Seth Godin’s latest explores an old chestnut from a savvy, new angle. Linchpin: Are You Indispensible? Asks an age-old question, but it frames the idea of becoming un a “linchpin” in a post-global context that offers valuable contemporary insights.
What’s Hot
Godin engages a discussion about a subject that is on the tip of the tongue of every success-oriented professional.
What’s Not
While Godin’s previous books have been about marketing, ideas, and organizing, this one is about becoming an indispensable person and Godin’s recasting of himself as something of a self-help author may not be to the taste of all of his many, loyal readers.
The Bottom Line
Godin’s book takes the time to outline his version of how the old fashioned notion that an employee can simply fulfill his/her job requirements 40 hours a week and expect lifelong employment, benefits and a retirement plan. While this part of the book is hardly necessary to anyone who has watched the news in the last decade, Godin’s solution to this problem comes from an interesting perspective.
Godin suggests becoming a kind of entrepreneurial employee who works for a company, but defines his/her own place within it, positioning themselves between their utterly replaceable peers and the edge of innovation. Godin suggests that a combination of initiative, leadership and insight can all contribute to becoming a “linchpin”: a connector, a point of contact, an indispensable link in a chain.
Godin reaches into the history bag again to illustrate how Henry Ford’s interchangeable parts innovations lead to interchangeable employees. This leads to a discussion that ends in some engaging insights about how an economy based solely on expanding production and consumption has become one that is based on dynamism, innovation and products and services that feature a return to quality and craftsmanship. So to – according to Godin – is the new professional being called upon to represent values that create a diversity of ideas as well as human connections between employees and customers alike. Godin refers to this new job description as “art,” which is clearly pretentious, but not a term completely lacking in value. I can’t think of a better one at this moment.
Linchpin is not so much a how-to-do guide as it is a how-to-see manual about changing one’s perspective in the work place. Godin suggests that the average worker goes into work on Monday morning and sees a job. The linchpin bounds into the office at the beginning of the week excited to engage with a platform that is capable of empowering him/her to create any number of possibilities for achieving the kind of indispensability that is at the book’s core.
Time will tell whether Godin’s book is as indispensable as its subject, but its certainly a worthwhile read that has already become one of the more talked-about books we’ve read this year.
Check it out for yourself!
