Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us

Part 2 covers sections: “The Grateful Dead… And Jack,” “The Market Requires Change and That Requires Leadership,” “What Does It Take To Create a Movement?,” “Improving a Tribe,” “What Tribes Leave Behind,” “Anatomy of a Movement,” “Wikipedia,” “Leading from the Bottom (with a Newsletter),” “Crowds and Tribes,” “Marketing Changes Everything, but It Mostly Changes the Market,” “The Difference Between Average and Mediocre,” “How Many Fans Do You Have?,” “Twitter and Trust and Tribes and True Fans,” “The Status Quo,” “Initiative = Happiness,” “Crowbars,” “Scott Beale’s Party,” “A Brief History of the Factory, Part 1 (the Beginning),” “A Brief History of the Factory, Part II (the End),” ‘So Is It Really a ‘Free Agent Nation’?,” “The F Word,” “Thinking Your Way out of Fear,” “The Peter Principle Revisited,” “When It All Falls Apart,” and “Worth Criticizing.”

Godin reasserts from a previous work, Permission Marketing, that marketers must earn “the right to deliver anticipated, personal, and relevant messages to people who want to get them” (12). The Grateful Dead demonstrate this by nurturing their tribe’s culture and giving them concerts as communal events. Similarly, Jack, a pop-up restaurant run by Danielle Sucher and Dave Turner in Brooklyn, generates interest by opening 20 times a year and by appointment only. This model gives the restaurateurs freedom to focus on food quality and creativity, not foot traffic. Danielle and Dave, like the Grateful Dead, developed a tribe through communication and coordination, and by providing events where their fellowship can bond over kindred interests.

Godin reiterates the correlation between leadership and change: Both markets and tribes demand them. He contrasts the authoritarian, factory-esque manager against a versatile leader. The manager oversees a group but does not lead them, focusing on task completion but without vision. Leaders, however, understand and affect an organization through its entirety regardless of their place in the hierarchy.

Looking at the question of what it takes to form a movement, the author introduces two Nobel Prize winners: Muhammad Yunus and Al Gore. Yunus developed microfinancial strategies to combat poverty, and Gore raised awareness for global warming. Both issues and their solutions gained traction decades before either advocate received credit for their work. This is because both Yunus and Gore prioritized spreading their ideas through communities; they didn’t focus on their own authority. Therefore, Godin distinguishes between “telling people what to do and inciting a movement” (13): The latter inspires tribes through communication and kinship. In other words, leaders of movements focus on their tribes, not on themselves. That is how Niklos Zennstrom overtook powerful phone companies when he founded Skype. That is how citizens tore down the Berlin Wall. Empowering tribe members leads to unstoppable momentum that can topple the toughest problems.

Godin lays out that it only takes two elements to establish a tribe: a shared interest and method to communicate. Communication moves among four pathways: leader to tribe; tribe to leader; member to member; and member to outsider. Tribe leaders can improve their group efficiency in three ways: “transforming the shared interest into a passionate goal and desire for change; providing tools to allow members to tighten their communications; and leveraging the tribe to allow it to grow […]” (14). A good leader maximizes all three aspects without fixating on any single one. The tribe’s size seldom dictates its impact. Instead, those tribes with better communication and cohesion have the biggest effects on culture. Moreover, loyalty and connection are cultivated through the members’ empowerment, not through financial backing or “stuff”; the intangible motivations outweigh the tangible. As a tribe’s members gain value, that value proliferates, growing the group in power and numbers. The author links this to the Internet by deeming it “viral activity, or a virtuous cycle” (15).

Godin highlights Senator Bill Bradley’s three characteristics that make a movement: a narrative people can relate to and place themselves within; connections between members and leaders; and goals with as few limitations as possible. Jimmy Wales, cofounder of Wikipedia, helped build the site into a vast and legitimate resource. He did this by leading a small active coalition whose members were interested in participating in his experiment. Wales used technological communication and a platform that facilitated tribal engagement with the outside world. Although Wikipedia collects revenue only from small donations, Wales found success in three steps: “motivate, connect, and leverage” (16).

Godin offers a personal anecdote about his time at a software company named Spinnaker. After a summer internship, he got the opportunity to turn science fiction novels into computer adventure games with a small programming team. He printed a bi-weekly newsletter that highlighted each member’s accomplishments, celebrating them and driving outside interest. Godin’s team grew as engineers defected or spent spare time working on his project. The products were a huge success; he and his colleagues look back on their hard work fondly. Godin led through example and authentic sacrifice—his focus was facilitating communication, and it paid off. Without a leader or communication, a tribe is only a crowd. Although crowds can have interesting cultural effects, tribes are more resilient and effective. Many organizations make the mistake of marketing to crowds instead of galvanizing tribes.

