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Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us
Seth Godin
By
Published: Jan 01, 2008
Category:
Non Fiction
Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us
Seth Godin
If American Express had said yes, you wouldn’t be reading this. Not unless you had a Platinum or Black card. But despite high-level connections at Amex, I could never find The Right Person to pitch my dream of being a personal cultural concierge for American Express’s most valued clients. Not that The Right Person was likely to do more than pat me on the head and send me on my way — large companies are famous for knee-jerk rejections of ideas from Outside.
Instead of sulking, I remembered something that marketing guru Seth Godin had said: “Do you want to have a business plan — or a business?” So I took the Godin Challenge: I stopped looking for sponsors and launched this web site. My mother and brother showed up. So did my wife and a few friends. Soon I seemed to have a little community of people who liked their cultural colors a bit outside the lines.
Seth Godin, who’s never at a loss for a phrase, would call this community a “tribe” — a “group with a shared interest and a way to communicate”. He’d call me its leader. He likes tribes and leaders — in fact, he thinks they’re the salvation of the world.
And his message, in this under-sized, 140-page rant, is that you are a potential leader of a trible — and, dammit, you really ought to get to it.
You may think he’s talking about Internet tributes, and you wouldn’t be wrong. Facebook, Twitter, the comments areas of HuffingtonPost.com and Gawker.com — they’re big, robust, highly visible gathering places. But it’s not all about virtual communities. The Grateful Dead formed a tribe. And so did the kids who shop at Abercrombie.
All it takes to start one is an idea and a leader.
That’s the kindergarten summary of Tribes. There’s more to it. First is resistance to tribes — and resistance to stepping up and leading. The thing is, as Godin and everyone smart has noted, we really don’t like change. And, for many of us, the experience of speaking up and taking a contrarian position has not been pleasant — you’re branded as a troublemaker, you get fired.
On the other hand, we are in the midst of a global crisis. The old rules don’t apply. “When I started, I was working in a status quo, static world, where the future was expected to be just like the past, but a little sleeker,” Godin has said. “Now, chaos is the new normal. That makes it easier to sell an idea but a lot harder to sound like a crackpot.”
So the organizations that win now, Godin claims, disrupt the status quo.
And top management, he says, wants leaders (he calls them “heretics”) who will create change before change happens to them. And by leaders, he doesn’t mean charismatic firebrands or high-maintenance rock stars. He means people who have ideas, who can communicate them, and — and this isn’t small — can listen to others.
I half-agree. Perhaps people will gather around someone who proposes change they can believe in, but in an organization in which lots of people are proposing change, the first result is likely to be noise and confusion. The second is that management gets impatient and tells everyone to shut up. Meanwhile, the loudmouths and idealists have identified themselves — when it’s time to downsize again, aren’t they the ones most likely to be shown the door?
I would hate for someone to read this book, get fired up and lose his/her job.
Seth Godin would say that if that happens, you weren’t doing a job worth having. You’re wasting your life. Got an idea that consumes you? Get busy! Have faith!
Between pep talks, Godin spotlights leaders and leadership styles he admires. He doesn’t offer any details; the book seems to have been written in a state of white heat, with the auther moving so fast he can’t slow down to pluck some facts and how-tos from the roadside. It may be Godin doesn’t care to know that information — that would smack too much of writing a change book for dummies.
Seth Godin doesn’t do hand-holding.
No, he’s the friend who screams at you to get on with it. He’s the irritant, the grain of sand; it’s up to you to make the pearl. Effective? That tough love message worked on me. And here you are, aren’t you? Maybe it is time you did something that makes a member of your tribe.
I read “Tribes”, underlining madly, occasionally talking back, disagreeing frequently. I call that high praise.
To buy “Tribes” from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy the Kindle edition of “Tribes” from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy the Audio CD of “Tribes” from Amazon.com, click here.
For Seth Godin’s blog, click here.
