Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin Flashcards
(300 cards)
1
Q
No one is a genius all the time. Einstein had trouble finding his house when he walked home from work every day. But all of us are geniuses sometimes. 59
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Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
2
Q
It’s time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map. 85
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Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
3
Q
You have been brainwashed by school and by the system into believing that your job is to do your job and follow instructions. It’s not, not anymore. 130
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Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
4
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Artists are people with a genius for finding a new answer, a new connection, or a new way of getting things done. 163
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Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
5
Q
In every corporation in every country in the world, people are waiting to be told what to do. Sure, many of us pretend that we’d love to have control and authority and to bring our humanity to work. But given half a chance, we give it up, in a heartbeat. 190
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Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
6
Q
People want to be told what to do because they are afraid (petrified) of figuring it out for themselves. 194
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Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
7
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PERL (Percentage of Easily Replaced Laborers) In the factory era, the goal was to have the highest PERL. 197
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Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
8
Q
The goal was to leverage and defend the system, not the people. 200
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Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
9
Q
If you build a business filled with rules and procedures that are designed to allow you to hire cheap people, you will have to produce a product without humanity or personalization or connection. 217
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Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
10
Q
Consumers are not loyal to cheap commodities. They crave the unique, the remarkable, and the human. 253
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Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
11
Q
you earn your place in the market with humanity and leadership. 254
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Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
12
Q
Those are the only two choices. Win by being more ordinary, more standard, and cheaper. Or win by being faster, more remarkable, and more human. 260
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Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
13
Q
There are no longer any great jobs where someone else tells you precisely what to do. 270
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Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
14
Q
Any project, if broken down into sufficiently small, predictable parts, can be accomplished for awfully close to free. 272
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Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
15
Q
the law of the Mechanical Turk. Instead of relying on a handful of well-paid people calling themselves professionals, Wikipedia thrives by using the loosely coordinated work of millions of knowledgeable people, each happy to contribute a tiny slice of the whole. 279
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Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
16
Q
The original Mechanical Turk was a chess-playing “computer” built in the same year that the Encyclopaedia Britannica was founded. Invented by Wolfgang von Kempelen, the Turk wasn’t actually a computer at all, but merely a box with a small person hidden inside. A person pretending to be a computer. 281
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Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
17
Q
services like CastingWords do transcription for less than fifty cents a minute using the Turk. 291
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Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
18
Q
The essence of mass production is that every part is interchangeable. Time, space, men, motion, money, and material—each was made more efficient because every piece was predictable and separate. 313
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Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
19
Q
first you have interchangeable parts, then you have interchangeable workers. 317
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Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
20
Q
Having a factory job is not a natural state. It wasn’t at the heart of being a human until recently. 326
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Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
21
Q
competitive pressures (and greed) have encouraged most organizations to turn their workers into machines. If we can measure it, we can do it faster. If we can put it in a manual, we can outsource it. If we can outsource it, we can get it cheaper. The end results are legions of frustrated workers, wasted geniuses 352
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Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
22
Q
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. 392
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Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
23
Q
For our entire lives, the push has been to produce, to conform, and to consume. What will you do if these three pillars change? 401
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Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
24
Q
There are two teams, management and labor. Management owns the machines, labor follows the rules. 418
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Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
25
Thornton May correctly points out that we have reached the end of what he calls attendance-based compensation (ABC). There are fewer and fewer good jobs where you can get paid merely for showing up. 426
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
26
successful organizations are paying for people who make a difference and are shedding everyone else. 427
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27
Now, the only way to grow is to stand out, to create something worth talking about, to treat people with respect and to have them spread the word. 475
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
28
You don’t become indispensable merely because you are different. But the only way to be indispensable is to be different. 481
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
29
Great schools might work; lousy schools definitely stack the deck against you. 503
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30
If you want a job where you get to do more than follow instructions, don’t be surprised if you get asked to do things they never taught you in school. If you want a job where you take intellectual risks all day long, don’t be surprised if your insights get you promoted. 518
