A linchpin is a pin passed through the axle to keep a wheel in position. Without that piece in place, the machine cannot function. It is indispensable, a sine qua non. In his book Linchpin, bestselling author and business guru Seth Godin offers suggestions on how to become an irreplaceable linchpin in an economic system that often turns us into poorly paid, dispensable cogs.

What are linchpins? Linchpins are unassuming pieces that hold a creation together, be it a machine, a building, or an organization. Every organization has at least one. If it doesn’t, it won’t be an organization much longer. If it has lots of linchpins throughout, it will probably be around a lot longer. These are the people in a team about whom we say, “That team or company wouldn’t be the same without that person.” If you are a business owner, your job should be to find and cultivate those linchpins. If you are an employee, learn to become one.

In a world full of factories and machines, we can become machines ourselves: operating and producing mindlessly according to our boss’ programming. If you think too mechanically, you will become a cog: a taken-for-granted, replaceable piece. And because you are viewed as replaceable, employers will get away with paying you very little, and may not take you seriously. The linchpins in organizations can do the mundane, mechanical tasks, but they are artists—capable of creating value in an organization that employers would hate to lose.

The world used to want you to fit in and paid you pretty well to do so. This was the economy of your parents’ generation, which rewarded employees for staying with a company for decades. But now the economy wants to see something different from you, that singular je ne sais quoi that only you offer.

This is a call to your inner genius. Now, before you brush aside that call and sell yourself short again, know that you do possess genius, and that’s not wishful thinking. Bear in mind that no one’s genius is online all the time, and our educational-industrial complex and self-protective (but ultimately self-sabotaging) mechanisms are intent on squashing it and producing average, compliant worker bees. But there is genius inside you that even your surliest grade school teacher couldn’t snuff out. You don’t have to do anything drastic to begin unlocking and harnessing it. You can find ways to make yourself an asset even in your cubicle. It’s less about dramatically quitting your job or becoming an eccentric and more about reframing the way you see your job, less about doing different work than working differently.

It begins with a choice, a committed “yes” to the process.

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The workforce is mostly composed of people living for the weekend, bureaucrats without imagination, fretfully following the rules and waiting to be handed maps and manuals. This is the path of (apparent) safety. It is also the path of pain and quiet desperation.

We’ve become sheep, bullied and intimidated into a pen of mediocrity. This sounds great from an employer’s perspective. Who doesn’t want cooperative sheep? The problem comes when these excellent sheep have no idea what to do next. They are helpful until they can’t help because they haven’t received orders yet.

Those who insist on being mediocre sign up for monotony, pain, and uneasiness at work. Working as a cog will tire you out because you are settling for minimal pay, trying to be just a little better than your coworker. But it’s hard to deliver quality work while you are also pricked by pain and insecurity about your job. It’s hard to gain the kind of confidence that would motivate you to go above and beyond.

The problem and the opportunity is that the economic system has tried to keep its PERL (percentage of replaceable labor) high. The more labor you could easily replace, the easier it was to keep your systems running and the less you needed to pay workers. Making yourself irreplaceable is the best way to get out of the PERL trap, and it is exactly what organizations need. They need those people who can provoke, reimagine, and care enough to risk reconnecting the dots in a novel way if they want to stay in business. And you need to be a person who does those things, if you don’t want your soul sucked out of you.

Remembering that linchpins are not brilliant all the time can relieve some pressure in the quest to become a linchpin. Einstein developed the theory of relativity, but that same man could barely find his way home from work most days. Even geniuses don’t create works of art all the time. Genius creativity comes in bursts and those bursts come between doing the more ordinary workaday tasks. You could probably do most of what Bill Gates or Elon Musk or Richard Branson do on a daily basis, but there are a few minutes each day where they do something remarkable that no one else can do and they create value that tallies up to billions in very little time.

You can become a linchpin wherever you are, whether that’s on the sales floor or in the cubicle. Saying “yes” to becoming a linchpin can feel daunting in a world swirling in information like never before. With so many marketing methods and strategizing apps and tools available, it’s no surprise that most people just ask for a map instead of charting their own way forward. It requires emotional labor to do the latter. It costs something. But this is where linchpins are willing to go. They learn the systems and status quos well enough to find ways to upend them or tweak them to benefit the company and make themselves irreplaceable.

