Linchpin_ Are You Indispensable_ - Seth Godin [90]
you leave behind your family, your town, your appearance? Most people would merely
change the fabric on their sofa or make their job a little better (and their salary go up).
Some people, though, have an itch for a different future, one with radically different
rules. Those people are emotionally connected to the sort of drive and visionary
leadership that organizations look for in a linchpin. It's not a skill or even a talent. It's a
choice.
You don't want your head of business development to have serious nostalgia for a
particular future. If she does, she'll hold on to the deals and structures that make that
future appear, and undervalue alternatives that could dramatically improve your
organization, at the same time that her future vision is threatened.
The New York Times was offered a deal with Amazon during the 1990s. It would have
transformed the economics of the paper and delivered billions of dollars in revenue over
time. According to former CFO Diane Baker, senior management turned it down. They
were worried that they would upset Barnes & Noble, which at the time was a big
advertiser. Management had nostalgia for a future with steady increases in their current
business, and felt threatened by a radical shift in that future.
The book publishing business is also run by people with this affliction. They love their
industry, their product, their systems, and the joy it brings them. New technologies and
business systems undermine that vision, and publishers often dismiss them because of
simple nostalgia. The same thing happened to Kodak and to the big accounting firms.
The linchpin is able to invent a future, fall in love with it, live in it--and then abandon it
on a moment's notice.
The Stressful Part Is the Hoping
Patients who were given colostomies (an operation in which a large portion of the colon
is removed) were measured on their long-term happiness. The patients who were told that
the situation was permanent, that they would need to live with a bag their entire lives,
ended up being happier than those who were told that there was a chance they'd recover
use of their colon.
The stressful part is the hoping. Hoping against hope that your plane will arrive, that you
won't miss it, that your seat won't be given away, that you won't crash, that you'll land
close to on time. Hoping that the surgery will turn out okay. Hoping that your boss won't
yell at you. All of this is nerve-racking for many people.
And the reason is your nostalgia for the future. You've fallen in love with a described
outcome, and at every stage along the way, it appears that hope and will and effort on
your part might be able to maintain the future quo.
Madison House and Passion
Madison House is a Colorado-based music management and booking firm. They
represent artists like Bill Kreutzmann, The String Cheese Incident, and Los Lobos.
As the music world comes crashing down, they are thriving. How'd they do that?
Because of people like Nadia Prescher. Nadia is one of the people who run the firm, and
like her peers, she loves the music. She comes to the shows when she doesn't have to,
works on details that aren't part of her job, and expends emotional labor because she can,
not because she's told to.
Successful musicians have plenty of choices. If they pick Madison House, it's going to be
because the people at the firm care enough to make a connection, not because they're the
lowest-priced alternative. Every PR and professional service firm can learn from this.
When your people do what they do because they love it, it works. Even if they're not as
technically adept as the competition.
Be the Linchpin Once
If you can do it brilliantly once, just once, then of course you can do it again.
I'm not proposing you play a perfect round of golf or conduct a symphony. Instead,
success lies in being generous or understanding someone or seeing a route that others
don't see. You've done this already, done it brilliantly.