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
31
your outlook is completely due to your worldview. 533
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32
“Not My Job” Three words can kill an entire organization. 580
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
33
when customers have the choice between faceless options, they pick the cheapest, fastest, more direct option. 614
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
34
you lose if you also race to the bottom. The only way to win is to race to the top. 617
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35
When your organization becomes more human, more remarkable, faster on its feet, and more likely to connect directly with customers, it becomes indispensable. 618
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
36
The world works too fast for centralized control. 642
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
37
Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote, “Violence, sexism, and general nastiness are biological since they represent one subset of a possible range of behaviors. But peacefulness, equality and kindness are just as biological—and we may see their influence increase if we can create social structures that permit them to flourish.” 668
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
38
A huge concern among capitalists at the turn of the last century was that as factories got better and better at making stuff, there wouldn’t be enough people to buy what they made. The problem wasn’t production; it was consumption. 698
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
39
imagine a school with a sign that said: “We teach people to take initiative and become remarkable artists, to question the status quo, and to interact with transparency. And our graduates understand that consumption is not the answer to social problems.” 711
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
40
fear is a great shortcut on the way to teaching compliance. Classrooms become fear-based, test-based battlefields, 742
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41
we need a school organized around teaching people to believe, and teachers who are rewarded for doing their best work, not the most predictable work. 750
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42
Andrew Carnegie decided that the answer to worker unrest was a limited amount of education. 771
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43
Capitalists need compliant workers, workers who will be productive and willing to work for less than the value that their productivity creates. 773
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44
What They Should Teach in School Only two things: 1. Solve interesting problems 2. Lead 790
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45
Great teachers are precious. Lousy teachers cause damage that lasts forever. 804
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46
The linchpin is the essential element, the person who holds part of the operation together. Without the linchpin, the thing falls apart. 813
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
47
Anthropologie has a buyer, Keith Johnson, who spends six months a year traveling the world, visiting flea markets and garage sales, looking for extraordinary things. Not to sell, perhaps, but to beautify a store. 832
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48
The law of linchpin leverage: The more value you create in your job, the fewer clock minutes of labor you actually spend creating that value. In other words, most of the time, you’re not being brilliant. Most of the time, you do stuff that ordinary people could do. 851
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49
In 1996, Fred Wilson and Jerry Colonna founded a venture capital firm in New York City. 867
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50
Our economy now rewards artists far more than any other economy in history ever has. 871
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51
hired someone who knew how to train people to live without a map. 934
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52
Far better to build a team that figures out what to do instead. 935
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
53
Linchpins are able to embrace the lack of structure and find a new path, one that works. 966
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
54
If you could write Marissa’s duties into a manual, you wouldn’t need her. But the minute you wrote it down, it wouldn’t be accurate anyway. That’s the key. 979
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
55
Roz and Ben Zander wrote an incredible book called The Art of Possibility. 987
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56
You can spend your time on stage pleasing the heckler in the back, or you can devote it to the audience that came to hear you perform. 1001
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
57
Troubleshooting is never part of a job description, because if you could describe the steps needed to shoot trouble, there wouldn’t be trouble in the first place, right? Troubleshooting is an art, and it’s a gift from the troubleshooter to the person in trouble. 1007
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
58
Krulak’s law is simple: The closer you get to the front, the more power you have over the brand. 1015
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59
If you think the solution is more rules and less humanity, I fear you will be disappointed by the results. Organizations that can bring humanity and flexibility to their interactions with other human beings will thrive. 1019
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
60
Donald Bradman was an Australian cricket player. He was also the best athlete who ever lived. By any statistical measure, he was comparatively the best at what he did. He was far better at cricket than Michael Jordan was at basketball or Jack Nicklaus was at golf. 1031
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
61
Fearless doesn’t really mean “without fear.” What it means in practice is, “unafraid of things that one shouldn’t be afraid of.” 1069
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
62
Reckless, on the other hand, means rushing into places that only a fool would go. 1073
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63
Feckless? Feckless is the worst of all. Ineffective, indifferent, and lazy. 1075
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64
the last 1 percent takes almost as long to achieve as the first 98 percent did. 1098
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65
We’ve been trained since first grade to avoid mistakes. 1116
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66
Dylan’s answer gets to the heart of what it means to be an artist: “Yeah I know. It’s a mystery to me too.” 1134
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67
If it wasn’t a mystery, it would be easy. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be worth much. 1138
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
68
Being pretty good is extremely easy these days. 1147
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69