Another piece of becoming a linchpin is risking the occasional grade of “D” to create something brilliant. You can jump through all the hoops and get an “A,” but if that paper or project has no soul, then what is it really worth? If your boss gives it a “D” rating simply because you did not follow the map, it’s still a risk well taken—assuming it was creative and involved emotional labor. Mollifying your boss’ momentary anxieties is a small price to pay if the risks help you get your soul back and forge a path toward linchpin status.

Remember that people can’t hold you to the map without your permission. If you submit to the factory-like industrial mindset and stay within the preset grooves, that is your decision, but it is never too late to try something different.

Becoming a linchpin also means learning to troubleshoot. Problem solving is rarely an explicit part of any job description, but the one who can do it has much better job security than the one who can’t—even if the one who can’t is diligent and industrious.

Becoming a linchpin means learning to regulate emotions. The average person feels fear and pulls back from what he was doing, but the linchpin acknowledges fear when it comes up and then presses in.

Linchpins also learn to let go of perfectionism. Perfectionists aren’t even after perfection most of the time—they just want to be perfectly free of mistakes. But this is cog thinking—not linchpin thinking. It keeps you tied to a map and unwilling to try something new.

Emotional labor is tough to expend—it is labor after all. Moreover, it is tempting to view that extra emotional labor as optional, as a flowery superfluity that makes no real difference. We can sympathize with the flight attendant who rushes through the pre-flight instructions script without an ounce of passion or humanity. She might not think of it as an opportunity because she’s read the same thing hundreds of times and most of the time nobody listens. But when the airline’s finances are tight, she will be viewed as a replaceable cog. Her script is an opportunity to volunteer emotional effort beyond a monotonous bare minimum. People feel they are not paid to put forth extra emotional labor, but they are. Every industry involves some kind of customer, and it is your job to make their experience exceptional—even if you are not paid extra to be extra kind, generous, creative, and so on.

JetBlue is an excellent example of an airline that harnesses the power of linchpins. The company saw friendly and engaged flight attendants as the key to brand building, but Amy Curtis-McIntyre, who built JetBlue’s program, decided against giving a manual or map. She simply looked for affable candidates whom she could inspire to expend emotional energy to make passengers’ experiences memorable. She refused to make it too cookie cutter or corporate.

Investing emotional labor in your work not only benefits the customer—it benefits you, too. Making someone smile or even laugh—that feeling of connecting—is a gift that comes back to you and energizes. In our everyday lives we do this often, but we have been conditioned to switch back into a humdrum work mode when we clock in. We do what we are told, put on our blinders, and miss opportunities to bring originality into our work life.

At least initially, emotional labor will earn you little recognition or compensation in terms of pay, but there is a gratification to creating and giving the gift. By choosing to give it, you will also change the atmosphere of your work environment. Colleagues will loosen up and become more genuine with you. Bosses will trust you more and cut you more slack when you color outside the lines of protocol. Moreover, your customers will become more attached to you and associate you with their enjoyable experiences.

If you think you lose by giving, you are operating in a zero-sum poverty mindset and you will hold back your genius and gifts from others—and yourself. Bring the gift of who you are to work and you will be surprised by the returns on that emotional investment.

Sixty percent of all the world’s paintings come from the small Chinese village of Defen, not far from the city of Shenzhen. The town is teeming with painters, but not artists. These painters are extremely hardworking and gifted, but their gift is mimicry—not creativity. They traffic in paintings, but they paint as they have been taught to paint, and produce the same pieces over and over and over. If you order a piece of art from Defen, you will not be able to trace the piece back to its source. And it hardly matters who did make it.

Far more artistic were the people who developed the system of painting production, but their painters are replaceable cogs who get paid very little for their talent of rendering the same patterns on a canvas with staggering consistency.

Most artists can’t draw to save their life, but they creatively defy the status quo in ways that are inspiring and beautiful, full of passion and deeply personal. According to Godin, “art is a personal gift that changes the recipient.” You don’t need a canvas to do that. Whatever the medium, art is human-to-human. Human interaction itself is an art, and we know those moments when we witness social grace become an art: that manager who skillfully deescalates a conflict with a livid customer, the hotel receptionist who makes the weary traveler feel utterly at home, the journalist who knows how to guide an interview, the fundraiser who somehow convinces people to donate generously to a cause, the therapist whose counseling is tailor-made for the client.

If you can interact with people in a way that changes them, then you are an artist. But do you see yourself that way? Part of becoming a linchpin is changing the way you see yourself and your contributions. If you see yourself as an artist, the way you approach your job will change, too. This artistic capacity is in you, waiting for you to trust yourself enough to give it a chance.

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