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The mammoth Linchpin review that you will like

Posted by Pascal Landshoeft

Jul 23, 2017 10:33:19 AM

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The mammoth Linchpin review that you will like

Linchpin is a book which you will find on most marketers shelves. I personally avoided Seth Godin for quite a while as I thought his ideas were a bit too far fetched. You have to embrace the possibilities of freelancing and doing your own thing first before getting the full value out of this book in my opinion. When it was mentioned again as recommended reading in John Goodman's material to become a successful personal trainer I decided to get it on my Kindle app and give it a proper read. This my summary for you in case you do not want to read the full book 
 

Seth Godin

Seth Godin is all about getting things done and doing them properly. He is one of the most successful online marketers on the planet. So far he has published 18 books. Four of them are a series which has been published via Kickstarter. In his good old manner of creating art and touching people, Seth managed to break records yet again for this very platform by reaching the goals of this campaign within three hours.
 
I personally in the Tim Ferriss podcast in which he speaks about himself and also about making coffee, cooking for others and how his lifestyle changed since he moved a bit away from the publishing/editing industry and did his own thing.
 
He has also been made part of the hall of fame of direct marketers.
 

Bibliography

 

Ted talks 

 

 

 

 

MBA program

Seth has also founded an Alt Mba program which is a four-week online program for 3.000 USD for future leaders. During the workshop, the student will present the results of 13 projects on the alt MBA. It is an entirely online program. Some of my friends did it when I worked at Hubspot. The feedback from all of them was positive as soon as they got in. One of them had a few challenges because the program is regularly over subscribed.
 

Linchpin book summary

This is my personal overview of the book. Always be aware that this is based on my perception of reality and the filters which my little brain uses to bring it to paper. If you want to make sure that you understand it best in the way it is relevant to your world pick it up and read it yourself.

Anyone can be a genius

The book starts with showing you that anyone can be a genius. Seth Godin outlines that you do not have to be especially talented or gifted to make art and stand out from the crowd. Three questions he poses to the reader to overcome the blockades of taking action is:
 
  • Have you ever found a shortcut that others could not find?
  • Made a connection with someone who was out of reach to everyone else?
  • Solved a problem that confounded your family
 
I would like to hop that most people can at least answer one of these questions in the affirmative and so does Godin. From there it becomes easier to position all of the actions which he describes in the book. Next, he talks about the concepts of becoming indispensable and being a cog in a machine.

Indispensable vs outsourced

A good part of the book is spent on how work and school life have been established out of the need to create factory workers. The main interest for factory owners was to create cheap, replaceable labour in form of workers who were able to reliably follow instructions. This created a world with a race to the bottom which the companies who produced the most the cheapest won. However in the new economy of the connected world in which everything can be produced and gotten for a fraction of the cost of 100 years ago he makes the point that the ones who can solve interesting problems and who create blue prints for that will be the most valuable workers of the future. 
 
To become a linchpin one, therefore, must strive to become indispensable. A key point within their organisation which is hard to replace. This usually entails building connections with people or being directly involved in the development of the newest products or services of the company. Good places to start for becoming indispensable is to be in a league of your own for the task you get assigned, owning a lot of different client relationships or owning most of the most lucrative ideas of the company.
 
"If all you do can is the task and you're not in a league of your own at doing the task, you're not indispensable"

Win lose vs win win

Linchpin tackles the hard-headed capitalist view of limited resources and therefore having to perform only in win/lose scenarios. If you base your business in outdoing the competition in a race to the bottom of who can service the targeted niche the cheapest the quickest your business model will not be sustainable. Therefore Seth Godin gives several examples in the book to persuade the reader to switch their view from a win/lose model to a win/win model with unlimited growth potential. The linchpin will look out for the possibilities to make relationships binding long term on a human, emotional level which will transcend technologies and products to stick for a long time. The main tool which is being described to achieve this is creating art.