So yes, good is bad, if bad means “not a profitable thing to aspire to.” And perfect is bad, because you can’t top perfect. The solution lies in seeking out something that is neither good nor perfect. You want something remarkable, nonlinear, game changing, and artistic. 1158
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70
David refused to wait for instructions. He led with his art. 1176
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71
A résumé gives the employer everything she needs to reject you. Once you send me your résumé, I can say, “Oh, they’re missing this 1191
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72
if you don’t have more than a résumé, you’ve been brainwashed into compliance. 1204
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people who have the work, not just a résumé. And the work is exactly what the linchpin’s résumé looks like. 1212
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74
Projects are the new résumés. 1216
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75
If your Google search isn’t what you want (need) it to be, then change it. Change it through your actions and connections and generosity. 1216
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76
find a company that understands the value of the linchpin. Find a company that doesn’t use a computer to scan résumés, a company that hires people, not paper. 1227
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77
You are not your résumé. You are your work. 1236
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78
There are two ways the linchpin can use “no.” The first is to never use it. There’s a certain sort of indispensable team member who always finds a yes. 1244
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79
a second kind of linchpin. This person says “no” all the time. 1247
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80
Matt Dayton skied Nordic (cross-country) in the 2002 Olympics. He taught me a simple lesson: The person who leans forward the most wins the race. 1252
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81
the brand that leans into the problem the hardest will win. 1258
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82
He leans into the work, not away from it. His energy creates energy in those around him; his charisma turns into leadership. 1282
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83
Melinda has decided that she has a platform, and she uses it to make a tiny difference in every customer’s day. 1291
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84
Author Richard Florida polled twenty thousand creative professionals and gave them a choice of thirty-eight factors that motivated them to do their best at work. The top ten, ranked in order: 1. Challenge and responsibility 2. Flexibility 3. A stable work environment 4. Money 1303
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85
If you need to conceal your true nature to get in the door, understand that you’ll probably have to conceal your true nature to keep that job. 1326
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86
Groucho Marx famously said, “I don’t care to belong to any club that would have me as a member.” 1328
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87
over time, organizations won’t pay extra for someone who merely does the easy stuff. 1337
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88
Work is nothing but a platform for art and the emotional labor that goes with it. 1341
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89
there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances. 1391
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90
He’s an artist because he takes a stand, he takes the work personally, and he doesn’t care if someone disagrees. His art is part of him, and he feels compelled to share it with you because it’s important, not because he expects you to pay him for it. 1396
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91
Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. 1410
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92
By definition, art is human. 1416
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93
A cook is not an artist. A cook follows a recipe, and he’s a good cook if he follows the recipe correctly. A chef is an artist. 1417
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94
The second person to install a urinal wasn’t an artist, he was a plumber. 1420
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95
If art is a human connection that causes someone to change his mind, then you are an artist. 1434
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96
The real artists are the people who dreamed up this system, or possibly the person who drew the first example of my little chimp man. 1444
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97
The moment you are willing to sell your time for money is the moment you cease to be the artist you’re capable of being. 1462
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98
You have become a day laborer and I have become a day boss. 1465
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99
When a day’s work does not equal a day’s pay, that means that at the end of the day, a bond is built. A gift is given and received, and people are drawn closer, not insulated from each other. 1470
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100
artists have moved from the exterior of our economy to its center. 1522
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
101
Peter said, “I don’t care what anybody does in the beverage industry. I really don’t. They’re going to do what they’re going to do. We’ve got to do what we’ve got to do. You have to know what they’re doing, but you don’t have to follow what they’re doing.” 1540
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102
mechanics—people do their art where they find it, not the other way around. 1552
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103
People with passion look for ways to make things happen. 1561
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104
In everything you do, it’s possible to be an artist, at least a little bit. Not on demand, not in the same way each time, and not for everyone. But if you’re willing to suspend your selfish impulses, you can give a gift to your customer or boss or coworker or a passerby. And the gift is as much for you as it is for the recipient. 1583
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105
There are two reasons why it’s vital to know whom you are working for. The first is that understanding your audience allows you to target your work and to get feedback that will help you do it better next time. The other reason? Because it tells you whom to ignore. 1591
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106
It’s okay to have someone you work for, someone who watches over you, someone who pays you. But the moment you treat that person like a boss, like someone in charge of your movements and your output, you are a cog, not an artist. 1610
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107
The future of your organization depends on motivated human beings selflessly contributing unasked-for gifts of emotional labor. 1619
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108
The easier it is to quantify, the less it’s worth. 1632
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109
