Switch + Linchpin: More than the Sum of their Parts
After having recently read Seth Godin’s Linchpin: Are You Indespensible, I’m just finishing up Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath. Both books are great reads by themselves, but I think that adding them together makes a more powerful combination than they are separately.
Godin sets a great vision of why it’s important to become indispensable (or at least not first on the firing line when times get tough) in the new economy. But while he provides general characteristics of what makes a Linchpin and broad suggestions of how to become one, he doesn’t lay out the path (people who have already read Switch get this first clue). More likely than not it will require a change in an individual’s behaviors to actually become one. That’s where Switch comes in.
Predictably, and perhaps sadly, I saw many familiar storylines in Switch – some related to companies I’ve worked for and others related to my own work-style. But Switch gives the reader a framework in which to effect the changes called for in Linchpin – both for themselves and how to create leverage withing their organizations. The approaches in Switch should be especially useful in cases where you have access to limited resources to move your agenda forward, which I would imagine is pretty standard fare for most people.
Amazon does list both books under the “Customers who bought X also bought Y”, but I didn’t see a special deal to buy the two books together on Amazon, but I’d suggest that you do anyway.
Have you read Linchpin or Switch yet?
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