The problem is that the bureaucrats, note takers, literalists, manual readers, TGIF laborers, map followers, and fearful employees are in pain. They're in pain because they're overlooked, underpaid, laid off, and stressed out.
The first chapter of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations makes it clear that the way for businesses to win is to break the production of goods into tiny tasks, tasks that can be undertaken by low-paid people following simple instructions. Smith writes about how incredibly efficient a pin-making factory is compared to a few pin artisans making pins by hand. Why hire a supertalented pin maker when ten barely trained pin-making factory workers using a machine and working together can produce a thousand times more pins, more quickly, than one talented person working alone can?
For nearly three hundred years, that was the way work worked. What factory owners want is compliant, low-paid, replaceable cogs to run their efficient machines. Factories created productivity, and productivity produced profits. It was fun while it lasted (for the factory owners).
Our society is struggling because during times of change, the very last people you need on your team are well-paid bureaucrats, note takers, literalists, manual readers, TGIF laborers, map followers, and fearful employees. The compliant masses don't help so much when you don't know what to do next.
What we want, what we need, what we must have are indispensable human beings. We need original thinkers, provocateurs, and people who care. We need marketers who can lead, salespeople able to risk making a human connection, passionate change makers willing to be shunned if it is necessary for them to make a point. Every organization needs a linchpin, the one person who can bring it together and make a difference. Some organizations haven't realized this yet, or haven't articulated it, but we need artists.
Artists are people with a genius for finding a new answer, a new connection, or a new way of getting things done.
That would be you
Text from the book:
Linchpin : are you indispensable? / Seth Godin