The job is what you do when you are told what to do. 1634
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110
Your art is what you do when no one can tell you exactly how to do it. 1637
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111
why we’re so easily able to expend emotional labor off the job, but uncomfortable expending the same energy on the job. 1651
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112
Artists Are Optimists The reason is simple: artists have the chance to make things better. 1653
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113
Art, at least art as I define it, is the intentional act of using your humanity to create a change in another person. 1682
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114
Poet Bruce Ario said, “Creativity is an instinct to produce.” 1700
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115
Artists think along the edges of the box, because that’s where things get done. That’s where the audience is, that’s where the means of production are available, and that’s where you can make an impact. 1710
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116
the greatest shortage in our society is an instinct to produce. 1715
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117
The only purpose of starting is to finish, and while the projects we do are never really finished, they must ship. 1730
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118
Shipping is the collision between your work and the outside world. 1732
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
119
French refer to esprit d’escalier, the clever comeback that you think of a few minutes after the moment has passed. 1732
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120
Every software project that has missed its target date (every single one) is a victim of late thrashing. The creators didn’t have the discipline to force all the thrashing to the beginning. 1751
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121
limit the number of people allowed to thrash. 1765
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122
If you have a choice between being surprised (and watching a great project ship on time) or being involved (and participating in the late launch of a mediocre project), 1766
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123
Appoint one person (a linchpin) to run it. 1768
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124
The lizard brain only wants to eat and be safe. 1773
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125
The lizard brain cares what everyone else thinks, because status in the tribe is essential to its survival. 1775
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126
Daemon is a Greek term (the Romans called it a “genius”). The Greeks believed that the daemon was a separate being inside each of us. The genius living inside of us would struggle to express itself in art or writing or some other endeavor. When the genius felt like showing up, great stuff happened. If not, you were sort of out of luck. 1790
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127
Society pushes artists to be geniuses, as opposed to encouraging artists to allow the genius within to flourish. 1795
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128
Every time you find yourself following the manual instead of writing the manual, you’re avoiding the anguish and giving in to the resistance. 1799
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129
The War of Art, Steven Pressfield 1802
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Given the chance, the lizard brain will shut you down and the resistance will win. 1812
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the amygdala, and this mini-brain apparently takes over whenever you are angry, afraid, aroused, hungry, or in search of revenge. 1828
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In the face of screaming resistance from the amygdala, the rest of your brain is helpless. It freezes and surrenders. The lizard takes over and tries to protect itself. 1831
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133
The challenge, then, is to create an environment where the lizard snoozes. You can’t beat it, so you must seduce it. 1833
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134
the older a brain system is on the evolutionary scale (and the closer to the brain stem), the more power it has to suspend the actions of the younger systems. And the lizard brain within the limbic system is the loudest 1854
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135
The lizard brain stands by, jumping into action whenever basic survival needs are at stake. And when it is aroused, the other part of our brain stands little chance, particularly if we haven’t trained it for these events. 1875
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136
if we go down the list of behaviors that are highly valued because of their scarcity, almost all of them are related to bringing a conscious and generous mind to the work, instead of indulging our lizard brain’s reflexes of fear, revenge, and conquest. 1890
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137
The Rotterdam Zoo now distributes special eyeglasses for visitors to the gorilla area. The glasses are sort of like the 3D glasses from the movies, except that they don’t change what you see. They change what the gorilla sees. They have a picture painted on them of your eyes looking to the side. This way, when you are near the gorillas, it doesn’t look like you’re making eye contact with them. Which is threatening. 1893
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138
Public speaking is one of the worst things the lizard brain can imagine. 1899
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139
The lizard hates your genius, and tries to stamp it out. 1917
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140
Looking busy is not the same as fighting the resistance. Being productive at someone else’s task list is not the same as making your own map. 1932
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141
Successful people are successful for one simple reason: they think about failure differently. 1943
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142
Successful people learn from failure, but the lesson they learn is a different one. 1944
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143
They learn that the tactics they used didn’t work or that the person they used them on didn’t respond. You become a winner because you’re good at losing. 1946
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144
The resistance seeks comfort. The resistance wants to hide. 1952
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145
Discomfort brings engagement and change. Discomfort means you’re doing something that others were unlikely to do, because they’re busy hiding out in the comfortable zone. When your uncomfortable actions lead to success, 1960
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146
A well-defined backup plan is sabotage waiting to happen. 1968
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147
The people who break through usually have nothing to lose, and they almost never have a backup plan. 1969
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148
