I’m reading Linchpin, the newest book released by Seth Godin. Barely the 4th Kindle-short page into it, he asks,

“What if you could learn a different way of seeing, a different way of giving, a different way of making a living? And what if you could do that without leaving your job?”

Those are the key questions we all should be asking ourselves, no matter what job we’re in. The world we work in today isn’t the same as it was a short three or four years ago, and we’re not in a cycle this time: There’s no going back. The rules have changed, and we’ve got to play the business game better, and much more independently, if we want to survive well enough to remain in it. It’s downright foolish for anyone collecting their income via a paycheck to place bets on their ongoing job security.

Unless… they begin to work ON their business, and not just passively IN it.

Yes, this is an extra post for me today. In the four o’clock hour this afternoon, the news broke about the sale of The Honolulu Advertiser.

I’ve been following tweets on Twitter, reading blog posts and the online news stories, and listening to the evening news on television, and there is so much gut-wrenching anguish being expressed; it’s incredibly sad. I sincerely do feel for those whose only thought tonight is about their job, as they wonder how much longer they might have it.

From where I sit however, (and take it from me, we who blog for The Honolulu Advertiser are not insiders by any stretch of the imagination) I am pretty amazed that anyone is surprised. Something had to happen; the writing has been on the wall for a while now for newspapers throughout the country, and no one could have possibly believed that The Honolulu Advertiser or the Star Bulletin would long survive unless something was to change.

Unless something, or someone was to change.

It all comes down to this: We cannot be passive employees anymore. No one can.

You can’t even be a star at your job, and have that be enough, if you cannot articulate how what you do is indispensable to the business model of your employer, AND that you in particular are indispensable as the single best person doing it.

If you have the attitude that making a business profitable is not your job, and that it is the responsibility of your boss, or a business owner, or a board of directors, or anyone else in some corner office, you’re wrong. Dead in the water wrong. You’re a sitting duck waiting to be a victim of someone else’s decisions about how your business works best (and “best” always means most profitably). The brutal truth is that corner-office person may not have your interests at heart.

Sadly, they could have your best interests at heart, but they have financial obligations too. They have pressures you aren’t aware of, and from where they sit, they may not see the business model fixes that you see, and that you could be shining a bright light on as a necessary adjustment which would help.

Every working person must work ON business profitability and sustainability with and for their employer. No one has the luxury of passively working IN a business anymore, unless they are willing to put their livelihood in someone else’s hands and take their chances.

We’ve been talking about this for a while now: From January 4, 2009:

That sage advice of fulfill the biggest need is still the best advice I can give you.

Put yourself in the shoes of someone with the ability to hire you and keep paying you: What are they looking for, and why should they hire you, unless they are sure you’ll deliver what they need?

Fulfill the Biggest Need

There are two things business owners are focused on right now, and they go together:

a) Boosting cash flow quickly
b) Making customers deliriously happy

Said another way, cash is King and a paying customer’s loyalty is Queen.

To be blunt, these two things were not the priority for most managers before our current economic recession. Most managers were focused on making everyone else happy (employees, peers, the boss, vendors, suppliers and other partnerships). They were preoccupied with organizational systems and processes, most of which need to be reinvented right now, not maintained. Why should any business owner maintain something that isn’t working?

Business is, and has always been, about money and about the value add for a customer that results in market share (i.e. brand penetration). Those are not bad things, however this recession has made that truism blatantly real and completely unavoidable for every single person in a company – you can’t departmentalize them anymore as the responsibility of the sales and marketing people, or those in customer service who “directly touch the customer.”

From what I understand, and again, I only hear what’s on the news and in my Twitter stream right now, “The sale is subject to regulatory and other approvals and is expected to close in the second quarter of 2010.”

If you work for one of these two newspapers, that is the window of time you have left to prove that you are a star, an indispensable star, and that the surviving newspaper needs you badly. You are closer to so many of the answers your leaders need, and even though I don’t know the man, and have never met him, I’d bet that David Black, chairman of OPI would agree. If you have answers on the business model that will work, he’ll want to hear them.
(Update: You can read “A word from David Black” at the Star Bulletin.)

I wish you all well, I truly do, for it would be tremendous for all of us to have journalism shine brighter than it ever has before, and that IS what you are capable of. Time to deliver.

Please know that I am not saying you did not deliver good work before. The question is if what you delivered makes you indispensable, and will be part of journalism's winning formula in our all-too-near future.

Friday morning update: I think John Temple says this very well: He shares the Hō‘imi viewpoint we recently spoke of here.

I’m too busy building something new to look back. And that’s the good news.

I feel so lucky to be here. I feel liberated by not having the tug of the newspaper holding us down as we imagine what the future of journalism might look like. I have only a map of where we’re going and I don’t know all the people I’ll be going with, but each day I get to put one foot in front of the other and help us try to find our way.

I would encourage others to do the same. Don’t abandon your belief in the importance of the work or your dream of doing work better than anything you’ve done until now.

Yes, the announcement Thursday in Honolulu was probably another grave marker along the road to doom for newspapers. But I feel even more strongly today than a year ago that what we should be thinking about reinventing is journalism, not newspapers. I still love newspapers - I read three a day in print - and I admire the work that many are still doing at them. To those who can still work at them, and to their owners, I would just ask that you take more chances. Just because something used to be a certain way doesn’t mean it always has to be that way.

And to those at both Honolulu papers, I would tell you what I told our staff when Scripps announced the Rocky was for sale. Don’t waste the time you have. Do the stories you’ve always wanted to do. You won’t regret it. In the end, that’s what it’s all about.

Read in entirety here: “One year later” at Temple Talk