Technology, Society, Work & Play

Here’s my review of Seth Godin’s book “Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us“, although I recommend you read it yourself; also, his Blog is one of the few feeds I actually look forward to reading.

Something to believe in:

Three things have happened recently:

1. Working on stuff you believe in is much more satisfying than just getting a paycheck and waiting to get fired (or die).
2. Many people have discovered that the factory centric model of producing goods & services is not nearly as profitable as it used to be
3. Many consumers have decided to spend their money buying things that aren’t factory produced commodities

So why are we:

Stuck following archaic rules in industries which not only avoid change but actively fight it?

Acting like managers or employees instead of the leaders we could become?

Because We’re embracing the factory instead of the tribe.

Why should I lead? And why now?

Leadership isn’t difficult, but you’ve been trained for years to avoid it. You don’t have to wait until you’ve got exactly the right job, built the organization or moved three rungs up the corporate ladder, you can start right now.

What does it take to create a movement?

There a difference between telling people what to do and inciting a movement. Movements need:

1. A shared interest, and
2. A way to communicate.
   1. Communication can be in one of 4 ways:
      1. Leader to Tribe
      2. Tribe to Leader
      3. Tribe member to Leader
      4. Tribe member to Tribe member

   So a leader can create effectiveness of the tribe and its members by:

   1. Transforming shared interest into a passionate goal and a desire for change
   2. Providing tools to allow members to tighten their communications; and
   3. Leveraging the tribe to allow it to grow and gain new members.

Anatomy of a movement

Defined as having three elements (Senator Bill Bradley)

1. A narrative that tells a story about who we are and the future we’re trying to build
2. A connection between the leader and the tribe
3. Something to do – the fewer limits the better

The Status Quo

Whatever the Status Quo is, changing it gives you the opportunity to be remarkable

Initiative=Happiness

Marketplaces reward innovation. The fastest growing <fill in blank> is the newest and most innovative. Interesting side effect is that creating products and services that are remarkable is fun. Doing work that is fun is engaging. So not surprisingly making things that are successful is a great way to spend your time. There you go: initiative=happiness

Crowbars

With a long enough crowbar, you can rip nails out of a plank. The levers just got longer for everyone, and everyone has far more power than before. The King and the status quo are in big trouble. One person (you) can make a video that reached $50m viewers, make one pricing model that turns an industry upside down. We have everything we need to build something far bigger than ourselves.

The Peter Principle

Dr Lawrence Peter: “in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence”. When you do a great job you get promoted; this process repeats itself until finally you end up in a job you can’t handle. Seth Godin “in every organization everybody rises to the level at which they become paralyzed with fear” . Essence of being a leader is being aware of your fear – no it won’t go away but awareness is the key to making progress.

Worth Criticizing

A remarkable product is like a purple cow. Brown cows are boring; purple ones are worth mentioning. Create purple cows:

1. Ideas that spread, win
2. Boring ideas don’t spread
3. Boring organizations don’t grow
4. Working in an environment that’s static is no fun.
5. Working for an organization that’s fighting off change is horrible

Fear of Failure is Overrated

What people are afraid of isn’t failure. Its blame & criticism.

Fear of criticism is a powerful deterrent because the criticism doesn’t actually have to occur for the fear to set in. Watch someone be criticized for being innovative and you will convince yourself that it will not happen to you.

The Cult of the Heretic

Heretics are engaged, passionate, and more powerful and happier than anyone else. And they have a tribe they support (and that supports them).

Challenging the status quo requires a commitment, both public and private. It involves reaching out to others and putting your ideas on the line (or nailing 97 theses to the door!)

Can you imagine Steve Jobs just showing up for the paycheck? Its nice to get paid. Its essential to believe.

Tightness

The first thing a leader can focus on is the act of tightening the tribe. A tighter tribe is more likely to hear it’s leader.

Discomfort

Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead. It’s uncomfortable to:

1. Stand up in front of strangers
2. Propose an idea that might fail
3. Challenge the status quo
4. Resist the urge to settle

This scarcity makes leadership valuable. If you’re not uncomfortable in your work as a leader, its certain that you’re not reaching your potential as a leader.

The Wrong Question

Change isn’t made by asking permission, it’s made by asking forgiveness later.

All you need to know is two things

1. That individuals have far more power than ever before in history.
2. The only thing holding you back from becoming the kind of person who changes things is this: Lack of Faith. Faith that you can do it, faith that it’s worth doing Faith that failure won’t destroy you.

The Balloon Factory and the Unicorn

People who work in balloon factories are afraid of sharp objects, if a Unicorn were to show up – the first reaction is to ignore it or shush it away, inevitably the unicorn goes into the factory anyway. The balloon factory is the status quo, the Unicorn is the leader changing the status quo.

Over-the-top Underdog Bravery

If you’re not over the top, you’re not going to have any chance at all of making things happen.

The Easiest Thing

1. The easiest thing is to react
2. The second easiest thing is to respond
3. The hardest thing is to *initiate*

Don’t panic when the New Business Model isn’t as “Clean” as the Old One

Record industry analogy – establishment couldn’t fit digital media model into old model, so tried to get the old one to work in the new environment.

Industries don’t die by surprise, you can see it coming. If you have the Leadership to change it, then do, if not, get out. Getting out first and staking out the new territory almost always pays off.

Sheepwalking

Sheepwalking is the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them brain dead jobs and enough fear to keep them in line.

