Conquering your lizard brain
I am a Seth Godin fan. I got hooked reading Unleashing the Idea Virus, Small is the New Big, Permission Marketing, The Dip, All Marketers are Liars, Tribe, Meatball Sundae, Purple Cow and The Big Moo. Godin is a maverick business author who has a divisive impact on people. To raving admirers, he is the “guru of small entrepreneurs,” while to hardcore business people, he is “a writer who needs graphic evidence and figures to support what he posits in his books.”
A new title I came across is Linchpin, another thought-provoking tome by him. Its premise is that “today’s organizational structure is a throwback to the days of factories, with interchangeable parts and interchangeable workers.” This means that if you do your job as you’re told, then you’re easy to replace. A linchpin represents a basic swing in the way markets and economies work, which were built for years to train people to fit in, comply and be productive components in a huge machine. And what has swung in recent years is that those people are now left unrecognized and unrewarded. They are mistreated, discarded, and their positions and functions are outsourced. On the other hand, the people who are doing the work that makes the company proud accumulate value and are classified as “indispensable.”
In Godin’s definition, you are a linchpin if you are a vital cog in the organization. You refuse to become an identical part, someone who merely follows a template. You hold part of the operations together. Without you, things stumble and fall. You are akin to a hardware-store item, the linchpin — a lightweight piece of material placed crosswise through an axle to prevent a wheel from coming off. Life will be difficult without it.
For a great fraction of your life, though, you have been brainwashed to be the opposite of a linchpin — a transposable element in the machinery. So how can you turn into a linchpin then? Godin offers these premises, and as usual, they are not the standard “how-to’s” but stimuli that will impel and nudge you into seeing things from another perspective
• You make the choice. Do you want to stand out or fit in? You are happier if you make the choice to rise above the clutter or stick out as long as you can; to be an apple in a box of oranges; to wake up from a deep slumber and move faster than usual. For Godin, the key postural difference is this: cogs see a job, linchpins see a platform. Every interaction, every assignment is a chance to make a change, a chance to delight or surprise or touch someone. Once you see the platform and the opportunity, it really does change things. The choice is yours.
• You are an artist. Being an artist is not taken in a literal sense. It doesn’t mean that you have to be a painter, dancer, playwright or singer. In the linchpin context, you are an artist if you stand up, stand out and effect change. You manifest a personal act of courage that creates a transformation in another; just like when a customer service representative uses a conversation to convert an irate client into a raving fan, or a corporate planner develops a new business model that uses the online space to radically change the way a company markets or sells its products with great efficiency. You maneuver, innovate, incite, lead, connect and make things happen.
• If you have a map, there is no art. “Paint by numbers is not art. Paint by numbers is a mechanical activity,” Godin avers. He adds, “If you are told, step-by-step, what to do to become indispensable, then anyone could do it. And if you could do it, it wouldn’t be worth very much.” Scarcity creates value. If you need a map, you are going to get paid less and less, and work harder and harder each day, because there are a lot of you who can do it. The challenge is for you to now live without a map, to be less obedient, less compliant, and ultimately to do work that matters. In other words, it is perfectly healthy to challenge rules, question directions or confront conventions.
• You ought to conquer your lizard brain. The part that wants you to play the game and veer away from risky actions that can turn you into a linchpin is your lizard brain. It brings about what is called the “resistance,” the element that deters you from delivering what you declare you will deliver. It prevents you from taking your project to completion, doing the needed phone calls, e-mailing a business proposal or stepping out of your comfort zone. Your lizard brain wants you to stay put in what you consider a danger-free zone, and at the earliest sign of trouble, gives you all types of excuses why you can’t accomplish what you set out to do. “It plants in your head that others will laugh at your ideas, criticize an article you wrote, or bamboozle a blog post you created.” The only real way to prevent your lizard brain from taking over your life, he adds, is to complete things even when it feels uncomfortable.
• You have to love your job. If you don’t love your job, not only will you be fed up and ruined the rest of your personal life, you are also less likely to be successful in business as well. Essential to loving your job are transparency in your motives, excellence in your judgment, and steadfastness in delivering your promises. If you are not willing to trade that joy for a few bucks, stick to your principles and defend them to the death. And here’s the cool irony: the more you do that, the more money you make!
• Your “Emotional Labor.” It is doing your work when you don’t feel like it. Mostly, Godin is talking about doing the difficult work of bringing your very best self to each interaction, because to do otherwise is a mortal sin. “Work is nothing but a platform for art and the emotional labor that goes with it,” he underscores. Every day you spend doing work that you don’t love, you give up value and a bit of your life. On the other hand, if you are engaged in work that allows you to lead, make change, connect and create tiny breakthroughs, you increase your worth and regain and sustain your life. You are able to bring disruptive elements, to transform the company from a wannabe to a challenger, or raise the bar higher and encourage people across the company to jump higher.
• Your fear is a clue that you’re getting close to doing something important. Fear is a complicated word. It comes in various shapes and configurations. There are decent fears and explicit fears: getting sick, losing a loved one, getting fired from a job or eating street food. These fears are there to be dealt with. On the other end, there are phony, make-believe fears: being laughed at, making a mistake, or not fitting in. Check what’s holding you back. Godin suggests that you throw your fears out the window. Or turn them into opportunities that can open up a whole new world of relationships, experiences and successes.
• You give away more, you get back more. Godin iterates that this is actually a secret plan to have what you want, need and hope for, because the market — your bosses, recruitment companies, client — love freebies, and they’ll stand in line for more, bid for more, and pay for more. If you’re the one who can deliver it, you’re in on a better deal. Be openhanded, create art, make connections, pick up work that matters and you don’t have to worry about making a living. The secret of a potlatch — a ceremony of feasting among Native Americans on the northwest coast of North America — is that the big chief offers gifts, or sometimes destroys wealth, but gains prestige in the process. He gives away everything today and he’ll be even richer next week.
Godin’s works are typically not self-help or instructional manuals. As one interviewer mentions, he does not advise people what to do. He pushes people to decide. It may sound like a faint disparity, but it sure is an important one.
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Linchpin and most of Seth Godin’s works are available at National Book Store.
