Let me start this review by saying that I have been a huge fan of Seth Godin for a long time. I have read most of his books, and all of them have been very valuable in building my various business ventures and learning about the internet-based economy of the future. (Keep in mind that, as William Gibson said, “…the future is already here. It’s just not very evenly distributed.“)

Linchpin is different. It is less of a business book, more of a personal development book. Like Tribes before it, Linchpin describes the essential qualities needed for success in the world to come but it is not an instruction manual. Linchpin will be generally available on 26 January, you can pre-order your copy from my Amazon link here – Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

There are 2 very special things about this book, the first is how Godin has gone about marketing it, the second is how it pulls together a lot of information-threads and weaves them into a new design.

Internet Marketing and Philanthropy

As part of the launch of this book, Seth Godin is sending out 3,000 copies to the first 3,000 people to donate at least $30 USD to the Acumen Fund. He wrote about it on his blog (Get a Review Copy of Linchpin…) and it only took 49 hours for the stock to run out, raising $108,000 for Acumen. 49 hours. That is amazing. Both the speed in which Godin’s fans (like me, that is where I got my copy) snapped at the chance to get his new book before everyone else, and the fact that some people paid more than the $30 minimum.

Why did he do it this way? As Godin wrote in his original blog post:

… because you have a network. You blog. You tweet. You talk things up at meetings or recommend things to friends.

And there are a lot more than a hundred of you.

One solution is to give everyone a free copy. Publishers and authors could do this and try to make money doing something else. Another solution is to let the best of this group, the most committed, the most interested… let them stand up and identify themselves.

So, that’s what we’re experimenting with on Linchpin. For a select group of motivated readers, I want to send you a copy of Linchpin (at my expense) three weeks before anyone else can buy one. My US publisher is not sending free review copies to magazines (the few that are left), newspaper editors, TV shows, any of the usual media suspects. Instead, we’re allowing people like you to raise their hands and, if they like the book, asking them to tell the world about it in January.

So I suppose that this means that I am already a sort of Linchpin…and after reading the book, I am convinced that if I am not one quite yet, I certainly want to be.

The War Against Excellence

The first half of the book is a bit of a history lesson where Godin describes, in horrifying detail, exactly how the government, business world, and public school systems have let down generations of students. This blog is not the place where I want to discuss my feelings on this topic, I have done a lot of reading and research on the history and politics of this situation – if you ‘d like to talk about it more, send me an e-mail.

This is some very important reading, but the really important stuff is in the second half of the book. This is where Godin describes what you need to do to win the War Against Excellence and “create your own stimulus”.

The Resistance vs Your Creativity

The second half of the book, starting on page 101, is where it gets exciting and inspirational. First, Godin describes the effect of your “Lizard Brain” on your creativity, your motivation, your ability to actually finish things.
Your lizard brain is the oldest part of your brain. It’s the part that keeps you alive while you are thinking about other things, and the part that keeps humanity going via procreation, etc. The lizard brain is “the reason you’re afraid, the reason you don’t do all the art you can, the reason you son’t ship when you can. The lizard brain is the source of the resistance.”

Godin writes quite a bit about the source of this fear – why we don’t do the things we are capable of and why we prefer safety to actually getting up off our butts and doing the work. A few of the examples and anecdotes that he shares hit pretty close to home for me, and I suspect they will for you as well. This is good. It means that we have the same problems as everyone else and that we are able to see them. Which means that we can change them.

Measure the Resistance and Direct Your Creativity

There is a lot of talk these days about the ROI of various parts of a business: staffing levels, marketing efforts, social media engagement. Godin describes how his own resistance made him stop writing this book “a dozen times”, which meant that his lizard brain was afraid of the book, which inspired Godin to pick it up again. The greater the resistance to a project, an idea, the work that you do – likely means that the return is greater as well. It means that it is something that scares you deep inside and your safety-seeking lizard brain wants to run away as fast as it can.

Remember, doing your work is not the same as doing your job. Your work comes from a passion to create something amazing. Your job is (or maybe not, and if not, for Pete’s sake, change it!) where that happens.

Where is all of this going?

The title of the book is Linchpin: Are you indispensible? The core message of the book is this: In order to thrive in the new economy you must become a Linchpin, that part of your organization that is utterly invaluable – the part that holds the entire enterprise together.
The problem is, there is no one set of instructions for this.

• There is no guidebook.
• There is no map.
• There is no checklist.

Godin does share some stories about people that have done amazing things, and they share a few qualities that anyone can nurture and develop. Of, course, these qualities will vary from person to person and according to your field of endeavor.

A short list of the basics:

• Impatience with things “as they are”
• Discernment, the ability to really see what is happening
• Motivation to create something special
• The ability to make a genuine connection
• A greater desire to give than to receive

I believe that most people would agree that these are simply “good qualities” for anybody to have. But as the old saying goes, “Anybody could have, everybody should have, nobody did.”

That is the heart of the matter. We all need to take a good, hard look at what we do, our work not our jobs, and make a conscious decision to become indispensable. Read the book. Think about your work and your fear.

Then do something about it. I know that I will. Stay tuned.

Extras: You can see people Tweeting about #Linchpin here and learn a lot more about it at the Squidoo Lens for Linchpin Reviews. Check out the audio excerpt here – You Are a Genius.

You can pre-order the book via Amazon, and help me pay for hosting too:

[Editor's note to the FTC: I did receive a copy of this product for free in exchange for a donation to the Acumen Fund and writing a review, no other compensation or expectation of a positive review was expressed or implied.]

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