Linchpin_ Are You Indispensable_ - Seth Godin [97]
time.
We had buses and cars and planes to coordinate. Kids with passports, kids who forgot
their passports. Parents on the phone, parents at the gate, and parents who forgot to show
up.
Out of ninety staff members, only a dozen could be trusted to handle travel day. They
were ambassadors, cut off from the king, making decisions on their own in a foreign land.
The good ones were priceless.
All of our staff members were great, but most couldn't handle this task. It required
mapmaking and clear judgment, and if you hadn't practiced either, it was hard to invent
on the fly. This isn't a gift you're born with. It's a choice.
Leading Customers
As markets fragment and audiences spread, consumers are seeking connection more than
ever. In short, we're looking for people to follow, and for others to join us as we do.
The traditional model of commerce is that a tiny group defines a product or a brand, and a
team of people go sell it. It's a one-way transaction and it's static. Tide detergent is Tide
detergent; take it or leave it.
The new model is interactive, fluid, and decentralized. That means that organizations
need more than a tiny team. It means that every person who interacts with a consumer (or
a business being sold to, or a donor to a nonprofit, or a voter) is doing marketing as
leadership.
There's no script for leadership. There can't be.
Inspiring Staff
Organizations obey Newton's laws. A team at rest tends to stay at rest. Forward motion
isn't the default state of any group of people, particularly groups with lots of people.
Cynics and politics and coordination kick in and everything grinds to a halt.
In a factory, this isn't really a problem. The owner controls the boss who controls the
foreman who controls the worker. It's a tightly linked chain, and things get done because
there is cash to be made.
Most modern organizations are now far more amorphous than this. Responsibility isn't as
clear, deliverables aren't as measurable, and goals aren't as cut and dried. So things slow
down.
The linchpin changes that. Understanding that your job is to make something happen
changes what you do all day. If you can only cajole, not force, if you can only lead, not
push, then you make different choices.
You can't say, "Get more excited and insightful or you're fired." Actually, you can, but it
won't work. The front-desk worker at a hotel who runs out in the middle of the night to
buy gym shorts for a guest isn't doing it out of fear of being reprimanded. He does it
because he was inspired to do so by a leader who wasn't even in the hotel when the clerk
decided to contribute.
Providing Deep Domain Knowledge
Earlier, I argued that having deep domain knowledge by itself is rarely sufficient to
becoming indispensable. Combining that knowledge with smart decisions and generous
contributions, though, changes things.
Lester Wunderman knows quite a bit about direct marketing. In fact, he invented it. He
helped create the American Express card and the Columbia Record Club. When Lester
agreed to serve on the board of my Internet company in 1996, I was thrilled.
It turns out that we didn't learn a thing about the tactics of direct marketing from him.
Instead, my team learned about decision making and strategy. We came to understand the
big personalities in the industry as well as the motivations of many of our partners.
Mentoring is rarely about the facts of the deal (the facts are easily found), but instead is a
transfer of emotion and confidence. Lester had drawn a map once before and so he had
the standing and authority to help us draw a new map.
Mapmakers often have the confidence to draw maps because they understand their
subject so deeply.
Possessing a Unique Talent
When I was a kid, I loved the Legion of Super-Heroes and the Justice League of
America. These were comics for slumming comic-book writers, fun and sort of stupid
stories in which a whole bunch of