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Degrees of Freedom This is important. One of the easy things about riding the train is that there aren’t many choices. The track goes where the track goes. Sure, sometimes there are junctions and various routes, but generally speaking, there are only two choices—go or don’t go. Driving is a little more complicated. In a car you can choose from literally millions of destinations. Organizations are far more complex. There are essentially an infinite number of choices, endless degrees of freedom. Your marketing can be free or expensive, online or offline, funny or sad. It can be truthful, emotional, boring, or bland. In fact, every marketing campaign ever done has been at least a little different from every other one. The same choices exist in even greater number when you look at the microdecisions that go on every day. Should you go to a meeting or not? Shake hands with each person or just start? Order in fancy food for your guests or go for a walk together because the weather is sunny. . . . In the face of an infinite sea of choices, it’s natural to put blinders on, to ask for a map, to beg for instructions, or failing that, to do exactly what you did last time, even if it didn’t work. Linchpins are able to embrace the lack of structure and find a new path, one that works.
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