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| Title: | Tribes | ||||
| Author: | Seth Godin is a modern day marketing guru and the author of over a dozen books. | ||||
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| What the book is about: | |||||
| This book is about following our passions, breaking the old rules and leading groups of like minded people (our tribes).
It expands on the differences between leaders and managers and the fact that in today’s modern world we are all potential leaders. The old feudal leadership model was propagated around a leader (or King) surrounded by “YES” men. Today we are surrounded by people who like to make up their own minds. To become leaders of the new tribes we need to be heretics. Modern day heretics are people who are willing to change the status quo and have realised that safe can no longer be classed as secure. The thing that stops most people form becoming leaders is fear, people just don’t like change. They will work in a business and even though it may be going bankrupt they refuse to leave because they wish to maintain the status quo. We are told that businesses such as the record industry are going to fail if they refuse to adopt new methods (Believing they can maintain the status quo of their old distribution models). He coins the term sheepwalking, “the concept of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient, giving them brain dead jobs and enough fear in an effort to keep them in line”. Leaders of the new tribes have a responsibility to break out of the sheepwalking mode! The tribe is defined as “a group of people connected to a leader and connected to an idea”. The size of the tribe can vary but a small tribe is not necessarily a bad thing. The people we exclude from our group can add as much to its strength as the people we include as a small tribe can provide exclusivity. “If you want to sell just one product you may get away with an overnight success but if you wish customers to return you need to provide value”. The tribe theme is very much about niches and catering for our specific segment of the market. We are told that it is not just our right but our obligation to become leaders of a tribe. Senator Bill Bradley’s definition of a movement is having three elements: “1. A Narrative, 2. A connection, 3. Something to Do”. The book tells us that too often organizations concentrate only on the third. |
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| Would I buy this book: |
YES |
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| Although Seth recommends at the end of the book that if you got anything out of the book you should pass it on. I would only pass it on as a library book. I class this is as a keeper and one for my library. | |||||
| What I liked about this book: | |||||
| There are lots of useful concepts in this book but my personal favourite was the term sheepwalking and the idea of adopting new practices, breaking out from the norm to follow our passions. | |||||
| What I thought could have been improved in this book: | |||||
| I realise that the book is about modern ideas and by its very concept of being different its layout isn’t required to be traditional. As this is one of those books that I like to revisit, I would have liked an index or contents page of any kind to assist in future navigation. | |||||
| Formats available: | |||||
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| Where available: | |||||
| http://www.fishpond.co.nz/ | |||||
| www.thenile.co.nz | |||||
| Shop at Amazon.com! | |||||
| www.Audible.com | |||||