One way to become creative is to discipline yourself to generate bad ideas. The worse the better. Do it a lot and magically you’ll discover that some good ones slip through. 1977
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149
The devil’s advocate is actually a card-carrying member of the resistance. 1990
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150
The race to make average stuff for average people in huge quantities is almost over. 2078
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151
three biological factors that drive job performance and innovation are social intelligence, fear response, and perception. Public speaking brings all three together. 2098
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152
Attention is focused on us, and attention (according to our biology) equals danger. 2102
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153
between the rational desire to spread an idea by giving a speech and the biological phobia against it, biology has an unfair advantage. 2105
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154
When the resistance tells you not to listen to something, read something, or attend something, go. Do it. It’s not an accident that successful people read more books. 2145
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155
the resistance is wily. It works to do one of two things: get you to fit in (and become invisible) or get you to fail (which makes it unlikely that positive change will arrive, thus permitting you to stay still). 2150
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When you say it out loud (not think it, but say it), the lizard brain retreats in shame. 2182
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If you get enough bad ideas, the good ones will take care of themselves. 2186
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if you become indispensable, you’ll discover that you get a better boss. 2195
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Bre Pettis wrote this manifesto on his blog: 1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion. 2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done. 3. There is no editing stage. 4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it. 5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it. 6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done. 7. Once you’re done you can throw it away. 8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done. 9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right. 10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes. 11. Destruction is a variant of done. 12. If you have an idea and publish it on the Internet, that counts as a ghost of done. 13. Done is the engine of more. 2200
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The habit that successful artists have developed is simple: they thrash a lot at the start, because starting means that they are going to finish. Not maybe, not probably, but going to. 2219
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Each time, the force that got me to pick it up again was the resistance. I realized that my lizard brain was afraid of this book, which is the best reason I can think of to write it. 2235
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The Internet Is Crack Cocaine for the Resistance 2273
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There’s a big part of our psyche that wants to touch and be touched. We want to be connected, valued, and missed. We want people to know we exist and we don’t want to get bored. 2276
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What if he harnessed even one of those ideas and fought the resistance hard enough to actually make something of it? 2288
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The goal is to strip away anything that looks productive but doesn’t involve shipping. 2304
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Leo Babauta’s brilliant little book Zen Habits 2308
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Attempt to create only one significant work a year. 2309
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They try to do the significant project at the same time they pay lip service (and devote time) to all that surface nonsense that people say you’re supposed to spend your time on. Since they try to do both, they accomplish neither. Or they pretend their project is significant, but it’s actually trivial and far below them. 2313
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The difference between a successful artist and a failed one happens after the idea is hatched. The difference is the race to completion. Did you finish? 2318
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Anxiety Is Practicing Failure in Advance Anxiety is needless and imaginary. It’s fear about fear, fear that means nothing. 2320
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Anxiety is diffuse and focuses on possibilities in an unknown future, not a real and present threat. The resistance is 100 percent about anxiety, 2322
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Anxiety doesn’t protect you from danger, but from doing great things. 2325
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It’s impossible to be a linchpin if you agree to feed your anxiety. 2331
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The idea of sitting with your anxiety appears to be ludicrous, at least at first. 2349
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Then, an interesting thing happens. It burns itself out. The anxiety can’t sustain itself forever, 2352
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Shenpa is a Tibetan word that roughly means “scratching the itch.” 2359
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The best time to stop the spiral is the very first moment. Taking action at the start, calling it out, recognizing the cycle—this is your first and best chance. Embrace the itch from the start, but don’t scratch it. 2375
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If you can’t teach the world a lesson, accept it, don’t get attached to a different outcome. 2378
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our anxiety not only makes us miserable, but ruins the interaction. People smell it on you. 2389
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Shenpa is caused by a conflict between the lizard brain (which wants to strike out or to flee) and the rest of our brain, which desires achievement, connection, and grace. 2392
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P.S.: Never let the lizard send an e-mail. 2407
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“The odds of a plane crashing from turbulence are essentially zero, so I sit and enjoy it. It’s like a ride at an amusement park.” 2420
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The moment I stopped trying to will the plane to stay in the air and started enjoying the ride, it got a lot more fun, and it turns out that the pilot didn’t need my help in keeping the plane aloft. 2422
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When I put myself on an Internet diet (only five checks a day, not fifty), my productivity tripled. Tripled. 2451
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You can’t sprint every day, but it’s probably a good idea to sprint regularly. It keeps the resistance at bay. 2468
