Reading "Tribes" by Malcolm Gladwell, I was struck by two concepts, which I see as Enabling Change and Authenticity. Those are not words that Gladwell used, but they are terms that seem appropriate to me when thinking about the promises and pitfalls of creating social movements.
Leadership is the new management, Gladwell proclaims. No longer will the world be run by people in charge, but by people who think of new ideas and lead a tribe of followers who share a faith in something. Creating anything big is hard, and sustaining it is even harder - there is a reason IBM and Google have tens of thousands of employees, and were initially backed by wealthy investors and tycoons of industry.
Gladwell , however, is asserting that any person, regardless of their position in society, can be a leader in a tribe. That's a lot of work for one person. So the solution is not managing people but enabling them to contribute to the movement themselves. Wikipedia could never have thrived if Jimmy Wales had chosen to update every page himself. But leaders have visions for a tribe. And allowing others to contribute in a meaningful way to a tribe will inevitably alter the vision of the leader. So leading a tribe requires trust. What I got caught up on, however, was who the leader has to trust. Leadership requires trust on two separate levels. A leader must trust that they have created they have created the correct structures to enabling change to happen, and they must also trust in the tribe members. Such trust does not come easily, but it is necessary if a leader wants to enable change.
A story is more important than an idea. No ideas are new. They have all been proposed before, or at the very least, someone has thought of them. What turns an idea into a tribe is a leader and story. The better the story, the stronger the tribe will be. Where, I wonder, is the place of authenticity in all of this? And how does authenticity relate to the concepts of truth and modesty. I have a natural inclination towards modesty, and I often equate confidence with bragging. But that prevents me from effectively communicating my vision; from selling my story to my potential tribe members. How can I balance modesty with storytelling, and how does authenticity relate to the spread of ideas? These are questions I continue to struggle with, and which I hope to resolve as I move forward with this class.
Leadership is the new management, Gladwell proclaims. No longer will the world be run by people in charge, but by people who think of new ideas and lead a tribe of followers who share a faith in something. Creating anything big is hard, and sustaining it is even harder - there is a reason IBM and Google have tens of thousands of employees, and were initially backed by wealthy investors and tycoons of industry.
Gladwell , however, is asserting that any person, regardless of their position in society, can be a leader in a tribe. That's a lot of work for one person. So the solution is not managing people but enabling them to contribute to the movement themselves. Wikipedia could never have thrived if Jimmy Wales had chosen to update every page himself. But leaders have visions for a tribe. And allowing others to contribute in a meaningful way to a tribe will inevitably alter the vision of the leader. So leading a tribe requires trust. What I got caught up on, however, was who the leader has to trust. Leadership requires trust on two separate levels. A leader must trust that they have created they have created the correct structures to enabling change to happen, and they must also trust in the tribe members. Such trust does not come easily, but it is necessary if a leader wants to enable change.
A story is more important than an idea. No ideas are new. They have all been proposed before, or at the very least, someone has thought of them. What turns an idea into a tribe is a leader and story. The better the story, the stronger the tribe will be. Where, I wonder, is the place of authenticity in all of this? And how does authenticity relate to the concepts of truth and modesty. I have a natural inclination towards modesty, and I often equate confidence with bragging. But that prevents me from effectively communicating my vision; from selling my story to my potential tribe members. How can I balance modesty with storytelling, and how does authenticity relate to the spread of ideas? These are questions I continue to struggle with, and which I hope to resolve as I move forward with this class.
No comments:
Post a Comment