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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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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I’ve been reading Seth Godin’s book, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. Godin is the author of  The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick) and he also blogs here.

My plan, over the next few weeks, is to reflect on this relatively small and compact book and on some of Godin’s ideas focusing especially on what it means for us in the church.

So, what is a tribe? According to Godin…

A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea…. A group only needs two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate. …Tribes need leadership, sometimes one person leads, sometime more. …You can’t have a tribe without a leader, and you can’t be a leader without a tribe.”

Just as in the Grateful Dead community, people love to belong in tribes. It gives them a deep sense of connection. Christian communities that create deep encounters establish deep connections that last a lifetime. Just think of youth group trips or mission experiences that define that group and leads to them operating as a tightly-knit community.

Godin notes that before the Internet, tribes were local. Now, tribes transcend those boundaries. I wonder if the same is true for churches. Over the next generation, will churches need to make the transition to church beyond the local? Surely, churches will share commitments on ways to embody Christ in the world, but not necessarily the same geography. So, a church community might be a tribe that spans the globe, but physically gets together rarely. Instead of the pew as the meeting place, or even the cafe, it might be facebook or ning. The software platform might be the primary space where encounter occurs. To move beyond the local will be one of the major challenges for the church to engage in the next fifteen years.

In the same way that the church might be twelve people spanning the globe, it may also be a fairly large-scale phenomenon as well. Big or small, each type of community will have its own unique challenges.

Godin also talks about leadership. In fact the central theme of his book is leadership. Godin believes that anybody chooses to do so can lead, especially today. But you have to understand tribes, which is really nothing more than understanding human nature and our present cultural climate. The key word in the book is “Go!” Catch a vision, capture an idea, gather a group, communicate with passion, inspire change. Don’t wait, don’t dictate, just lead, and start doing it today. Go!

Sounds a little like something Jesus did. You know, share the vision with a small group of 12 nobodies and then inspiring them “Go!” and share the vision with others.

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