Seth Godin's Tribes

Seth Godin's blog is among the Internet’s most popular, and an obvious medium for promoting his books. But doing so overtly violates his own "permission marketing" philosophy. For each of his recent books, though, he’s deployed decidedly remarkable methods. In July, Godin launched a new social networking site, Triiibes.com, a “gated” online community of self-identified leaders, initially open only to those who pre-ordered his new book. It opened to the public, by invitation-only from current members, last week.



Anyone can help fill our society's leadership void
Lead or get out of the way. Everyone can and should be a leader, according to Seth Godin.

BY RICHARD PACHTER

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. Seth Godin, Portfolio. 160 pages.

This is an odd one, even for Seth Godin, a statement he's certain to embrace as the compliment that's intended. He's the guy, after all, who encouraged business people to emulate a mythical purple cow to be unique and highly remarkable.

In his last book, The Dip, Godin looked at people who quit and compared them to those who persevere and succeed. But he refused to advise readers to stay with something blindly. In fact, he urged some to quit after making certain that they were doing so for the right reasons. After all, perpetuating a doomed enterprise is hardly wise.

The difficult thing, however, is determining when to stay and when to go, and Godin's advice in this area was more than a bit ambiguous. How could it not be, though? Each case — and every person — is very different and unless he published the business equivalent of the I Ching, there'd be no way to cover every possible circumstance.

FOLLOW THE LEADER
This new book, however, is about an entirely different issue, at least as far as I can tell. The Great and Wise Godin now casts his attention toward leadership, a very timely and worthwhile subject, as the absence thereof is one of the biggest problems we face in just about every aspect of culture, commerce and life.

Think about it; research, once a smart tool to gauge effectiveness seems to be mostly used as a crutch, or worse, a mechanism to cover mediocrity and the posteriors of the guilty parties. But doing things intuitively, not necessarily wildly or blindly, is perhaps our greatest strength. Travel to the moon? Sure! We'll work out the details as we go along. Godin encourages this actualized passion and positions it quite wisely as leadership, which is really a great way to put it, as it requires doing not just saying.

As usual, his writing is clear, clean and deceptively simple, and he invokes a requisite number of salient examples but doesn't overdo it.

UNIVERSAL BLISS
Though most of the leaders he cites aren't captains (or even corporals) of industry, they all followed their own bliss, instincts, interests or whims. And some of them aren't even individuals but organizations like the L.A. Philharmonic, which cast a counterintuitive choice as its conductor.

Leadership is not just doing outrageous stuff or going outside of the box for no reason other than to be kooky or zany. Not at all. He writes: "Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort to lead. This scarcity makes leadership valuable. If everyone tries to lead all the time, not much happens. It's discomfort that creates the leverage that makes leadership worthwhile.''

This was not an entirely comforting book to read, either, as some of my own shortcomings surfaced, recalling opportunities I'd failed to embrace. There's no DeLorean in my driveway, so like everyone else, I can only travel forward in time. But Godin's plea to lead — even if it's just a matter of leading oneself — is resonant and inspirational.

published in The Miami Herald 10/20/08

Weekly Biz Bookage

Harnessing power of the crowd
Aggregating the intelligence inherent in amateur enthusiasm and professional knowledge leads to innovation.
BY RICHARD PACHTER

Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business. Crown Business. Jeff Howe. 320 pages.

Jeff Howe's new book belongs in the same section of your library as The Wisdom Of Crowds, The Starfish and the Spider, Wikinomics, Small Pieces Loosely Joined and Seth Godin's forthcoming Tribes. The subject is group intelligence, or as Howe, a writer for Wired and other publications, calls it, "crowdsourcing.''

It's not the greatest name in the world, but it'll do. More accurately, it's ''aggregated intelligence'' since it's really the product of a bunch of individuals and not a ''crowd.'' And it's at its most powerful when disparate and diverse elements and interests come together (virtually) to solve or just work on a single issue.

But nomenclature aside, Howe is an interesting writer and fine reporter. The text follows his intellectual curiosity as he seeks ways that a diverse multitude acts in concert to predict winners of political contests, solve scientific challenges, distribute music, design clothing and conduct all manner of commerce.

It's interesting to me, because some of his findings are decidedly counterintuitive. For example, non-experts in a variety of fields — engineering, for example — can find solutions to problems that may elude dedicated professionals. In many professions, including journalism, debates about professionals and amateurs abound. Howe establishes that amateur enthusiasts have historically made major contributions to their respective fields. In many instances, their work surpassed the efforts of dedicated professionals. But then, as now, professionals resisted, ridiculed and attempted to devalue the work of nonprofessionals.

Howe writes: "Although the technologies behind this latest surge in amateur activity are new, the impulse itself has a venerable history. More than a century of a professionalized academy has helped obscure the amateur roots of the arts and sciences, which evolved through the accomplishments of men and women who wore the mantle of amateur with great pride, and would have considered being called a professional an insult.''

I hasten to add, though, that enthusiasm doesn't magically impart knowledge and competence. But it's a great start. In fact, among the examples of aggregated intelligence Howe cites is the analysis and summaries done by a ''crowd'' of volunteers who scrutinized Justice Department e-mails and memos, which resulted in Josh Marshall and his Talking Points Memo website (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com) being honored with the George Polk Award for Legal Reporting for its ''tenacious investigative reporting'' in uncovering the rampant politicization of the appointment and retention of U.S. attorneys by the Bush Administration, a conspiracy that had escaped the professional "mainstream media.''

Whether they're political bloggers, after-hours amateur computer researchers, virtual collaborators or fans, engaging the power and enthusiasm of these ''crowds'' is a challenge that many legacy companies like IBM, Procter & Gamble have embraced. And a growing number of new enterprises — YouTube, Facebook, iStock, Marketocracy — were built the same way.

Tribes

Seth Godin's new book is coming soon. He's done all kinds of cool promo stuff before, during and after the release of his previous books. This one is no exception.