Issue No. 127 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Feb. 16, 2009) is all about tribes, Seth Godin’s latest book on leading a movement. By the way, Peggy Noonan commented in her Feb. 7, 2009, Wall Street Journal column, “Every new president starts out fresh, in part because he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. Ignorance keeps you perky.” That’s the big challenge as you lead your team: helping them move from “I don’t know what I don’t know,” to “I know what I don’t know.” And this reminder: check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.
Sell One!
One word, one paragraph, not even one page can adequately describe Seth Godin’s latest epistle on leadership—because it’s more about marketing. No, it’s about tribes (I’ll explain). No it’s about the Internet and factories. No, it’s about how leaders build communities (tribes, again) and focus on true fans versus thousands.
Well, actually it’s about heretics, nonprofits, faith, religion, Steve Jobs, unicorns and the Customer Bucket and the Printing Bucket (aka Communications Bucket)—and how movements are looking for leaders—and how you can lead your tribe (I think). Aw…forget it. I can’t really explain this book, but I’m going to read it at least twice. You should too.
Guarantee. Read all 147 pages (it’s short and small) and you’ll have dozens of conversation-droppers to impress and amaze your colleagues. You’ll also change your thinking on stuff. I counted 127 short stories/principles—each with a gotta-read-this headline. There are no chapters—just quick-reading, page-turning marketing/leadership insights:
• Leadership Discomfort: “Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead … When you identify the discomfort, you’ve found the place where a leader is needed.”
• Twitter and Trust and Tribes and True Fans: “The essential lesson is that every day it gets easier to tighten relationships you have with the people who choose to follow you.”
• Leading from the Bottom (with a Newsletter): “Twice a week, the newsletter went out. Twice a week, I talked about our quest. Twice a week, I chronicled the amazing work of our tiny tribe. The newsletter connected the tribe members. It turned a disparate group of career engineers into a working community.”
Godin, bestselling author of Poke the Box and This Is Marketing, says there are three steps in tribe work: motivating, connecting and leveraging. His real-life examples get your adrenalin going. His pithy bursts of wisdom are memorable. “My friend Fred has a new book coming out and he was trolling around for marketing ideas. I think he’d be surprised at this one: Sell one.”
To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, by Seth Godin.
YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
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1) Seth Godin writes, “The first thing a leader can focus on is the act of tightening the tribe.” He says it’s tempting to make the tribe bigger versus more connected. What are we doing here to “tighten the tribe?”
2) He adds, “Friending 10 or 20 or a thousand on Facebook might be good for your ego but it has zero to do with any useful measure of success.” What would be a useful measure of success on Facebook [or Instagram or X]?
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Giftedness vs. Slots
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit
One of the big ideas in the Volunteer Bucket, Chapter 12, in Mastering the Management Buckets is to leverage the spiritual giftedness of your volunteers. Rather than filling volunteer slots, take time to discover the spiritual gifts of your volunteers—and place them in roles where their giftedness shines. (Now there’s a concept!)
Paul reminds us in Ephesians 4:11-13 (The Message), “He handed out gifts above and below, filled heaven with his gifts, filled earth with his gifts. He handed out gifts of apostle, prophet, evangelist, and pastor-teacher to train Christ’s followers in skilled servant work, working within Christ’s body, the church, until we’re all moving rhythmically and easily with each other, efficient and graceful in response to God’s Son, fully mature adults, fully developed within and without, fully alive like Christ.”
For more volunteer resources and ideas, visit the Volunteer Bucket page of my website.
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NOTICE! Issues No. 1 to 657 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (2006 to 2025), previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to this blogsite you are on now (John Pearson's Buckets Blog).
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