Tribes

Godin argues that the internet made it cheap to connect people who share an interest, that groups so connected want leadership, and that most people decline to provide it. He defines a tribe as a group with a shared interest and a way of communicating, and says the two missing ingredients are usually a leader and a means for members to reach each other rather than only the centre.

His prescriptions are short and repeated. Leadership is distinct from management: management directs people to accomplish known tasks, leadership creates change people want to be part of. Anyone can lead, and the barrier is not permission but willingness. Leaders should be heretics, meaning they should challenge the status quo of their industry rather than seeking consensus. A leader should aim to move a small committed group rather than to reach a mass audience indifferent to the message. Faith in the destination is required, and criticism is evidence of having said something.

The book is a hundred and fifty short pages assembled from brief sections, with examples drawn from businesses and non-profits rather than from systematic evidence.

There is no research base and Godin does not claim one. The argument is exhortation. Its practical content is thin relative to its length, and the specific examples of internet-enabled movements are now dated. What has held up is the structural point that connecting members to each other, rather than only to the organisation, is what turns an audience into a group that sustains itself.

American marketing writer, founder of Yoyodyne and Squidoo, who has published a daily marketing blog for two decades.

Permission Marketing argued for earning attention through opt-in years before that became the default of email and content marketing, and Purple Cow made remarkability the product's job rather than the advertising budget's. The Dip supplies a decision rule for when to quit a market and when the difficulty itself is the barrier worth pushing through.

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