JANUARY 24, 2016

Below are the notes I took on my phone while listening to the audiobook Tribes, written and narrated by one of my favorite thinkers, Seth Godin. The notes in no way do justice to the entire book, which I highly recommend reading. They may serve to supplement your reading or offer a refresher of this classic. If this is of value, please feel free to check out other book notes with the tag below. Thank you! 

• Management is about manipulating resources to get a known job done.
  Leadership is about creating change you believe in.
  Movements have leaders. Leaders have followers. Managers have employees. Managers make widgets. Leaders make change.

• Partisans join tribes, not middle of the roaders. The aim is not to attract everyone.

• Managers manage by using the authority the factory gives them... Leaders use passion and ideas to lead people as opposed to using threats and bureaucracy to manage them.

• Movements happen when people in a community talk to each other.

• 3 ways to make a tribe more effective:

  
  1) Transform shared interest into a passion for change
  2) Create tools to allow tribe members to tighten communications
  3) Leverage tribe to allow it to grow and gain new members

• If you want us to follow you, don't be boring.

• There is no BIA: Bureau of Idea Approval you need to get approval from.

• The most fearless heretic wins, not the best idea.

• The only thing holding you back is your own fear.

• Fear of criticism is higher than fear of failure.

• Religion is not faith. Religion is a set of rules and protocols that overlay faith. Religion can reinforce faith.

• Tactics of leadership are easy. It's the art that's hard.

• Cynicism is a lost strategy.

• What most people want in a leader is something that's very difficult to find: someone who listens. It's hard to find leaders who listen because it's easy to confuse listening to individuals and going with the crowd.

• The key is to listen, evaluate, and decide, whether it contradicts what people said or not. People want to know you listened to what they said. They are less interested in whether you do what they say.

• Tribes grow when people recruit people. That's how ideas spread too.

• Real leaders don't care about credit. Credit isn't the point. Change is.

• Compromise may expedite a project. But compromise may kill it too.

You can pick up a copy of Tribes here: