Cogs Are Less Threatening.
The fact is, many organisations, and a lot of managers want cogs. Cogs are less threatening. Cogs on some level are more dependable. They do exactly what you expect every single time. So the argument I’ve been making for fifteen or twenty years is that the future belongs to organisations that are resilient. That can deal with change. That can do things that are magical that can’t easily be outsourced. That can’t easily be turned into AI. That is the job of a Linchpin. A group of people who care enough to write the manual instead of following the manual.
But - and it’s a very big But - we’re in the middle of a generations long transition away from the industrial era. And if you work at an institution where people are rewarded for being compliant cogs, don’t be surprised when they’re not happy when you act like a Linchpin.
One thing I can share with you, is that early in my career after a year of some of the best work of my life, one of my managers tried to get me fired. He didn’t try to get me fired because he disliked me as a person. He tried to get me fired because it was too difficult for him to manage seven people where one of them was intent on breaking rules, making rules, figuring out how things work, and six of them wanted to follow the manual.
What I figured out in that moment, was that I could stay in the organisation by working with and for other people who got the joke. Who needed what I could provide. But if those people aren’t around, that’s a signal that maybe you need to look somewhere else. Because the worst thing you can do is pretend to be a cog. The worst thing you can do is just give up and become compliant, and ask what to do next, and simply follow the manual.
Because if you do that, then you will be just like everyone else, and you’ll be easily replaceable. And the goal when we do our work is to make things better by making better things.