The market demands novelty and intrigue because such ideas self-proliferate. Effective tribes therefore nurture ideas that look to the future. In the past, business success involved repeating the same processes for the same effects with diminishing returns—however, the market has changed, and Godin urges readers to eschew the boring and aspire to greatness. Again, this involves being a leader, not a manager; managers desire stasis, and they create acceptable products for consumers who expect predictability. If stability persists, this strategy works. In such cases, Godin notes, “[T]his is exactly the right strategy. Build reliability and predictability, cut costs, and make a profit” (18). However, tribes want neither averageness nor predictability. It’s wasted effort to resist the inexorable tide of change when stability is tedious and not life-affirming.

Godin posits that “[a]n individual artist needs only a thousand true fans in her tribe” (19). True fans are people who go out of their way to buy from a chosen artist or who contribute to the artist’s movement. These fans are more valuable than casual one-offs because they create a tribe and amplify the group’s message. Gaining a person’s loyalty is the key to transforming them into a true fan, and this is where many organizations fail: Too many companies focus on growing numbers instead of earning loyalty. Again, technology can play a role in earning loyalty, and most people underestimate Twitter’s power in this regard. For example, entrepreneur Laura Fitton used the platform to gain the trust of thousands and develop a tribe, eventually acquiring true fans by building that trust through her communications. Godin argues that ultimately, while methods will change with time, what matters are the new technological opportunities to strengthen leader-tribe relationships.

Circling back to the importance of change, the author addresses the idea of the status quo, i.e., any element of an organization that is taken for granted or regarded as permanent. Godin encourages readers to inspect whatever others take for granted and to challenge it. Technology has equipped individuals with more than enough tools to achieve leverage and challenge protocol. Again, thanks to technology—especially social media—even a single person can build a vast following or completely change an industry. Godin calls on the reader to take the lead because people are ready to follow. An example is Scott Beale, an entrepreneur and leader of the company Laughing Squid. At the 2008 SXSW conference, Beale was tired of waiting in line for a Google party, so he created an alternative meetup at a bar down the street. He leveraged his tribe and Twitter’s platform to hold a gathering that had a line out the door. Beale had already earned the respect and admiration of the people who showed up; Twitter was just a tool he used to communicate with his tribe.

The author now focuses on the factory—a symbol for lifeless, rote work. The factory model of production is one that “cranks out a product or service, does it with measurable output, and tries to reduce costs as it goes” (22). Any organization with this formula can fall under the broad definition of a factory. There is an appeal to factories: They are efficient and stable, and there is even a certain element of freedom in being told what to do—it gives purpose and predictability. Many people all over the world yearn for jobs like government bureaucrat, which is steady and reliable but offers no tribe. Factory work offers tribes in neither employees nor customers. People started noticing cracks in the factory model when large companies began laying off employees en masse or losing customers to new and exciting start-ups. The new age is one of individual empowerment, one where a person “has control over what he does all day, creating products or services that he’s actually proud of” (23). The factory model gives an illusion of purpose but takes away personal sovereignty and creativity.

Free Agent Nation, a term coined by author Dan Pink, describes workers’ movement away from organizations to start their own businesses. Organizations aren’t the problem; it’s the factory models they cling to. In fact, organizations supply the focus, coordination, and output tribes need—but, unlike managers and factories, good leaders can adapt, paving the way through volatile times to come out on top. Godin sums up what stops people from innovating: fear. There is no shortage of people with original ideas, but many of them lack the courage and willpower to pursue them. He believes the most successful ideas are energized by the individuals most willing to take risks and break rules. Since fear is one of the most ancient, instinctual obstacles to risk, people are often sensitive to stories of failure. Godin sees successful individuals as writing a narrative that conquers terror of defeat. Insight and a yearning for change help instill courage—conquering fear is not an easy task, but there is ample proof that it is possible.

Still focusing on the topic of fear, the author cites the Peter Principle. This principle is named after Canadian educator Dr. Laurence Peter, who asserted that “in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to the level of his incompetence” (25). In other words, a person works and gets promoted until they finally reach a role for which they lack the competence. Godin readapts this principle for his own thesis: “In every organization everyone rises to the level at which they become paralyzed by fear” (25). Awareness of fear is one of the keys to unlocking potential—of oneself and one’s tribe.

Godin sees fear as the cause of other forms of stasis, too. For example, some people are stuck in cycles, toiling away at the same processes without making progress; the author argues these people are afraid of leading, so they only follow. They are stuck in followership. Therefore, taking the lead is among the best ways to overcome fear.