Without a linchpin, things come apart! 
My wife and I just finished reading “Linchpin” by Seth Godin. I love the interaction that occurs between my wife and I whenever we read books together. We often have interesting conversations and sometimes very interesting developments in our household. For example, over the past couple of weeks my wife has started several projects in our home and on the Internet. “Linchpin” has been an inspiration. Using Seth Godin language, she is “shipping”. In other words, she is turning her ideas into action.
I like how Godin attempts to explain the self-defeating thought processes (the so-called Lizard Brain) that keep people from doing creative new things. Especially interesting to me was Godin’s theory of how our culture tends to force people into the mold of the compliant factory workers; cogs in a machine. It is the mysterious Resistance that tends to keep people in-line.
Godin goes on with many examples of people who overcame the Resistance, their Lizard Brain fears, or broke from the “cog in machine” mold thinking, to accomplish amazing things.
However, I found myself pondering the role of discipline in Godin’s theory. Godin never explicitly addressed discipline in the success of people. I believe it is the people who master discipline who become Godin’s Linchpins. Linchpins are people who are able to establish a high value goal, establish priorities aligned with the goal, and then maintain focus while taking consistent action.
Discipline is required to move forward; to ignore the disruptions or internal notions to quit or do something else.
Linchpins do not exist without Discipline!
Filed under: Leading and Managing People, Observations on Discipline Tagged: | discipline, leadership, linchpin
