Aug
18
Tribes by Seth Godin
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I bought this book after enjoying reading Seth Godin‘s blog. I wanted to understand his daily insights in greater detail.
The book itself was a bit disappointing. It was coherent, for what it was, but was poorly structured and read like a series of blogposts put together into an evangelistic speech / pitch for more people to start their own tribe. By the end, I was left hoping for a bit more rigour and analysis of how the internet had made this possible and why this was so different in context and outcome than previous opportunities.
However, with those caveats, it was a powerful advocacy for a significant online movement and one that was published when all this stuff was quite new. Godin references people like Gary Vaynerchuk but was writing before many of these ideas had taken root. Whilst Brits such as Iain Dale may recognise many of the elements Godin refers to, I’m sure there are still things that the great marketeer could recommend. This advice is couched in memorable phrases and nifty expressions to capture some concepts that are unique to the web (leading from the bottom) and others good old fashioned common sense (leading not managing).
The key points that I took from the book were:
the importance of disrupting traditional models, particularly:
- leading not managing
- embracing the tribe not the factory (believing in what you’re doing)
- leading from the bottom
The quote from Bill Bradley: that successful leaders of tribes are those who communicate a narrative of who we are and where we are/should be going. And the need to combine this with something to do with the fewer limits the better.
You have to talk yourself out of fear in order to have the courage to create your tribe.
The value of curiosity
The importance of avoiding personal ‘sheepwalking’.
The 5 step path to creating a tribe:
- Publish a manifesto
- Make it easy to connect to you
- Make it easy for your followers to connect to each other
- Make sure money is not the point
- Track your progress
And the 6 lessons underpinning this:
- Transparency is your only option
- Movement is bigger than you
- You need to grow to thrive
- Compare your tribe to others
- Exclude outsiders (define yourself by what you are not)
- Build up your followers
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