Tribes

Rating

6.5/10 On one hand I enjoyed the presented ideas and took quite a few notes in an attempt to remember them. On the other hand, the book has no structure and reads as a bunch of tweets with titles stitched together. It’s not bad as a motivational piece, if you have an itch to build a tribe and an idea you are excited about. But if you don’t have a tribe-worthy manifesto in you, I think you will finish the book disappointed, lacking any clear direction or action steps to pursue. It also pretty much repeats itself from page 20 onwards. Here and there a new noteworthy snippet emerges, but the ideas don’t develop: “Just build a tribe! Do it now! We need leaders. Challenge status quo.” That’s pretty much the synopsis. So, not terrible, but not great either. It was short enough to get through despite the lack of direction or development of any idea/story.

Synopsis

“Just build a tribe! Do it now! We need leaders. Challenge status quo.” That’s pretty much the synopsis.

Notes

• management is about manipulating resources to get a known job done
• leadership is about creating a change that you believe in
• you want your followers to be partisans, people with an opinion, not middle-of-the-roaders
• to turn a group of people into a tribe, you need: a shared interest + a way to communicate
• effectiveness of a tribe can be increased by:
  1. transforming the shared interest into a passionate goal and desire for change
  2. providing tools for tighter member communication
  3. leveraging the tribe to spread the message and grow it
• Focus on 1. and 2., 3. will come
• Mossy Earth is a great example of a thriving tribe. They have a common narrative that tells a story of the future they want to build. They have multiple channels that allow for communication between tribe members and tribe leaders. And they have many activities that both the leaders and the members can engage in
• building a tribe: motivate, connect, leverage
• a crowd is a tribe without communication and a leader
• organizations that destroy the status quo win. Changing the status quo gives you the opportunity to be remarkable
• doing work that’s fun is engaging - and most often that kind of work is new and refreshing, attracting a tribe of change-makers
• in a hierarchical organization everyone tends to rise to their level of incompetence - you get raises until the job you do is over your competence
• Lean in and be a vibrant leader or create a vibrant community, back off and let it be alive on its own. Do one of the two, but not nothing.
• Those who most often succeed at building and leading a tribe do it because of what they can for the tribe not because of what the tribe can do for them
• Leadership is not a trick that you can learn, it’s an art that you must perfect through practice