Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us

Stand up and be counted

Tribes - Seth Godin

Tribes is an excellent book about leadership, about creating movements, and marketing based on positive word of mouth. "Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead. This scarcity makes leadership valuable."

In this new age where the Internet has enabled and mobilized countless global ‘tribes’ around passions ranging from global warming to politics to great restaurants, Seth presents in a very interesting way, how what we want to achieve is all there waiting for us and all we need to do is take the first step. This is a book about new leadership, and it speaks out to those heretics amongst us on the edge or fringe to use the new media tools now available to build momentum behind their vision.

Tribes are essentially part of what makes us humans and our need to belong, to be part of a tribe, to contribute to within a group of like-minded people. “We are drawn to leaders and to their ideas, and we can't resist the rush of belonging and the thrill of the new." The goal of a tribe is to transform the shared interest into a passionate goal and desire for change and as Seth mentions "it's is clearly more fun to make the rules than to follow them, and for the first time, it's also profitable, powerful, and productive to do just that.”

A common driver for all the examples given throughout the book is that the barriers to leadership have fallen thanks to the internet, and the game has changed. Because the Internet eliminates geography, existing tribes are bigger and there are now smaller tribes. There are tribes you work with, tribes you travel with, tribes that ride motorcycles, and more. One great example is the reference to the success of the Grateful Dead (the band). “The Dead didn't succeed by selling records as they only had one Top 40 album. “They succeeded by attracting and leading a tribe."

The call to action in this book is simple. A Tribe needs a shared interest and a way to communicate. Your Tribe needs to include the story, a connection between the tribe members and the leader, and something that needs to be done.

Nice couple of quotes to finish:

"All that's missing is you, and your vision and your passion. Being charismatic doesn't make you a leader. Being a leader makes you charismatic."