A Considerable Speck

“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.”

Every once in a while a book comes along that challenges you to stop and look at the world around you and to reflect on the way you engage with and interact with the world. That book, for me, is Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? ,the latest book by Seth Godin. So what is the book about? Quite simply Linchpin is a concise book about what it takes to become indispensable. It’s about how business and our world has rapidly changed and how treating employees like factory workers (or doing your job like one) doesn’t work any longer. We must make choices and take action to “chart our own paths” and add value that others do not. We cannot wait for a boss or a job description to tell us what to do, rather we must just take the initiative ourselves. Only then can we become indispensable “linchpins,” rather than replaceable “cogs.”

This is a personal manifesto, a plea from me to you. Right now, I’m not focused on the external, on the tactics organizations use to make great products or spread important ideas. This book is different. It’s about a choice, and it’s about your life. This choice doesn’t require you to quit your job, though it challenges you to rethink how you do your job… You have brilliance in you, your contribution is valuable, and the art you create is precious. Only you can do it, and you must. I’m hoping you’ll stand up and choose to make a difference.

The book is well worth a read if for no other reason than to provide a few “B-A-M” moments (those little moments when you can feel your brain explode a little). Godin’s style is very easy to read mainly because he is able to condense much of what he is trying to convey into short chapters with some great quotes that one can take away. Here are some of my favourites:

• The ability to see the world as it is begins with an understanding that perhaps it’s not your job to change what can’t be changed. Particularly if the act of working on that change harms you and your goals in the process.
• Leaders don’t get a map or a set of rules. Living life without a map requires a different attitude. It requires you to be a linchpin. … 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.
• “I don’t know what to do”—this one is certainly true. The question is, why does that bother you? No one actually knows what to do. Sometimes we have a hunch, or a good idea, but we’re never sure. The art of challenging the resistance is doing something when you’re not certain it’s going to work.
• The linchpin is coming from a posture of generosity; she’s there to give a gift [no-strings support of your efforts to succeed]. If that’s your intent, the words almost don’t matter. What we’ll perceive are your wishes, not the script.
• Virtually all of us make our living engaging directly with other people. When the interactions are genuine and transparent, they usually work. When they are artificial or manipulative, they fail.
• Art is unique, new and challenging to the status quo. It’s not decoration. It’s something that causes change. Art cannot be merely commerce. It must also be a gift.
• Real change rarely comes from the front of the line. It happens from the middle or even the back. Real change happens when someone who cares steps up and takes what feels like a risk. People follow because they want to, not because you can order them to.
• 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. So many times we want someone to tell us exactly what to do, and so many times that’s exactly the wrong approach.

Some other books by Godin that are worth reading…

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WWW: Wake is the first book in a new trilogy by Canadian SF author, Robert Sawyer. He wrote such books as Calculating God, Flashforward and Hominids. WWW:Wake, like most of Sawyer’s books, is a thought-provoking and entertaining read.

Before going on here is a brief summary of the book:

Fifteen year old Caitlin has been blind from birth thanks to  a very rare medical condition that affects the link between her eyes and the part of her brain that interprets visual signals. Her condition has been untreatable until now.  A Japanese doctor contacts her with a proposal for an experimental treatment which involves an implant that will restore the connection between her brain and eyes electronically and hopefully give her the gift of sight . It seems like the procedure is a failure but before too long  Caitlin notices some very  interesting side effects. She is able to visualize the World Wide Web – each and every link and connection within the web.

In the mean time some seemingly unrelated events take place around the world. In China an outbreak of the bird flu is handled by the Chinese government by shutting the country off from the outside word completely and taking some very rigorous containment measures. In a research facility in southern California a Bonobo/Chimpanzee hybrid, Hobo, which is taught to communicate with it’s caretakers  using American Sign Language, produces representational art.

All of these events are witnessed at some level, by a newborn, growing intelligence/consciousness on the world wide web and Caitlin becomes its eyes and ears and its teacher.

The central theme of the novel is the development of self-awareness and consciousness and more specifically the World Wide Web developing and gaining self-awareness and consciousness. Since it is the first in a series, it does seem a little disjointed in places. The narrative contains a series of subplots which aren’t necessarily woven together at this early stage of the story. At times, Sawyer does get a little bogged down in detail  he goes into some of the theory behind internet protocols and mathematics and the like.  But that is classic Sawyer and it does help with understanding the plot a little better. As usual, Sawyer begins to raise some interesting questions about whether consciousness is a cultural construct (a la the theories of Julian Jaynes).

Overall, WWW:Wake is well worth the read and I am looking forward to the rest of the series.

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As I have mentioned, I’ve been reading Seth Godin’s Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. It continues to fascinate, challenge and makes me think.  In this post, I want to focus briefly on the topic of leadership (which Godin reflects on in great detail). So here’s one of the sections that have made me think where Godin is talking about the 7 elements of leadership…

Leaders challenge the status quo.

Leaders create a culture around their goal and involve others in that culture.

Leaders have an extraordinary amount of curiosity about the world they are trying to change.

Leaders use charisma to attract and motivate followers.

Leaders communicate their vision of the future.

Leaders commit to a vision and make decisions based on that commitment.

Leaders connect their followers to one another.

We’ve been talking about “sacred leaders” in religion and popular culture class, so this has tied into some of our conversations there. It has been fascinating using these elements to analyze in slightly more depth some of the leaders portrayed in popular culture – including characters such as Paikea in Whale Rider, Neo and Morpheus in The Matrix and Dr. Gregory House in House, M.D. and others. 

Not surprisingly, all this has also forced me to reflect on my own leadership style and that, I have to say, has been something of an eye-opening experience. More on that later….maybe!

In the meantime, from the sublime to the funny, here’s a commercial (I think) for the NZ Bakery of the Year challenge. It is funny and cute and does have some connection (albeit a little distant) to the whole idea of leadership!

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