The Tribes We Lead (Seth Godin)
Seth Godin argues that the internet ended mass marketing and revived the ancient social unit of the tribe. A modern tribe is built on shared ideas and values, and it gives ordinary people the influence to become leaders and create big change. He urges us to lead our own tribes.
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What are we doing with our lives?
What do we do every day?
In my opinion, what we do is work to change everything.
We look for a situation —
something that bothers us, something that needs improvement,
something that's desperate for change — and we change it.
We try to create change that's big, lasting, and important.
But we don't really think of it that way.
And we haven't spent a long time talking about what that process looks like.
Creating and spreading ideas —
I think a lot happens behind that.
One reason, among many, is that this act means change.
Before and after are different.
It's a single point in time.
So I think, in our lives, we've arrived at just such a significant point.
A point where the way ideas are born, spread, and realized is changing.
First there was the idea of the factory. An efficient factory that creates change capable of changing the whole world.
Then came the idea of television.
The pitch was: if you show up a lot on huge PR channels or TV and buy enough advertising, you'll succeed.
Now a new leadership model has emerged.
The way we make change is no longer spending money or pulling the levers of a system — it's leading.
(Like Jang Yeong-sil in Guga-ui-seo bringing his own ideas to life. Haha.)
Let me now talk about three cycles.
The first is the factory cycle. Henry Ford came up with a really brilliant idea.
But you have to be careful here.
If you misplace yourself, you can end up sending the exact opposite message of what you wanted.
In this model, the owner of the idea has to be the king.
I take responsibility and tell people what to do next.
This approach — mass marketing — needs ordinary ideas, because it's aimed at the masses.
And it needs a lot of advertising.
What we do as a kind of spammer is hypnotize everyone.
We get them to buy our idea.
To donate to our cause, to vote for our candidate.
But this approach doesn't work so well anymore.
The good news is this.
I call it the Tribes idea.
Tribes is a very simple concept —
going back 50,000 years to the act of leading and connecting people and ideas.
It's what people have always wanted.
Many people are familiar with spiritual tribes and church tribes.
There are workplace tribes and local community tribes.
And now, with the rapid spread of the internet, mass media, and many other things
active in our society and around the world, tribes are appearing everywhere.
They said the internet would connect us all and make us all the same,
but in reality it created silos of diverse interests.
The key point is: if you want to, you can find the Ukrainian traditional dance troupe and connect with them too. Because we want to form relationships with each other.
People on the edges can find each other and go somewhere together.
Pirate tribes are really something. They have their own flags and eyepatches.
When you meet someone from a tribe, you can pick it up right away.
And in reality it's not money or factories — it's tribes that change our world, change politics, and pull lots of people together.
They weren't forced to do something against their will; they developed a new way — built a sea of IT — and made people sail on it.
So some people step up and form one team, and others build another.
Leadership also affects decision-making — even when you're making a product or service.
This is a machine I really like.
Unfortunately, when it was built, it wasn't designed to let writers create a movement.
What if you could see what someone else wrote about the same book at the same moment?
The writings of your book club, your friends, or any group you want would do.
What if writers or people with ideas used this Kindle version 2, which launches this Sunday,
to organize people and get them to talk about something?
What if, while using this Kindle, there were comments, quotes, notes —
I could describe millions of mechanisms for different movements —
but let me share just two.
1) The Beatles did not invent teenagers. They just decided to lead them.
Most movements, and the leadership we exercise, are about finding disconnected groups.
But those groups need to be desperately wanting something.
It's not about forcing people to want something that isn't there.
Example) The seal-hunt video: they didn't invent the idea of caring about this issue in the first place.
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