A Confession of A Struggling Middle Manager -Book Review on Seth Godin's Linchpin

I have a strong aversion to business self help books. Ones that supposedly tell you how to be successful, get rich quick, work fewer hours a day, exercise more influence on people, tend to turn me off.

So when I saw the subtitle of Seth Godin's new book Linchpin, "Are you indispensable?," a red flag went up in my head, but I read on. I have always admired Seth Godin's work and, somehow his campaign with the Acumen Fund told me this was different.

From the first page, it was obviously different.

This book does not tell you how to of anything; it simply demands you to become indispensable for the right reasons. Many of us already see the change that is happening in the marketplace. If we only lift the blinders that we have on as a business in the name of efficiency, we clearly see what customers are demanding. What we are demanding.

We are demanding a human interaction. Emotional connection with another human being, regardless of whether it is a business or personal interaction.

We no longer want to shop at a place where they treat us like a chicken in a chicken coop. We are tired of a service assembly line where even smiles and greetings are considered as "parts" of a system (for example, in McDonald's in Japan where $0 smiles are listed as a part of the menu).

The new economy of emotional currency (Seth calls this gift economy) demands more from us, but not at the humanity's expense.

On the contrary, it demands us to express our uniqueness, to do more than our job description, to create a meaning and a value in our interaction with one another.

It demands a middle manager like me to unlearn the discipline of blindly enforcing the procedures and frameworks. Even for a knowledge business like consulting where I live and work, we often fall into a trap of handing out the manuals to our junior workers. It is because, unfortunately, many of knowledge businesses nowadays are organized as a knowledge factory.

Linchpin challenges a struggling middle manager like me to become indispensable. I am learning to recognize my "lizard brain" (which, out of fear and a misguided need for self-preservation, tells us to hide and stay unremarkable) at work and say, thank you for sharing, and move on.

It is an important book that should be read by all who is serious about their career, whether young or old. I shared passages with my 13 year old, because I know the world will be a very different place when she is ready to enter the workforce. Because I want her to know it is demanded of her to be indispensable.

Linchpin gives us courage to be indispensable, share, lead, and be generous. The courage to appreciate our humanity once again. I believe that it is the only way that we get out of this turmoil that we are in.

It is not an easy book. It is not the kind of a book that you can put down and pretend you have learned all there is to learn from it. The book is just a start to live and work in a new way. It is the book to be taken seriously. Thank you, Seth, for the indispensable gift that you offer to the world.