Tuesday 22 February 2011

Tribes by Seth Godin



This book at first appears to be too thin on the ground, incoherent snippets from blog posts turned into a book - but get a little further ahead and it builds up momentum, driving deeper into the subject of leadership. Be warned though this isn't your usual "How to be a good leader" books of which there are hundreds of such books...it's about the reality that anyone can assume a leadership position, as long as one is committed and has the grit to persistently face resistance no matter how tough the going gets, and from that all, over time you will get people following you...forming your own tribe.

I've recently become a follower of Seth Godin's Blog.

Interesting bits that struck a chord in me & that'll stick with me are (quotes from the book):

Leaders have followers, managers have employees.
Leaders initiate, managers react.
Become a heretic, question the status quo.
Sheepwalking - 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.
The only thing that makes people and organisations great is their willingness to not be great along the way.
The desire to fail on the way to reaching a bigger goal is the untold secret of success...
The longer you wait to launch an innovation, the less your effort is worth...
The tactics of leadership are easy, the art is the difficult part...
The yin and yang are clear: without people pushing against your quest to do something worth talking about, isn't to be worth the journey.
Persist...
What's hard now is breaking the rules. What's hard is finding the faith to become a heretic, to seek out an innovation and then, in the face of huge amounts of resistance, to lead a team and to push the innovation out the door into the world.
Don't settle - it's an obligation not to settle.

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