If there’s one name that should be on your radar, both as an innovator and a luminary in the field of marketing, it’s Seth Godin. With his latest release, The Song of Significance, Godin is once again challenging the way we think about business and leadership.
Described as an “urgent manifesto” about work, management, and leadership, The Song of Significance urges companies to ensure agency, dignity, and respect for everyone on the payroll.
You have the chance to ask this global thought leader your questions about his manifesto, marketing, and meaning during Growth Faculty’s upcoming free live virtual interview with Seth Godin on October 25 2023. In the meantime, here’s a brief overview of Seth Godin, and The Song of Significance.
Who is Seth Godin?
For those who are new to his work, Seth Godin is a best-selling author, entrepreneur, and public speaker, known for his game-changing ideas, inspiring quotes, and unapologetically distinct voice in the world of marketing and leadership.
Since the early 90s, he has penned more than 19 internationally acclaimed books, including classics like Purple Cow, Linchpin, This is Marketing, and Tribes.
More than just a writer, Godin is a thinker. He has transformed the landscape of modern marketing by urging businesses to be remarkable rather than just good or even great.
He believes in creating products and services worth talking about and then leveraging the power of the tribe – a connected group of people, bound by a common interest or idea – to spread the word.
The Song of Significance – A Call for More Meaning
In The Song of Significance Godin has written 144 brief essays on the pursuit of purpose in business and leadership.
“We need to decide what work is for,” he says. In other words, profit as the sole driver of success is being questioned. Companies are increasingly looking to build legacies, make meaningful impacts, and create resonant stories.
In The Song of Significance Godin says that businesses can create value, cause change, and make a difference by “leading with humans instead of treating them as cogs in a soulless machine.”
Base Culture on Connection
In classic Godin fashion, this isn’t just another business book. It’s a clarion call for leaders to think beyond spreadsheets and quarterly reports.
In essence, it’s about seeking a higher tune – a song that aligns with your company’s values, vision, and role in the larger ecosystem. This requires building a culture based on connection and affiliation, says Godin. “Culture defeats strategy, but culture is more difficult than strategy,” he admits.
With more people knowing that they have options elsewhere, businesses need to create a culture that amplifies people’s desire to do work that feels significant to them. In a healthy culture, “work gets done because it is important and desired, not because a surveillance system insisted,” he says.
Significant Work Creates Human Value
Central to this is his idea that significant work is work “on the edge”, with high stakes and high trust. It is the opposite of the industrialist’s race to the bottom, the race of productivity – of more for less. Significant work, in contrast, “is the work that creates human value as we connect with and respect the individuals who create it,” Godin says in The Song of Significance.
He says “Work is an expression of our energy and our dreams. We owe those along for the journey the same dignity and connection we would like to receive in return.” Seth Godin says significance is a choice, and the significance revolution is “unmaking” the commercial power of industrialism and pushing us to create organisations that were hard to visualise a decade or two ago:
- Places that allow employees to work from wherever they like, whenever they like
- Places that expect employees to innovate and bring humanity to their interactions
- Places that encourage employees to gain new skills and develop into leaders
Significant Organisations are Team-centric
Milton Friedman argued that every organisation must be profit-centric, says Godin. He says others have argued that it’s possible to be customer-centric, using customer service as a proxy for profits. Whereas, he argues, significant organisations are team-centric.
He says the goal of these organisations is to make a change happen and to do that with (and for) a group of people who care about making an impact.
“The purpose of the beehive isn’t to make honey; honey is the by-product of a healthy hive,” he says. A significant organisation can please its customers and make a profit as well, but it begins by earning enrolment from the team and then doing the work to make change happen, he says.
Why Should You Care?
If you’re in business, whether you’re leading an SME, a Fortune 500 company, or just starting out on your entrepreneurial journey, Godin’s insights are invaluable. They challenge convention, provoke thought, and provide a fresh lens to view age-old challenges.
Today’s world moves at such a pace, that conventional wisdom becomes outdated quickly. Innovators like Godin help us stay ahead of the curve, reminding us that in a world full of noise, finding and resonating with our own unique ‘song’ is crucial. After all, in the symphony of business, isn’t it time your brand found its unique tune?
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The Song of Significance
From the bestselling author of Purple Cow and This Is Marketing comes a new expert guide for leaders facing unprecedented challenges in a rapidly-changing workplace.
The workplace has undergone a massive shift. Remote work and economic instability have depressed innovation and left us disconnected and disengaged. Quiet quitting runs rampant, and people show up without truly showing up. Alarmed managers are doubling down on keystroke surveillance, productivity tracking and back-to-the-office mandates, when what they should be doing is the opposite - affording employees the dignity necessary to inject purpose and motivation into their work.
In The Song of Significance, Seth Godin argues that we need to build organisations that empower and trust employees to deliver their best work, no matter where they're working. If you want your employees to live up to their full professional potential, you must give them the respect and autonomy they deserve as humans. Godin offers a series of commitments leaders must make, and a list of organizational milestones on the way to significance.
It's time for leaders to make and keep a new promise, and to recognize that, as Godin says, "Humans aren't a resource. They are the point."
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