loses.

Over and over again, in every industry, precisely the same calculation takes place.

"Should I pay significantly more to have it done the old way, the local way, the

traditional way, the way that pays a neighbor a living wage--or should I keep the

money?"

In our rush to build, profit, acquire, and otherwise leverage our efforts, we almost always

pick the fast and cheap alternative, particularly if it's as good as (or better than) what it

replaced.

Do you still use a full-price stockbroker? Odds are that somewhere along the way, you

realized you could trade on your own, for close to free.

Does your airline still pay travel agents a 10 percent commission? Odds are that the

airline decided to keep that 10 percent (which is greater than the profit on the flight

itself), rather than pay someone to use Travelocity while you sat and watched.

Have you chosen to shop at Wal-Mart? There's plenty of research that indicates that every

time Wal-Mart enters a community, jobs disappear, businesses close, and the base of the

town decays. That's okay, though, because you can get a jar of pickles the size of a

Volkswagen for three dollars.

Abstract macroeconomic theories are irrelevant to the people making a million tiny

microeconomic decisions every day in a hypercompetitive world. And those decisions

repeatedly favor fast and cheap over slow and expensive.

There are pundits who will go to great lengths to persuade you that these decisions are

selfish and shortsighted and even morally wrong. Books that will deplore capitalism in all

its forms and argue that we need to legislate an alternative.

I don't buy the plausibility or implementability of the argument in favor of freezing things

as they were. I think these well-meaning authors have been brainwashed into believing

that the old version of the American Dream was a right, and that