1. Step one – give the problem a name:
2. Step two – if you see yourself in this mirror realize that you can always stop
3. Step three – if you teach or hire, embrace non-sheep behavior.

The Thermometer and the Thermostat

Obviously better to be a thermostat than an thermometer

Your Micromovement

Every leader cares for and supports a movement. Today you can have a narrow movement.

Five things

1. Publish a manifesto: Give it away and make it easy to spread far and wide.
2. Make it easy for your followers to connect with you: Simple as email or rich as facebook.
3. Make it easy for your followers to connect with one-another – look at camaraderie by volunteers on a political campaign.
4. Realize that money is not the point of the movement: money is merely an enabler
5. Track your progress: Publically

Six Principles

1. Transparency is really your only option.
2. Your movement needs to be bigger than you.
3. Movements that grow, thrive.
4. Movements are made most clear when compared to the status quo or to movements that push in the other direction.
5. Exclude outsiders
6. Tearing down others is never as helpful to a movement as building your followers up.

Every Tribe is a Media Channel

Tribes are the most effective media channels ever. But they’re not for sale or rent. Tribes don’t do what you want, they do what they want. Which is why joining and leading a tribe is such a powerful marketing investment.

How to be wrong

• The secret to being wrong isn’t to avoid being wrong
• The secret is being willing to be wrong
• The secret is realizing that wrong isn’t fatal

Secret of leadership is simple: Paint a picture of the future. Go there. People will follow.

“Possibility of Risk”

(Quoting a talking-head on the radio). People are so afraid of the Risk that can’t even use the word. Risk is probability of failure, so this guy is warning about the possibility of probability of risk … it’s all risk.

“Stuck on Stupid”

Quoting Lt Gen Russel Honore, who points out that too many people get stuck on stupid.

Not Now, Not Yet

By the time you realize your corner of the world is ready for innovation its almost certainly too late, it’s definitely not too early. There’s a small price for being too early, but a huge penalty for being too late.

The Revolution will not be Televised

Real leadership rarely comes from the CEO; instead it happens out of the corner of your eye, in a place you weren’t watching.

Writing Songs that Spread

The challenge for the leader is to help your Tribe sing, whatever form those songs take.

Who Cares?

Caring is key emotion at the center of a tribe

The Elements of Leadership

1. Leaders challenge the status quo
2. Leaders can create a culture around their goal and involve others in that culture
3. Leaders have an extraordinary amount of curiosity about the world they are trying to change
4. Leaders use charisma (in a variety of forms) to attract and motivate followers
5. Leaders communicate their vision of the future
6. Leaders commit to a vision and make decisions based on that commitment
7. Leaders connect their followers to one another

Hard just got Easy

… and vice versa; what was once hard is now easy, but what’s hard now is:

1. breaking the rules.
2. finding faith to become a heretic
3. to seek out an innovation and then
4. in the face of huge amounts of resistance, to lead a team and then push the innovation out the door into the world.

What would you prefer, trial or error

If your organization requires success before commitment, it will never have either.

Positive Deviants

Great leaders embrace deviants by searching for them and catching them doing something right.

The Obligation

We should never use the work opportunity, it’s not an opportunity its an obligation. (Flynn Berry)

Where Credit is Due

Real leaders don’t care about getting credit, if it is your mission to spread the word, you *want* other people to take credit.

The Big Yes

Rene Hromek. The “little no” is easy to find and hard to avoid, the “BIG YES” is about leadership and apparent risk.

Imagination

Einstein “Imagination is more important than knowledge” you can’t manage without knowledge. You can’t lead without imagination.

Fierce Protection

Compromise may expedite a project, but compromise can kill it as well.

The Perfect Fallacy

Quality is not only not necessary, for many items its undesirable.

More fashion=less need for quality

Belief

• People don’t believe what you tell them
  
• They rarely believe what you show them
• They often believe what their friends tell them
• They always believe what they tell themselves

What leaders do is give people stories which they can tell themselves. Stories about the future and change.

“The World at Their Fingertips” – Director Article, Nov 2006
 
Millennials are:

1. Collaborators

• Web 2.0 sites and their collaborative information sharing represent an interactive approach to the Internet which is dominated by millennial users

2. Content Creators

• Millennials expect to contribute and be heard, they expect the influence their technological world, Wikipedia, Facebook, MySpace … all point to a culture of input and influence . This culture extends beyond the home.

3. Social Networkers

• Work is not based on processes, not instruction from above or boss/worker relationships.
• “I see nothing less than a new breed of human being, they’re surfing a wave of information and connections and their skill is in absorbing only the most relevant snippets.

4. Tech Experts

• Smart discriminate users of technology, want to open a tool, use it and close it, want it to work their way out of the box or with minimal configuration.

5. Informal

• Email is OK … for everything, they will not like formal communication protocols.
• This is a generation which will not ‘know its place’
• Management need to find ways to collaborate and tap this sense of freedom and creativity.

6. Nomadic

• Can and will work anywhere.
• Loved this quote (adapted for CA) ‘ Try telling millennial workers (who know they can be just as effective working at home) that they need to spend 2 hours on i80 to get to their desk by 9:00am and their resume will be out before you can say “work/life balance” ‘

7. Future Leaders …

• .… or dictatorial rabble?
• Management structures will evolve, but those who understand the skills the millennial brings to the workplace and can adjust to play to their strengths will reap the rewards of the emerging knowledge economy.