Create art

Apart from the examples already given the book lines out that the best way to become a linchpin is to create art. Art is defined as work which is outstanding, is a gift to the recipient, evokes emotion and is targeted to specific recipients. Artists do not work for money, but out of passion and the desire to help others. Seth Godin also stresses that real art is not about the idea and the creative process, but about tangible products, shipped pictures and real world attainment. One of the most impactful definitions I found in his book was:
 
"Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient." 

Making the map 

Creating art is one way of becoming the linchpin another or connected way of becoming one is charting a map in undiscovered territory. Christopher Columbus was an artist, even though he never drew a picture. Stephen Hawkins and Albert Einstein are artists as they went beyond the horizon of what was known to expand upon it. This made all of these people linchpins within their domains and time settings. While creating or mastering a task to perfection can be art, charting the map for others to follow can be another.
 
"It if wasn't a mystery, it would be easy. If it were easy, it wouldn't be much worth."

Become the best

here are certain ways of thinking described by Godin's in his book on how to become the best. To be the best he outlines that you can not merely be a little bit better than others, you have to stand out from them by a mile to be remarkable. This can be done be done being faster, more remarkable (wacky, unique etc.) or more human than your competition. To do this linchpins leverage an internal drive to become better or make the world better rather than being driven by monetary means only.
 
"Fitting in is not being the best.Being the best is standing out from the crowd by a mile"

Connect with people

Connection with people is a centrepiece of a linchpin, especially connecting with other linchpins who want to get something done. In the internet age, it has never been easier to connect with other people and become a linchpin if you start forming your ideas. In these points, i can only agree with Seth Godin. I used Fiverr and 99designs to get my ideas done. The person on the giving end will get more pleasure than the one who is following the instructions on these platforms. You either become a part of the mechanical Turk of nameless workers who produce a result for someone else or you become the person who is using it to make your dreams come true. 3d printers take this whole idea to the next step and there are already the first people who produce their own products which they can not buy legally themselves at home.
 

"In the internet age, the proletariat owns the means of production, has access to capital and are able to find one another"

 

What makes a linchpin?

 
The best way to find out is to read Seth Godin's book yourself. Based on what I could gather a linchpin:
 
  • Is Internally motivated
  • Does a job that otherwise does not get done
  • Embraces lack of structure and maps the path for others
  • Deal with fear in a productive way
  • Use the word no never or all the time
  • Can not be easily outsourced or replaced
  • Builds a team of fellow linchpins
  • Take leaps of faith
  • Don't need authority
  • Make art that matters to their audience
  • Invent the future and can abandon it in a heartbeat
 
These are eleven points. How many of these do you cover? I score 9 out of eleven and I am working on making art that matters to my audience and the ability to abandon my ideas in a heartbeat for a different one.
 

Linchpin bibliography

 
The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield
The Gift by Lewis Hyde
The Gift by Marcel Mauss
Art is work by Milton Glaser
Man on Wire by Phillippe Petit
True and False, by David Mamet
The Lonely Crowd by David Riesman
The Power Elite by C Wright Mills
The Managed Heart by Arlie Russell Hochschild
Stone Age Economics by Marshall Sahlins
Life Inc. by Douglas Rushkoff
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
The wealth of nations by Adam Smith
The Big Sort by Bill Bishop
The Trap by Daniel Brook
Weapons of Mass instruction by John Taylor Gatto
Schooling in Capitalist America by Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis
Learning to Labor by Paul Willis
The mythical Man Month by Frederick P. Brooks
Joel on Software by Joel Spolsky
Zen Habits by Leo Babauta
Ever since Darwin by Stephen Jay Gould
Honest Signals by Alex Pentland
Iconoclast by Gregory Barns
How we decide by Jonah Lehrer
Don't bite the hook by Pema Chödrön Pema
Awakening the Buddha within by Lama Surya Das
Ignore Everybody by Hugh MacLeod
The Black Swanby Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Peace is every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh
Getting things done by David Allen
Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds

Further reading

How to lose weight like a boss

 
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Topics: Think Deeper, Book Reviews