Linchpin
March 14, 2010 4:04 pm Books, StrategyLinchpin, Seth Godin
I was horrified when I read that Seth Godin had written a book about becoming indispensable! Why?
Well, every new job I’ve started I find someone who has made themselves ‘indespensible u’,sually by coding themselves into every system there is; email gets sent to them, only they know the logon, there is no documentation (I hate it too, but none!). They have become such an integral part of the system that nothing can happen without them, everything fails if they don’t logon one morning! I, on the other hand have been trying to make myself dispensable, trying to code myself out of a job, make each system so good I’m not needed*. So to write a book extolling the virtues of becoming indispensable shocked me, especially from Seth Godin! I was so infuriated I went out and bought it, I had to find out why.
How wrong was I!
This book explains why we don’t need those people any more (I’ll call them Lynchpins – because they kill the projects they work on) he refers to them as ‘factory workers’, once you figure out the system (map) anyone can do that job it’s monkeys pressing buttons, and why by coding myself out of a job, by making the systems as good as we possibly can I’m making myself indispensable! As when any other projects come up, it’s me they want to do it, I learn more, I have a more interesting job and everyone gains.
I would say that not all the concepts in the book are new (and he doesn’t claim that they are), I can relate some of these back to Enterprise Tuesday sessions, Predictably Irrational et al and Paul Arden’s books (especially Whatever you think think the opposite). But the way he has assembled these threads, and many others, into a manifesto of how we need to work is amazing. It is an inspiring book, that I nearly put down because I felt by reading it I may actually be procrastinating from what I could be doing! It’s not often that I find business books to be as engrossing as a thriller but I just had to keep reading this.
Putting his words into practice may not be easy for some (me included) but realising that in some cases it’s just the ‘Lizard brain’ trying to keep everything steady, and realising how much better you can make life for yourself and your work colleagues, I think it’s well worth putting the effort in.
*okay so writing a system that will run itself is possibly a bit far fetched but one that doesn’t require constant and unnecessary attention, and one where the attention it does require can be done by anyone.