Penguin, January 2010
I am nearly always put off by marketing and business books, Perhaps it's because I never really believe I have the ability to "think and grow rich," or maybe I just don't want that to be the point of my life. Why then did I find myself reading Seth Godin's Linchpin, and actually liking parts of it?
Seth Godin has been sort of clawing at the edges of my attention for a number of years. He's a speaker, author, and business blogger with numerous books to his name and a Gladwell-like ability to push new terms into the vernacular - terms like permission marketing and ideavirus. He’s also the founder of Squidoo.com, a community website on which anyone can create a subject matter page, because “everyone is an expert.” I don’t totally understand Squidoo, but it sounds as though it's something like Seth Godin’s own personal Wikipedia.
I am nearly always put off by marketing and business books, Perhaps it's because I never really believe I have the ability to "think and grow rich," or maybe I just don't want that to be the point of my life. Why then did I find myself reading Seth Godin's Linchpin, and actually liking parts of it?
Seth Godin has been sort of clawing at the edges of my attention for a number of years. He's a speaker, author, and business blogger with numerous books to his name and a Gladwell-like ability to push new terms into the vernacular - terms like permission marketing and ideavirus. He’s also the founder of Squidoo.com, a community website on which anyone can create a subject matter page, because “everyone is an expert.” I don’t totally understand Squidoo, but it sounds as though it's something like Seth Godin’s own personal Wikipedia.
Linchpin is Godin’s 11th book, and honestly, I never would have picked it up had I not heard that galleys would not be distributed to book critics per standard operating publicity procedure. Instead, Godin harnessed the power of his enormous online network by sending Linchpin galleys out to his readers and followers, and thereby turned them into an army of “citizen reviewers.” Intriguing.
But not surprising. Breaking the mold is a key point in Linchpin. Throughout, Godin exhorts his readers to forsake the system and draw their own maps for their careers, their lives. Indeed, Godin intends this book to be life-changing for his readers:
"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."
But not surprising. Breaking the mold is a key point in Linchpin. Throughout, Godin exhorts his readers to forsake the system and draw their own maps for their careers, their lives. Indeed, Godin intends this book to be life-changing for his readers:
"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."
I almost didn’t make it through the marketing speak, the combination of pleading and preaching and purported concern for each and every one of the millions of us reading Linchpin. But I fought the urge to leave the book on the commuter train and ploughed onward. And I’m actually glad I did.
The business and marketing crowd are going to love this book, as Godin makes a clear case for changing our perception of the workplace and how we fit into it. He speaks the truth here. The information age has long obliterated the factory model and put the tools for creation into everyone’s hands, and Linchpin is front-loaded with a lot of motivational hooey about how each of us can become indispensable in the new workplace. But this rhetoric is uninspiring next to Godin’s later assertions that we are all artists. That got my attention.
The business and marketing crowd are going to love this book, as Godin makes a clear case for changing our perception of the workplace and how we fit into it. He speaks the truth here. The information age has long obliterated the factory model and put the tools for creation into everyone’s hands, and Linchpin is front-loaded with a lot of motivational hooey about how each of us can become indispensable in the new workplace. But this rhetoric is uninspiring next to Godin’s later assertions that we are all artists. That got my attention.
Godin defines art as "a personal gift that changes the recipient" and throughout the latter half of the book he encourages his readers to find what their art is and relentlessly devote themselves to pursuing it and giving it away. Art in this context may imply actual physical creation, or it might mean insight, initiative, connection. He uses famous examples of Obama poster artist Shepard Fairey, photographer Thomas Hawk, and musician Keller Willams in driving home the notion that the new economy is about gifting one's art without asking for anything in return.
This part of the book is actually insightful and brilliant. If you ask me (and you did), Godin could have cut out all the linchpin drivel and penned a long essay about gifting one's art that would have been equally (if not more) compelling than the book I now hold in my hands. However in so doing, he would have failed to reach much of his base. Remember, it's marketing - not art - that is Seth Godin's art, and from a marketing standpoint, Linchpin makes more sense.
This part of the book is actually insightful and brilliant. If you ask me (and you did), Godin could have cut out all the linchpin drivel and penned a long essay about gifting one's art that would have been equally (if not more) compelling than the book I now hold in my hands. However in so doing, he would have failed to reach much of his base. Remember, it's marketing - not art - that is Seth Godin's art, and from a marketing standpoint, Linchpin makes more sense.