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I’m trying to sell you on the idea of building a platform before you have your next idea, to view the platform building as a separate project from spreading your art. 2484
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People focus on emergencies, not urgencies, 2499
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When we agree to define our success on others’ terms, especially other people who don’t particularly like us and aren’t inclined to root for us, we’re giving in to the resistance. 2520
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Do you remember what you had for lunch yesterday? If you take a second, you probably do. Now, do you remember what internal dialogue and little thoughts you had racing through your mind a few minutes before lunch yesterday? Almost certainly not. 2533
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Pacific Northwest, Native American tribe leaders established their power by giving everything away. 2561
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Power used to be about giving, not getting. 2568
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Thomas Hawk is the most successful digital photographer in the world. He has taken tens of thousands of pictures, on his way to his goal of taking a million in his lifetime. The remarkable thing about Hawk’s rise is that his pictures are licensed under the Creative Commons license and are freely shared with anyone, with no permission required for personal use. 2575
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the new form of marketing is leadership, and leadership is about building and connecting tribes of like-minded people. 2591
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As soon as it is part of a system, it’s not art. Artists shake things up. They invent as they 2597
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Art builds a community, and the community creates value for all. 2602
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When we meet a stranger, we do business. When we encounter a member of the tribe, we give gifts. 2641
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A lot of the stress we feel in the modern world comes from this conflict between the small world in which we’re wired to exist and the large world we use to make a living. 2646
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Moses. The rule was simple: you couldn’t charge interest on a loan to anyone in your tribe. Strangers, on the other hand, paid interest. 2649
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Suddenly, your tribe was a profit center. If you knew a lot of people, you could make money from them. Social leadership magically translated into financial leadership. For the last five hundred years, the best way to succeed has been to treat everyone as a stranger you could do business with. 2684
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Given a choice between an insider or an outsider, we choose to work with insiders. But tribe members are family, and we shouldn’t be charging them interest! 2694
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A loan without interest is a gift. A gift brings tribe members closer together. A gift can make you indispensable. 2696
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It’s hard to imagine two Bedouin tribespeople isolating from each other with such enthusiasm. 2705
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A critical underpinning at AA is that no money changes hands. There’s no central organization collecting dues, no fee to attend a meeting, no payments from one member to another. 2713
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When you have more friends in the core circle, more people with whom to share your art, your art is amplified and can have more power. 2741
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When you focus on the second circle, when you work to charge more people more often, your art suffers. Instead, we profit most when we make the first and third circles as big as we can. Generosity generates income. 2761
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as you give more and more to the friendlies, the list of people willing to pay you to do your work always grows. 2766
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A trade leaves things as they were, with no external surplus. A gift always creates a surplus as it spreads. 2772
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if there is no gift, there is no art. When art is created solely to be sold, it’s only a commodity. 2790
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Other people might need to consider the economic benefits first. These are people who were brainwashed by the last five hundred years of history, people who want to know what’s in it for them, people who believe there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch and every man for himself. 2810
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The hardheaded selfish capitalists among us will enjoy the next sentence: Artists are indispensable linchpins. 2814
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Three Ways People Think About Gifts 1. Give me a gift! 2. Here’s a gift; now you owe me, big-time. 3. Here’s a gift, I love you. 2826
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Metcalfe’s law says that the value of a network increases with the square of the number of nodes on the network. In English? It says that the more people who have a fax machine, the more fax machines are worth (one person with a fax is useless). 2833
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Sunny Bates is a human Ethernet. 2837
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creates value by helping clients connect to relevant communities. Her job is to connect people. 2838
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Gifts don’t have to cost money, but they always cost time and effort. 2843
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The secret of working this flight, I’ve been told by the people who do the work, is to realize that the extraordinary service being delivered is not for the passenger, and it’s not for British Airways. It’s for the flight attendant. The most successful givers aren’t doing it because they’re being told to. They do it because doing it is fun. It gives them joy. 2880
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the most successful and happiest flight attendants will be embracing their art, not looking for someone to applaud them. 2885
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Great bosses and world-class organizations hire motivated people, set high expectations, and give their people room to become remarkable. 2887
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The gift system is now a bigger part of commerce than it ever has been before. 2905
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Margaret Thatcher famously said, “There is no such thing as society.” 2906
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Society is where we give gifts. 2907
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The only people who don’t benefit from this are the hoarders. People who take gifts but don’t give them find themselves temporarily ahead of the game, but ultimately left out. 2913
