Tribes
When my professor first told me to read “Tribes” by Seth Godin, I was less than excited. While I will not lie and say that it was the most enthralling book I have ever read, it did make some good points and more importantly it made me want to take action. It made me want to find my own tribe and to change the world around me for the better of those in it. Which, if truth be told is a far better reason to read a book than the reason I was originally looking for.
The book begins by presenting the idea of a tribe. Summed up, a tribe is a group of people who have a common goal, a leader/ leaders, and a method of communication. In order for the tribe to be successful this goal needs to be something innovative, something that doesn’t just meet the status quo Godin talks so much about in the book. In essence, the tribe needs to be striving to make things happen. In addition, all tribes need a leader. According to Godin, it doesn’t matter if the leader takes an active role and “leans in” or if the leader simply supplies a method of communication and gets out of the way. The real importance seems to lie in the communication. Every member of the tribe must be able to communicate, they must communicate with the leader and more importantly with each other. If people cannot communicate then they will not feel connected and it’s those connections that are needed to carry out change.
As we were reading the book our professor told us to think about what Seth Godin would say about our tribe, meaning our class. Obviously there is no way for me to know for sure but I would imagine he would say we need a clearer goal. Our class has a wonderful leader in the form of our professor and each of the students seem filled with a conviction to enact change, but what change exactly? Yes we intend to expand our minds and learn to communicate, but surely that begs the question “what else?” If in fact we have as much talent as we think we do, then we should be doing more. I have heard nearly every student in the class stand up and present something that weighs on their hearts. I have heard each one present an idea with passion behind it. Perhaps that is our goal, not necessarily to further one idea, but rather to learn together how to further each others ideas.
The last thing our professor told us to think about and to write about was the company Godin talks about when they are trying to connect with their customer base. To be honest I cannot figure out which of the hundred examples my professor was referring to. However, given that the purpose of the book is to convince us to lead and to take risks, and most likely my professors point in asking is to prove I read the book,I will simply choose my favorite example. As surely you know by reading my first post, I have a love for food and a passion for cooking. Is it any wonder then that I fell in love with the restaurant example? The restaurant is called ”Jack” and is run by Danielle Sucher and Dave Turner. The idea struck me as innovative not because they only open the restaurant on Saturdays, I have seen places do that before, but because they had their tribe before they opened the restaurant and they opened it for them. Before hearing the idea in “Tribes” I had never looked at a regular party as a method of communication. For me a party is something I have to cook for and something I have to clean my room for, it never dawned on me to use a party to strengthen the ties of my tribe thereby promoting even further my ultimate goal, whatever it may be.
