How It Began

My journey begins as a response to rejection. There was a mishmash of emotions right before the fuse was sparked, and I don't want to delve too much into them. Instead of talking about the pain and defeat, I hope I can focus on how my response to this instance rejection has changed my life forever.

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

 -- Chinese Proverb

I have been working for over 3 years in my company, and by this time, as you would expect, I have gotten used to the job. A few months ago, our team of 7 was suddenly tasked with reviewing over 800 online articles and keeping them up to date. The articles are all from a huge knowledge base for an online ERP system that we supported. Even though this was not my team's main role, we had to do this twice a year, on top of all our other responsibilities.

I thought, "Are we the only ones tasked with this many articles?" I looked at the number of records assigned to other similar teams. A team of 11 only had to review 200-300 articles twice a year. Naturally I sought help from my manager. I devised a plan, and developed a macro, which I could present to management. I hoped we could all agree on distributing the work fairly.

I was invited to a meeting among the managers of multiple teams. I was asked questions about my plan, even before I could present it. I explained how the plan would go. One team lead disagreed and mocked my plan. They did not want to take some work off our hands because that would burden their team. Another team lead I had talked to days before originally agreed to this plan. However, that team lead was swayed during the meeting. No one else raised their voices to help, even if they all thought it was an "unfair anomaly" that we were assigned with so many tasks. A senior manager, who was also in the meeting did not comment at all.

Defeated and dejected, we regrouped as a team and dismissed what we all thought was a great plan that would optimize content management across two entire organizations (comprising 6 teams). We decided to do the work ourselves.

I began to ask myself, "Why in the world would a plan so beneficial to the entire organization, be rejected by management?" I knew my plan was flawless. I had been listening to business coaches on YouTube during those days. I had noted one of the books introduced by Andrew Kirby. The book was called Linchpin, by Seth Godin. I knew it was about how to become a great employee. So perhaps I could find an answer there, and perhaps a solution to deal with all our tasks.

I read a few pages and instantly connected with it. My situation was described so well, that I regained the confidence in what I had done. I was convinced that management was wrong. It was then that I decided I'd be a Linchpin -- an indispensable asset to the organization. What is a linchpin? Probably that's a story for another day. But I'll tell you this. If you want to be someone that organizations can't let go of, because they would die without you, it starts with the first step -- making the choice to be that person.