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Not only must you be an artist, must you be generous, and must you be able to see where you can help, but you must also be aware. Aware of where your skills are welcomed. 2921
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Great work is not created for everyone. If it were, it would be average work. 2925
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“Thank You and . . .” If you appreciate a gift, consider saying, “thank you and . . .” 2926
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If you are lucky enough to work with someone this generous, pay him a lot, or your competition will. 2952
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What does it take to lead? The key distinction is the ability to forge your own path, to discover a route from one place to another that hasn’t been paved, measured, and quantified. 2962
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No one has a transparent view of the world. In fact, we all carry around a personal worldview—the biases and experiences and expectations that color the way we perceive the world. 2971
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prajna. A life without attachment and stress can give you the freedom to see things as they are and call them as you see them. 2981
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Abandoning your worldview in order to try on someone else’s is the first step in being able to see things as they are. 2992
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If you accept that human beings are difficult to change, and embrace (rather than curse) the uniqueness that everyone brings to the table, you’ll navigate the world with more bliss and effectiveness. 3008
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Fire is hot. That’s what it does. If you get burned by fire, you can be annoyed at yourself, but being angry at the fire doesn’t do you much good. And trying to teach the fire a lesson so it won’t be hot next time is certainly not time well spent. Our inclination is to give fire a pass, because it’s not human. But human beings are similar, in that they’re not going to change any time soon either. 3011
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The first sign of attachment is that you try to use telekinesis and mind control to remotely control what other people think of you and your work. 3022
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We lose because the act of teaching someone a lesson rarely succeeds at changing them, 3039
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If there’s no way in the world you can please that customer with a reasonable amount of effort, perhaps it’s better to accept the situation than it is to kill yourself trying (and failing) to change that person’s mindset. 3060
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There’s a difference between passively accepting every element of your environment (and thus missing opportunities to exploit) and being wise enough to leave the unchangeable alone, or at least work around it. 3062
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have a moment of prajna, an acceptance of the world as it is, regardless of how she wants it to be. 3073
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Richard Branson, 3075
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“Seats to Virgin Islands, $39.” He went back to his gate, sold enough seats to his fellow passengers to completely cover his costs, and made it home on time. 3078
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In the bottom right is the Fundamentalist Zealot. He is attached to the world as he sees it. 3084
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The top left belongs to the Bureaucrat. He’s certainly not attached to the outcome of events, and he definitely won’t be exerting any additional effort, regardless. 3091
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The bottom left is the corner for the Whiner. The whiner has no passion, but is extremely attached to the worldview he’s bought into. 3094
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the top right, the quadrant of the Linchpin. The linchpin is enlightened enough to see the world as it is, to 3099
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At the same time, the linchpin brings passion to the 3101
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There’s no shortage of panic and no shortage of people willing to rearrange the truth to preserve their vision of the world as they’d like it to be. 3123
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Scarcity creates value, and what’s scarce is a desire to accept what is and then work to change it for the better, not deny that it exists. 3128
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It’s very easy for us to become attached to our feelings and memories and expectations of the system we work in, the companies we invest in, the people we work with. That attachment, and our response to it, forces us to wish for a different outcome than we might honestly expect. 3137
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Most people who see the truth refuse to acknowledge it. 3162
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Our attachment is to a different future, so we ignore the data or diminish its importance. We don’t mean to lie; we’re in denial. 3163
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The linchpin has figured out that we get only a certain number of brain cycles to spend each day. Spending even one on a situation out of our control has a significant opportunity cost. Your competition is busy allocating time to create the future, and you are stuck wishing the world was different. 3176
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We’re attached to a certain view, a given outcome, and when it doesn’t appear, we waste time mourning the world that we wanted that isn’t here. 3178
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There is no map. No map to be a leader, no map to be an artist. I’ve read hundreds of books about art (in all its forms) and how to do it, and not one has a clue about the map, because there isn’t one. 3195
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If there were a map, there’d be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map. 3198
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Man on Wire, a must-read diary of tightrope walker Philippe Petit’s 3216
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Bill O’Brien is the most beloved banker in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. He is the leading banker to the Amish community 3236
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Here’s a banker who’s making millions of dollars a year for his bank, doing business face to face and making each connection more human, not less. 3245
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If you are working only for the person you report to according to the org chart, you may be sacrificing your future. 3275
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You can either fit in or stand out. Not both. You are either defending the status quo or challenging it. 3305
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Perhaps the biggest shift the new economy brings is self-determination. 3313
