Tribes
Author: Seth Godin
ISBN: 1591842336
Date finished: - 9/12/26
How strongly I recommend it: 10/10
Reading Tribes came at the perfect moment in my life.
MY HIGHLIGHTS
Leadership…is about creating change that you believe in. (14)
Marketing is about engaging with the tribe and delivering products and services with stories that spread. (16)
Leaders lead…when they connect with their tribes, and when they help the tribe connect to itself. (17)
There’s a difference between telling people what to do and inciting a movement. The movement happens when people talk to one another, when ideas spread within the community, and most of all, when peer support leads people to do what they always knew was the right thing. Great leaders create movements by empowering the tribe to communicate. They establish the foundation for people to make connections, as opposed to commanding people to follow them. (23)
The National Rifle Association has a huge impact…because the tribe is extraordinarily well connected, communicating up, down, and sideways, and because they have a passionate mission, not just a common idea. (25)
Senator Bill Bradley defines a movement as having three elements:
A narrative [cast vision] that tells a story about who we are and the future we’re trying to build.
A connection between and among the leader and the tribe.
Something to do [A mission]—the fewer limits, the better. (27)
A thousand fans, true fans, form a tribe…what they demand, though, is generosity and bravery. (33-34)
The first thing a leader can focus on is the act of tightening the tribe…He introduces people. He invites them to dinner. He finds areas of common interest and then gets out of the way (52-53)
If the ideas are great, they’ll spread. The spread of these ideas attract a tribe. (54)
For a long time, if you wanted to get something done, you started at the top or you got really lucky…The new leverage available to everyone means….each employee now has the responsibility to change the rules before someone else does. (75)
The easiest thing is to react.
The second easiest thing is to respond.
But the hardest thing is to initiate. (86)
Think for a second about the people you know who are engaged, satisfied, eager to get to work. Most of them, I’ll bet, make change. (101)
Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you ought to set up a life you don’t need to escape from. (101)
[Godin’s six principles on pages 103-105 are too long to type but almost worth the entire book].
The congregation shows up every week and does the same ritual it did last week, goes through the same motions and nothing changes. In fact, nothing changes precisely because of the ritual…The religion gets in the way of the faith. Static gets in the way of motion. Rules get in the way of principle…Leadership is the antidote. (106)
The secret of being wrong isn’t to avoid being wrong!
The secret is being wiling to be wrong. (108)
The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there. People will follow. (108)
Growth doesn’t come from persuading the most loyal members of other tribes to join you. They will be the last to come around. Instead, you’ll find more fertile ground among seekers, among people who desire the feeling they get when they’re part of a vibrant, growing tribe, but who are still looking for that feeling. (119)
If you’re trying to persuade the tribe at work to switch from one strategy to the other, don’t start with the leader of the opposition. Begin instead with the passionate individuals who haven’t been embraced by other tribes yet. (119)
The largest enemy of change and leadership isn’t a “no.” It’s a “not yet.” “Not yet” is the safest, easiest way to forestall change…Change almost never fails because it’s too early. It almost always fails because it’s too late. (119)
Leadership comes when your hope and your optimism are matched with a concrete vision of the future and a way to get there. (122)
The challenge for the leader is to help your tribe sing, whatever form that song takes. (124)
Caring is the key emotion at the center of the tribe. (125)
Leaders challenge the status quo.
Leaders create a culture around their goal and involve others in that culture.
Leaders have an extraordinary amount of curiosity about the world they’re trying to change.
Leaders use charisma (in a variety of forms) to attract and motivate followers.
Leaders communicate their vision of the future.
Leaders commit to a vision and make decisions based on that commitment.
Leaders connect their followers to one another. (126)
[numbers added by me]
Being charismatic doesn’t make you a leader. Being a leader makes you charismatic. (127)
What most people want in a leader is something that’s very difficult to find: we want someone who listens. (127)
Remarkable visions and genuine insight are always met with resistance. And when you start to make progress, your effects are met with even more resistance. Products, services, career paths—whatever it is, the forces for mediocrity will align to stop you, forgiving no errors and never backing down until it’s over. (129)
Tribes grow when people recruit other people…The tribe doesn’t do it for you, of course. They do it for each other. Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work. (129-130)
It’s a myth that change happens overnight…They don’t It’s always (almost always, anyway) a matter of accretion. Drip, drip, drip. Improvements happen a bit at a time, not as grand-slam home runs that are easy to get. (131)
If your organization requires success before commitment, it will never have either. (132)
Over and over again, the Sternins have discovered a simple process: find leaders (the heretics who are doing things differently and making change), and then amplify their work, give them a platform, and help them find followers—and things get better. (134)
People don’t believe what you tell them.
They rarely believe what you show them.
They often believe what their friends tell them.
They always believe what they tell themselves.
What leaders do: they give people stories they can tell themselves. Stories about the future and about change. (138)
The barriers to leadership have fallen. There are tribes everywhere, many in search of leaders. (138)
