Benjamin Hysell – Software, Projects, and People

My name is Benjamin Hysell, and I’m proud to say I’m an artist.

I’m not sure I could have made that statement before reading Seth Godin’s new book Linchpin, but I am now proud to stand up and count myself as one of the many artist in the world.

Background

This past December Seth Godin put out a call on his website, http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/12/preview-copy-of-my-new-book.html, offering his readers the opportunity to obtain a review copy of his latest book, Linchpin, at his expense.  These books were not review copies that the publisher would have sent free to the press.  Seth mailed out the books on his dime to interested readers on one condition; Seth asked everyone who was interested in a book to make at least a $30 donation to the Acumen fund.  I went and checked the Acumen fund out and found something I liked:

Acumen Fund is a non-profit global venture fund that uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of global poverty. We seek to prove that small amounts of philanthropic capital, combined with large doses of business acumen, can build thriving enterprises that serve vast numbers of the poor. Our investments focus on delivering affordable, critical goods and services – like health, water, housing and energy – through innovative, market-oriented approaches.

http://www.acumenfund.org/about-us.html

I signed up, donated, and received my book just a few weeks ago.

::Seth posted on his blog a few days later…he raised over $108,000 for the Acumen Fund through this offer in less than 49 hours.  I’m not sure how many books he actually ended up sending out; as he states, some people gave more than $30, but needless to say, a lot of books were sent out into the world and I happen to have one of them.::

I have since read the book twice now, and on the second read through I was having trouble separating my progress bookmark from all of the other pages I bookmarked that I wanted to come back to for this review.

My Post-It Notes in Linchpin

My Verdict

In the vein of many great artists I’m going to tell you how this review ends right at the beginning.  The last thing I want you, the reader, to do is to stress out and have to read a couple hundred words to figure out if I liked the book or not.

• Go buy this book.

• Read it twice.

• Tell your friends.

I enjoy Seth’s blog on a daily basis, his posts are short and to the point, allowing me to digest his daily message quickly over my morning cup of coffee.

Seth’s precision as a writer is his greatest gift, and he has brought this gift to Linchpin by assembling themed chapters out of smaller, self-contained, individual thoughts.  These smaller individual thoughts, or “thought-lets”, within the chapters can completely stand on their own, giving one ample opportunity to bookmark them, and come back to them on a regular basis.  As you can see in the picture above, I bookmarked quite a few of his thought-lets.

Reading Linchpin was like consuming a shotgun blast of Seth’s blog posts, printed out, and bound for my reading pleasure.

The Wakeup Call

We have all seen the manufacturing jobs disappear and move overseas.  Seth argues manufacturing jobs were the easiest jobs to move because factory work is easy to describe, manuals can be easily created, and cheaper overseas labor is very easy to train.

Linchpin is a wakeup call to all of us doing white-collar work.  We may think our jobs can’t be replaced with cheaper labor, but it is already happening all around us.  Call centers are mostly overseas, programming jobs have been going to India, even lawyers are having their jobs shipped overseas.  Each one of these jobs have become commoditized, figured out, and moved overseas in the search for cheaper labor, and higher corporate profits.

The trend isn’t likely to stop.

Seth spends considerable time laying the groundwork for Linchpin by telling us how the world is, how we got to where we are, and where the world is likely going.  Seth then throws down the gauntlet by challenging us to become indispensable at our jobs by becoming artists.

The Artist Within

Seth argues the common thread between white and blue-collar jobs that have been moved overseas is they are all explainable, they can all be broken down into a “script” anyone could follow to complete the job.  Once a map is made on how to do a job, almost anyone can do it.

In Seth’s words, artist don’t follow a map, they create the map.

Artists can’t explain what they do.  Sure, artists write books on how to paint, but not what to paint.  Artist can’t be replaced, or if they can be replaced, it is very painful to the organization doing the replacing.  How can you replace something that you can’t explain, can’t follow, and can’t write a manual to describe what they do?

Seth asks, “What if we all were artists?  What if our workplaces were full of artists?”

He passionately argues that we can all be artists, that we have the choice to either follow a map and work ourselves out of a job, or we can choose to become very difficult to replace by becoming invaluable, by being artists.

I’m choosing in this review to focus on Seth’s idea that we should all choose to be artists, I will leave it to the reader to read Seth’s book to understand why we struggle as a species to make it happen.

What Does it Mean to be an Artist?

Several of the common artist themes Seth lays out in Linchpin are:

• Art doesn’t mean you work with paint and canvas, artist create, regardless of medium.
• Artist give gifts.
• Artist produce output.

Paints, Pencils, and Watercolors

Seth argues art doesn’t have to be paint and canvas.  Seth points to several examples of famous artists who worked in the conventional “art” mediums and asks aloud what would they be doing today?  If the Internet was available to Shakespeare would he have still written his plays?  Would Picasso still have painted?  Would Shakespeare and Picasso team up for the next great Xbox game?

When asking yourself if you can become an artist, Seth challenges us to not confine ourselves to the classic definition of artist.  Seth points out excellent customer service is an art, an amazing chef is an artist, a business owner who can make a million dollars a year is an artist.

I can’t draw for beans, but I can organize a team of freshly minted developers to create a data management system that organizes 50 plus gigabytes of data a month.

I can’t mix primary colors to create just the right shade of orange to paint a sunset, but I know how to architect a bare bones iPhone alarm application.

I can’t play an instrument to save my life, but I write a pretty darn good blog about software, project management, and managing people.

I can’t do anything a classical artist can, but at Seth’s urging I consider myself an artist.

The Act of the Gift

It used to be people who gave the most gifts actually had the most power, not the people receiving the gifts.  Seth spends quite a bit of energy convincing us about the power of gifts.  He does this by exploring a few lengthy examples of the power of gifts in culture, and the bond the act of gift giving creates between people.

Seth states that giving away your art is a key step in becoming an artist.  Speaking up and sharing with the community, providing something without an expectation of compensation, the act of giving a true gift to others can not only enriches those who receive the gift, but giving can feed an inner human need that could never be bought with a paycheck.

I feed my inner desire to gift by writing this blog.  I write because I want to change how our industry operates.  When I publish an article I am not paid or compensated.  My payment is the thought that when others read this blog they think about the topics I choose to write about, and further interact with me in my comments.

“Real Artist Ship!”

Seth uses this famous Steve Jobs quote it to make a point, if you can “create art”, but not publish, you are not an artist.

I have been working on this book review for six hours, I have restarted it four different times, and if I don’t publish it what was all of this effort for?  Sure, I might have created something special and unique, but no one would ever know about it if I don’t hit the “publish” button on WordPress.

I can refactor and clean up this posting for the next two days, but if I don’t ship it out the door for the world to enjoy I have not created art.  The art only lives once it has left my MacBook Pro, otherwise all I have done is given my fingers a great keyboard workout.

The Choice is Yours and Yours Alone…Good luck.

Seth provides a very compelling argument in Linchpin hopefully causing us to step back, think about what we do on a daily basis, and hopefully decide to change from being cogs in the factory of white-collar work and transition to being artists.

Seth states we are all not artist all the time, but it is his hope in this book that we will all be inspired to try to up our artistry in our jobs and in our everyday lives.