Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us Hardcover Author: Visit Amazon's Seth Godin Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1591842336 | Format: PDF, EPUB
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From Publishers Weekly
Short on pages but long on repetition, this newest book by Godin (
Purple Cow) argues that lasting and substantive change can be best effected by a tribe: a group of people connected to each other, to a leader and to an idea. Smart innovators find or assemble a movement of similarly minded individuals and get the tribe excited by a new product, service or message, often via the Internet (consider, for example, the popularity of the Obama campaign, Facebook or Twitter). Tribes, Godin says, can be within or outside a corporation, and almost everyone can be a leader; most are kept from realizing their potential by fear of criticism and fear of being wrong. The book's helpful nuggets are buried beneath esoteric case studies and multiple reiterations: we can be leaders if we want, tribes are the way of the future and change is good. On that last note, the advice found in this book should be used with caution. Change isn't made by asking permission, Godin says. Change is made by asking forgiveness, later. That may be true, but in this economy and in certain corporations, it may also be a good way to lose a job.
(Oct.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
Godin's simple manifesto for success and happiness is inspiring. FINANCIAL TIMES
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
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Direct download links available for Download Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us
- Hardcover: 160 pages
- Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover; 1 edition (October 16, 2008)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1591842336
- ISBN-13: 978-1591842330
- Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5 x 0.7 inches
- Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
When I was about 50 pages into reading Tribes, I was finding it quite repetitive and, frankly, was wondering what all the hype was about. It seemed like Seth Godin was simply saying the same thing over and over using different words each time. About halfway through the book, I changed my perception about it and began to take a different view.
My initial perception was that Tribes was a book about leadership. If you're looking for a book that teaches you how to lead, you would likely be disappointed in Tribes. My new view is that Tribes is meant to inspire people to lead, rather than teach them to lead. There's a big difference.
Did you have a class in school where the teacher simply presented the material in the textbook, you read it, took a quiz and that was it. If you were good at rote memorization, you probably got a good grade in that class. But were you inspired to learn more about that subject? I'll confess, my only motivation in a class like that was to get a good grade and move on to something more interesting. But then there were the teachers who led the class into interesting discussions and motivated you to want to learn more. That's leadership; that's connecting with your tribe.
Most of us can learn anything if we work hard enough at it. The big question is: are we motivated to learn it? We can do almost anything; the real question is are we passionate enough- do we care enough about it- to do something about it,to be a leader for that cause?
I see Tribes as an inspirational book, not as a "how-to-lead" book. Tribes is a "pep talk" to help us find that leader within each of us. You don't have to be the president or the CEO to lead. And perhaps your area of leadership doesn't even involve your work.
I've almost never been so painfully aware of a book's shortcomings while reading it. Not long into the book, you pick up on a pattern: Godin blithely throws out broad statements about how anyone can become a leader and how we should all strive to be leaders. He then gives the thinnest of examples of how his version of leadership can look. One example is of a guy who gets sick of waiting in line for one party, then goes to an empty bar, texts his friends and starts his own party. Viola! Instant leadership. But even Godin points out, that guy didn't get that party going in four minutes, he got it going using relationships he'd built over four years (or more) so people would respond to his text.
That's where you begin to see the problem. Godin doesn't explain how to go about doing the actual hard groundwork of leadership. He makes it sound like anyone with an idea and a cell phone can rally thousands of people to their cause in minutes if they just realize that it's not hard. Really? How does that work? First off, we can't all be leaders. The math just doesn't work. If every one of us is to be a leader to one thousand, it means that we must also take time to be a follower for 1,000 other leaders who also need their "tribe". Pretty basic arithmetic, and I don't think we've all got that kind of time.
Godin just skips from one shallow and unsupported, but grandiose statement about leadership to another. The one concrete example he gives in the book about how you might actually go about doing the work of leading comes when he describes his early work experience in a software company. He explains how he got the most out of shallow programming resources by starting a newsletter that created a sense of excitement around his project and attracted programmers to it.
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