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Sing it or stay home. 3349
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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. 3392
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Linchpins don’t need authority. It’s not part of the deal. Authority matters only in the factory, not in your world. Real change rarely comes from the front of the line. It happens from the middle or even the back. 3411
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find a job that matches your passion. 3416
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your product should match your marketing, not the other way around, 3417
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“If only” is a great way to eliminate your excuse du jour. 3436
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For many of us, the happiest future is one that’s precisely like the past, except a little better. 3441
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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. 3452
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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. 3467
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Most of what people do all day is roach stomping. The little tasks that distract us from the art of the work, that slow us down and wear us out. 3502
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Nothing about becoming indispensable is easy. If it’s easy, it’s already been done and it’s no longer valuable. 3522
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Dignity is more important than wealth. 3527
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If you can’t sell your ideas, your ideas go nowhere. And if you lie about your ideas, we will know and we’ll reject them. 3556
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psychologists agree that there are five traits that are essential in how people look at us: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extra-version, Agreeableness, and Emotional Stability. 3563
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This is about holding the relationships as sacred as they deserve to be. Only a human being can nurture relationships. 3577
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The memories and connections and experiences of the person in the center of this culture are difficult to scale and hard to replace. 3579
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The Secret of Frank at Comcast He’s a real person. That’s the secret. Frank Eliason 3588
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the market should accommodate art, art shouldn’t accommodate the market 3611
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Honest Signals, is named after his term for information that flows back and forth between people. 3631
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dialogue is expensive. It takes an enormous amount of processing power to absorb all these signals, compose a response, and broadcast it back. 3646
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Because interactions so overwhelm our processing ability, it’s almost impossible to fake your intent. Sure, you can probably fake the words, but the rest of you will give yourself away. 3647
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Wal-Mart wins because it’s cheap and close. Everyone else who wins must do it by being generous. 3665
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Humans are not rational computing machines—far from it. 3675
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Linchpins do two things for the organization. They exert emotional labor and they make a map. 3686
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what makes you indispensable: 1. Providing a unique interface between members of the organization 2. Delivering unique creativity 3. Managing a situation or organization of great complexity 4. Leading customers 5. Inspiring staff 6. Providing deep domain knowledge 7. Possessing a unique talent 3687
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Creativity is personal, original, unexpected, and useful. Unique creativity requires domain knowledge, a position of trust, and the generosity to actually contribute. 3713
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Delivering unique creativity is hardest of all, because not only do you have to have insight, but you also need to be passionate enough to risk the rejection that delivering a solution can bring. You must ship. 3716
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Linchpins make their own maps, and thus allow the organization to navigate more quickly than it ever could if it had to wait for the paralyzed crowd to figure out what to do next. 3723
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consumers are seeking connection more than ever. 3733
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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. 3737
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Some fancy marketers might call this a positioning statement or a unique selling proposition. Of course, it’s not that. It’s a superpower. When you meet someone, you need to have a superpower. 3769
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If you want to be a linchpin, the power you bring to the table has to be very difficult to replace. 3776
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humility is not the same as compliance. Humility doesn’t mean meekness or fitting in at all costs. Compliance feels like a shortcut to humility because it permits us to deny responsibility for whatever goes wrong. But compliance deprives you of your superpower; it robs you of the chance to make something better. 3793
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being unpredictable in predictable ways. 3821
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poets don’t get paid. Even worse, poets who try to get paid end up writing jingles and failing and hating it at the same time. 3842
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The pitfalls: 1. In order to monetize your work, you’ll probably corrupt it, taking out the magic, in search of dollars; and 2. Attention doesn’t always equal significant cash flow. 3846
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Doing what you love is as important as ever, but if you’re going to make a living at it, it helps to find a niche where money flows as a regular consequence of the success of your idea. Loving what you do is almost as important as doing what you love, 3850
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Do your art. But don’t wreck your art if it doesn’t lend itself to paying the bills. That would be a tragedy. 3859
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Focus on making changes that work down, not up. Interacting with customers and employees is often easier than influencing bosses and investors. 3875
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The act of deciding is the act of succeeding. 3899
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Every successful organization is built around people. Humans who do art. People who interact with other people. 3935
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