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| Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us | 
 enlarge | Author: Seth Godin
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $11.80
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (42 reviews)
Sales Rank: 180
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 160
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.8
ISBN: 1591842336
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.4092
EAN: 9781591842330
ASIN: 1591842336
Publication Date: October 16, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A tribe is any group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another, a leader, and an idea. For millions of years, humans have been seeking out tribes, be they religious, ethnic, economic, political, or even musical (think of the Deadheads). It?s our nature.
Now the Internet has eliminated the barriers of geography, cost, and time. All those blogs and social networking sites are helping existing tribes get bigger. But more important, they?re enabling countless new tribes to be born?groups of ten or ten thousand or ten million who care about their iPhones, or a political campaign, or a new way to fight global warming.
And so the key question: Who is going to lead us?
The Web can do amazing things, but it can?t provide leadership. That still has to come from individuals? people just like you who have passion about something. The explosion in tribes means that anyone who wants to make a difference now has the tools at her fingertips.
If you think leadership is for other people, think again?leaders come in surprising packages. Consider Joel Spolsky and his international tribe of scary-smart software engineers. Or Gary Vaynerhuck, a wine expert with a devoted following of enthusiasts. Chris Sharma leads a tribe of rock climbers up impossible cliff faces, while Mich Mathews, a VP at Microsoft, runs her internal tribe of marketers from her cube in Seattle. All they have in common is the desire to change things, the ability to connect a tribe, and the willingness to lead.
If you ignore this opportunity, you risk turning into a ?sheepwalker??someone who fights to protect the status quo at all costs, never asking if obedience is doing you (or your organization) any good. Sheepwalkers don?t do very well these days.
Tribes will make you think (really think) about the opportunities in leading your fellow employees, customers, investors, believers, hobbyists, or readers. . . . It?s not easy, but it?s easier than you think.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 37 more reviews...
 Platte aarde ontmoet leiderschap November 18, 2008
Seth Godin 's boek Tribes is een soort The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century meets Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness 25th Anniversary Edition 101. Godin ziet in doelgroepen Tribes en de noodzaak voor gericht leiderschap op die groepen. Anders zijn het slechts crowds, waaruit best aardige initiatieven kunnen komen, maar waar geen duurzaamheid blijkt. Een ander paradigma, waar de auteur graag en bij herhaling gebruik van maakt, is het verschil tussen religie en geloof (faith). Ten opzichte van een strikt stelsel met regels en gebruiken zie t hij liever een levend geloof, met inspiratie, volharding en passie. Voor de rebel, de ketter (heretic), de luis in de pels moet er ruimte zijn. Nieuw is beter in de optiek van Godin. En dus zijn oude business modellen als die van platenmaatschappijen terecht passe. Het aloude Amerikaanse paradigma dat groter ook beter is, heeft voor Godin evengoed afgedaan. Er is ruimte voor nichegroepen, zoals ook Anderson in Long Tail, The, Revised and Updated Edition: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More propageert.
Leiderschap is een anderen rode draad in het boek (vandaar de subtitel We need you to lead us, dat zo een beginregel uit een christelijk lied zou kunnen zijn). Leiders worden niet gemaakt, maar kiezen zelf om te leiden. Dat moet wel gepaard gaan met passie voor een groep en een doel. Anders, bijvoorbeeld aan de hand van een checklist uitzoeken van een tribe en daar maar het leiderschap op je nemen, werkt niet.
Godin gebruikt diverse voorbeelden, zoals de bedreiging van een eenhoorn voor een ballonnenfabriek of de lotgevallen van het impresiaat van The Beatles. Met Tribes biedt Godin me geen radcaal nieuwe inzichten, maar mengt ingredienten van andere populaire schrijvers van managementboeken tot een aantrekkelijk hapje. Het audioboek neemt ruim 3 uur tijd van je in beslag.
 Great book November 18, 2008
A simple (and great) way to show that the choice of being a leader just depend on us.
A Stimulating Read... November 18, 2008
Seth Godin's Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us is a stimulating read for anybody interested in marketing new ideas and stepping into a leadership role in today's fast changing world.
