Unlock Your Inner Artist: Book Three

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us
by Seth Godin

The third book in the “Inner Arstist” series is from marketing guru, Seth Godin.  Seth has been well ahead of the curve on this whole “Internet/Marketing thing” for years, and Tribes is no exception.  This isn’t the marketing you learned about in school.

Tribes explains how small groups and individuals have changed or are changing the world by standing up and leading. There’s never been a time when an individual has had access more tools to find and lead a group.  Godin writes to give readers that push they need to quit the status quo and become what he calls a heretic. He explains that there’s no reason to wait for the right job, or the perfect moment.  Today, a single person from anywhere in an organization, with zero authority can become a key figure.  The key is to stop managing and start leading.  Throughout the book, he mentions specific examples of leaders and tribes, including:

• The Grateful Dead
• Changing the SPCA to a no-kill zone
• Scott Beale’s LaughingSquid
• Apple’s Jonathan Ive
• The Acumen Fund

Beware, there are no “7 action steps to leading a tribe”, or “10 days to turn your tribe into a money making mob”.  There are probably a couple of reasons for that, like (1) the author knows you’re too smart for that, and (2) groups/tribes are different and are led in different ways.  There are no quick solutions or get rich quick strategies. Instead, you do get this:

“Leadership isn’t difficult but you’ve been trained for years to avoid it.”

There’s also a fantastic coverage of the movement away from the “factory” structure of leadership and into a “tribe” based structure where a leader can come from anywhere and shake the foundation of the most well established organizations.

It’s a short book, weighing in at 160 pages.  This is another thing to appreciate.  Rather than fluff up the book with repetitive info to get that ever-important spine size  increased*, Tribes respects your time and keeps it brief.  Plus, at this size, you can come back to it a couple of times when you need that extra kick or to reinforce one of those “a-ha’s” you’ll certainly come across.

The bad part?  One thing that makes me nuts is a shitty index.  Want to really make me nuts?  How about no index.  There’s no table of contents or index in this book.  I’m sure there’s a reason, but when I want to quickly flip to a section or an example and there’s not search bar or index/t.o.c. available, those reasons for not including them are nothing but a pain to me, the reader (the guy that dropped $19.95 on the book).

Last note, Seth Godin has a new book coming in January.  It’s called “Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?“.  Let’s hope it’s as powerful as Tribes, and that they take the extra week to knock out a killer table or contents & index!

BONUS:  Here’s Seth Godin at TED talking about the ideas behind the book, Tribes:

*In my experience in the publishing business, publishers love to crank up the thickness
of a book because it gives them more presence on the store's shelf.  This is certainly
an old way of thinking, but I'd bet it's still happening on a regular basis.