The popular reality show Survivor got people talking about tribes and voting people off the island (much like Jim Collin's Good to Great mantra of getting the wrong people off the bus). But the idea of modern-day people organizing themselves into tribes actually stemmed from the work of British anthropologist Robin Dunbar and was popularized in Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point. Everyone is a member of one or more tribes that range in size from 20 to 150 (Dunbar says that tribes split when they reach 150 - probably because it's really hard to stay close to more than that many people). You probably have built up a sizeable tribe on Linked-in, for example. One of my USC colleagues, Dave Logan, has spent a lot of time studying this concept of tribes (10 years and 24,000 people--that's a lot of time) and he and his fellow researchers wrote about it in the best-selling book Tribal Leadership. it goes a long way toward explaining why you need to have the right people in your tribe if you want to create a high-performance culture in your company. According to Dave, every tribe has a culture that ranges from 1-5, with 5 being the most desireable because it's a culture where performance is at its peak. Here's how Dave describes the 5 stages.
Stage One: Life sucks. This stage is where you would find your basic street gang or prison population.
Stage Two: My life sucks. The popular TV show The Office is representative of this tribe. Nothing gets done, no one takes responsibility, and when you present your great idea to the tribe, everyone yawns.
Stage Three: I'm great....you're not. This is actually where a lot of business people, athletes, and politicians play. It's a competitive, dog-eat-dog, zero-sum game. If I'm great, then you're definitely not because we both can't be great at the same time. Sound familiar?
Stage Four: We're great. In other words, we're all in this together--a team. Companies like IDEO fall into this category. Everyone supports everyone else and we want the whole tribe to succeed. What a great place to be.
Stage Five: Life's great. This is the holy grail of tribes. These are the organizations that want to have a global impact and collaborate with everyone. It's all about "leadership, vision, and inspiration." Sounds idyliic. Very few companies reach this stage or stay in it for long, but it's a worthy goal.
As an entrepreneur, you have the chance to select your tribe. If your goal is to work toward a Stage Five culture, then you sure don't want to hire Stage Two people (we assume you wouldn't be looking for Stage One types). What I've given you here is merely a teaser for all you can learn by reading the book. I highly recommend it for entrepreneurial leaders. After all, you are in charge of your company's culture.
