The Firm · Level 1

Tribes

Seth Godin · 2008

Thesis

The internet has made it easy for anyone to gather and connect people around a shared idea, so the scarce resource is no longer access or permission but leadership: the willingness of individuals to challenge the status quo and lead a group, a tribe, toward change.

The main ideas

• A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader and connected to an idea.
• The internet ended the dominance of mass marketing and makes forming and connecting tribes easy.
• Management handles resources to get known work done. Leadership creates change.
• Organizations built like factories produce sheepwalkers: obedient people who follow orders out of fear.
• Heretics who challenge the accepted way are the people who lead tribes.
• Fear of criticism, not lack of skill or permission, is what keeps most people from leading.
• Small movements grow by publishing a manifesto, connecting followers to the leader and to one another, and making progress visible.

Tribes

Seth Godin, a marketer and writer, defines a tribe as "a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea." For a group to become a tribe, it needs only a shared interest and a way to communicate.

Tribes are ancient, Godin argues, but for most of the twentieth century they were overshadowed by mass marketing and large organizations, which addressed people as an undifferentiated audience. The internet changed that. It lets people with a shared interest find one another and communicate cheaply, wherever they are.

His examples range widely: Joel Spolsky, whose job board drew a tribe of top programmers; the Grateful Dead, whose fans became a community; Gary Vaynerchuk, a wine expert with a devoted following; and the rock climber Chris Sharma, who led a tribe of climbers. The book, published in 2008, is a collection of brief essay-like sections rather than a sustained argument.

Implication: whatever your field, the people who care about the same thing as you can now be found and connected cheaply. The question is whether anyone will lead them.

Leadership, not management

Godin draws a sharp line between management and leadership. Management is the work of handling resources to get a known job done. Leadership is about creating change. A manager uses the authority an organization gives him; a leader uses passion and ideas to bring people with him.

He describes most organizations as factories, built to produce predictable output through employees who follow instructions. A factory has employees; a tribe has followers. The factory model still dominates, he argues, even though the most valuable work now involves change rather than repetition.

The mechanism is that change cannot be ordered. People join a change because they believe in it, which requires a leader with a vision, not a manager with authority.

Implication: if your work involves creating something new, stop waiting for authority to be granted and start persuading people to join you.

Sheepwalking

Godin's name for the result of factory organizations is sheepwalking: people going through the motions, obedient and afraid to fail, following orders without asking whether their compliance does any good. Organizations produce it deliberately, he argues, by hiring obedient people, giving them dull work and keeping them compliant through fear.

Against the sheepwalker he sets the heretic, the person who challenges the accepted way of doing things and steps out in front of a tribe. Godin presents heretics as more engaged and happier than those who conform. The book ends by celebrating them.

He distinguishes faith from religion. Faith is belief in an idea; religion is the set of rules and practices that grows up around it, in companies as well as churches. Religion can protect faith, but it can also block change. Heretics challenge the religion while keeping the faith.

Implication: ask whether the rules you follow at work still serve the purpose they were created for, and be willing to challenge those that do not.

Fear of criticism

What stops people from leading, Godin argues, is not lack of ability or permission but fear: fear of criticism and of looking foolish. Leaders make people uncomfortable, because change threatens the status quo, so anyone who leads will be criticized. People also become defensive when their practices are questioned, because they confuse their religion with their faith.

His advice is to seek forgiveness rather than permission, acting first and accepting the risk of being wrong.

The mechanism is that most people would rather avoid criticism than create change, so leadership opportunities go unclaimed by those who could take them.

Implication: treat criticism as a sign that you are attempting something that matters, and decide whether the change is worth it rather than whether it will be popular.

Micromovements

Godin's practical advice concerns micromovements, small movements of ten or a thousand people who care about a musician, a product or a cause. He suggests five things a leader should do: publish a manifesto that is free and easy to spread; make it easy for followers to connect with the leader; make it easy for followers to connect with one another; recognize that money is not the point of the movement; and show progress publicly, giving followers ways to contribute.

He adds principles for keeping movements alive, among them transparency, a purpose larger than the leader, and defining the movement clearly against the status quo.

The mechanism is that a movement's strength lies in the connections among its members, not only in their connection to the leader. When followers can talk to one another, the tribe sustains itself.

Implication: if you want to build a following, invest as much in connecting your followers to one another as in reaching them yourself.

Limits

• It argues by anecdote. Publishers Weekly found it short on pages but long on repetition, with its useful points buried beneath esoteric case studies, and the book presents little evidence on how tribes actually form or succeed.
• Its advice carries risk. The same review warned that the counsel to seek forgiveness rather than permission should be used with caution, since it can damage careers in cautious organizations.
• Connection does not guarantee engagement. Research on online communities finds that most members stay passive while a small minority produces most of the activity, which complicates the idea that connecting people readily produces an engaged tribe.

Related

• Zero to One — another case that progress depends on people willing to break from consensus.
• The Almanack of Naval Ravikant — building leverage through ideas and audiences rather than permission.