Many of Seth's ideas revolve around new technologies of communication, especially the Internet, but note that right at the beginning of the book he emphasizes that,
"You don't need a keyboard to lead... you only need the desire to make something happen!" - p. 6
Use the new media to communicate your passion. Leadership above all is about belief and passion - or belief IN your passion.
Seth talks a lot about faith, belief, religion and heretics in this book, with Martin Luther acting as heretic-in-chief. In today's market place it is "heretics" who are rewarded; leadership is not about management but about CHANGE - the kind of change that needs an heretical thinker to initiate.
The pace of change has made the pursuit of stability more of an illusion than ever. Not only is stability an illusion, the rush away from stability is an opportunity for you to become a leader and initiate change, because the market requires change and that requires leadership.
So why are there so few leaders? Seth suggests that it is because most of us have an exaggerated fear of failure which prevents us from stepping out from the crowd.
In one of the many stimulating examples he scatters through the book, Seth discusses a literal "leap of faith" by citing Chris Scharma's innovative rock climbing technique of letting go and leaping upwards... Chris Scharma has fallen headlong into the sea a number of times, but he has also transformed the concept of what it is possible for climbers to achieve.
That is the essence of the message behind this book. Stop "sheepwalking" - stop being afraid to fail or make mistakes - step up and become a leader! If you think you lack the charisma to become a leader, consider this:
"Being charismatic doesn't make you a leader. Being a leader makes you charismatic."
Seth Godin, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, page 127.
Those who object that Seth does not show us HOW to become leaders will not appreciate what Seth has to say on page 70:
"Some of you are itching to ask me exactly the wrong questions"... one of which is:
"'How do I do this?'"
It is the kind of question that employees ask managers, but leaders are initiators, not managers.
A similar objection could be that there no in-depth case studies of leadership... However, there are plenty of examples of people who have become leaders of tribes. The point is that if you want to know more about what it is to be a tribal leader you will have to TAKE THE INITIATIVE and do a Google search for some of the characters who appear in the pages of Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us - in other words, you will have to begin to act like a leader (by taking initiative) in order to discover what it is to be a leader. Neat!
Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us does not get bogged down in detail. Instead, it offers provocative and stimulating suggestions for anybody who wants to develop into a leader in a fast moving, plugged in, ever changing world.
 Aggravatingly short on substance. November 17, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
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. That's not only a great idea, it's a practical example a reader who wanted to lead could emulate. This book needs far more of those examples.
Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of this book is Godin's repeated sincere insistence that what's important these days is to be stylish and new, not established and stable. I just kept thinking, "isn't this the attitude that's gotten us into the economic mess we're in right now? Throw out what works for something that sounds good?" I couldn't believe I was reading something so misguided.
In the end, this book ends up feeling like something Godin banged out in a couple of months in order to generate some sales for himself and his publisher. There's a distinct lack of substance in this book, and Godin's sole useful example is one he could pull from his own memory without getting up from his desk or even picking up a phone.
Good writing takes far more work than that, and so does good leadership. This book is an example of neither.
Tribes and Higher Education November 16, 2008
This is one of the few books I'd be willing to purchase the "dead tree" format and pass along to colleagues, family, strangers (the major - shortsighted - downfall of Audible.com - can't pass along books).
Godin even ends his terrific little manifesto with a plea to "pass along this book" - oh if only it was so easy.
Why do I consider this little book a must read for folks who work in industries where change is essential for survival (and what industry is not one of these industries?)
Tribes is inspiring in its message that we all need to be leaders in our organization. That leadership is not management, rather leadership is both more important and more fun. Leadership exists at every level of the organization, and in fact those in the middle have the power to spread their ideas as the channels of communication and collaboration get wider and deeper.
This book particularly resonated with me in my role in higher education, as I am lucky enough to work in a unit and with colleagues who are all dedicated to creating learning (rather then teaching) institutions. This work is always exhilarating, but often exhausting, as we try to work within the historical, organizational and economic structure of a very old industry. Frankly, I appreciated being bucked up by Godin's message, and I came away from the book with a renewed commitment to lead this Tribe.
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