Editions Reviewed: Hardcover, Audiobook Recommendation: Read it. Then, like Seth suggests, give it away.
This past week Steve Jobs resigned (retired?) as CEO of Apple. He’s arguably one of the most charismatic leaders of one of the largest and most influential tribes on the planet, and there’s been a lot of talk over the last few days about the fate of Apple, both the company and the tribe. In honor of Steve, here we go…
Tribes is a blessedly concise book about the need…the need to lead.
Seriously, it’s short, and tiny, and it’s set it pretty big type. It’s a breeze to read in a couple of hours (the unabridged audiobook is less than 4 hours long), which means that if you have a client who needs to wrap their head around this idea, they might actually read it if you gave it to them.
Another thing that makes it fairly giftable, if you’re the type to give clients a book, is that the content isn’t really about branding so much as it is fanaticism, leadership, and making a difference in the things that matter to you. So, if your contact inside an organization isn’t decisions maker, there’s still something here for them. In fact, it might empower them to become an advocate for you and your work inside their organization.
Of course, there are implications for branding, customer service, marketing, and building a business in general. Mr. Godin talks about tribes not only in the context of marketing, but in terms of building communities, teams, businesses and an audience. His hypothesis is that not only is it easier than ever for people to assume the mantle of leadership, but that it’s becoming more and more expected of us that we take on leadership roles without being assigned them, and that the market rewards those who do.
There are two major ideas in Tribes that I find interesting personally:
Stability is an illusion—Tribes introduced me to the idea of ‘The Factory.’ The Factory is the traditional, top-down, bottom-line, widget producing organization that mistakes management for leadership and lops off the heads of those who are willing to stick their necks out. Seth discusses it a lot more in-depth in Linchpin.
You don’t need authority to lead a tribe—Why? Because authority is frequently invested in the status quo. Did you know that The Grateful Dead only ever had one Top 40 album? Think about it. Billboard is concerned with album sales, because the record industry is concerned with album sales. The Grateful Dead, and their thousands of fans however, were not. They didn’t look to Billboard to define their success.
Think about that the next time you let not having a wall full of awards, or bigger clients or a book deal stand in the way of attempting something you care about.
The point that I’d forgotten about until I refreshed myself for this review is that nearly all progress relies on some heretic standing up and disrupting the status quo. When he says, “We need you to lead us,” he means We in the grand cultural sense. Your employer, your employees, your customers, your peers, colleagues, audience, customers…We.
His message is not entirely unlike another message that a lot of us are intimately familiar with. So, to bring our little talk of tribalism to a close (and full circle), I’ll leave you with this:
Part memoir, part management book, part history lesson, Creativity Inc is a somewhat meandering account of how Ed Catmull, the founder and President of Pixar turned a love for storytelling and a fascination with Disney into a career in computer science, became the leader one of the most notably creative and productive companies in the world, and eventually became the President of Disney Animation, where he helped the company he once idolized return to its former glory.
Part memoir, part management book, part history lesson, Creativity Inc is a somewhat meandering account of how Ed Catmull, the founder and President of Pixar turned a love for storytelling and a fascination with Disney into a career in computer science, became the leader one of the most notably creative and productive companies in the world, and eventually became the President of Disney Animation, where he helped the company he once idolized return to its former glory.
You don’t know Mike Monteiro (unless you do, you lucky dog), but he loves you. He loves you and wants you to be happy, doing good work, and getting paid fairly. Design is a Job is a pragmatic, reality-based and direct outlook on a trade that is often shrouded in mystery. You should read it now, and again in a year.
You don’t know Mike Monteiro (unless you do, you lucky dog), but he loves you. He loves you and wants you to be happy, doing good work, and getting paid fairly. Design is a Job is a pragmatic, reality-based and direct outlook on a trade that is often shrouded in mystery. You should read it now, and again in a year.
Blink is a book about “thinking without thinking” but really, it’s about how the vast majority of thinking works. The insight in this book is especially useful when dealing with people who aren’t particularly well equipped to discuss their subconscious reactions to something relatively subjective…like design.
Blink is a book about “thinking without thinking” but really, it’s about how the vast majority of thinking works. The insight in this book is especially useful when dealing with people who aren’t particularly well equipped to discuss their subconscious reactions to something relatively subjective…like design.
Linchpin is the book that pulls together a lot of threads that Seth Godin has laid out there in the past, in books like Purple Cow, Tribes, and The Dip. Linchpin tells you, in no uncertain terms, that these things aren’t about brands or leadership or challenges, but about love. Really, this book is a love letter to loving your work.
Linchpin is the book that pulls together a lot of threads that Seth Godin has laid out there in the past, in books like Purple Cow, Tribes, and The Dip. Linchpin tells you, in no uncertain terms, that these things aren’t about brands or leadership or challenges, but about love. Really, this book is a love letter to loving your work.
This book is an golden oldie. It’s important to remember that this book was written not only a long time ago (Published March, 1997…so you know it was written sometime in 1996) but also very early into the history of the World Wide Web. It’s important to remember the context in which this book was written so that you can take some of the particular pieces of information with a grain of salt. And, since you can routinely find it on the shelves of Half Price Books for a couple of bucks, I hardily endorse it.
This book is an golden oldie. It’s important to remember that this book was written not only a long time ago (Published March, 1997…so you know it was written sometime in 1996) but also very early into the history of the World Wide Web. It’s important to remember the context in which this book was written so that you can take some of the particular pieces of information with a grain of salt. And, since you can routinely find it on the shelves of Half Price Books for a couple of bucks, I hardily endorse it.
This hour-ish episode of Critical Path is basically listening in semi-real-time as a market and technology analyst has a revelation about the nature and meaning of the word Brand. It’s always interesting to hear an outsider’s perspective on the thing that we do, and this particular outsider is particularly insightful and relentlessly analytical.
This hour-ish episode of Critical Path is basically listening in semi-real-time as a market and technology analyst has a revelation about the nature and meaning of the word Brand. It’s always interesting to hear an outsider’s perspective on the thing that we do, and this particular outsider is particularly insightful and relentlessly analytical.
Merlin Mann is a productivity guru that wants you to stop worrying about rearranging deck chairs and start finding the time and focus to do your best creative work. He’s funny, zany, and prone to a really obtuse but ultimately insightful analogy. He’s internet-famous for things like Inbox Zero and The Hipster PDA; but he’s also way awesomer than that.
Merlin Mann is a productivity guru that wants you to stop worrying about rearranging deck chairs and start finding the time and focus to do your best creative work. He’s funny, zany, and prone to a really obtuse but ultimately insightful analogy. He’s internet-famous for things like Inbox Zero and The Hipster PDA; but he’s also way awesomer than that.
100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People is a list of all the bits of psychology that they should be teaching in design school. It’s neatly organized, easy to refer to, and easily the best $30 I’ve spent on books in the last few years. If you’re even remotely interested in improving the effectiveness of your designs through an understanding of cognition, this is a great place to start.
100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People is a list of all the bits of psychology that they should be teaching in design school. It’s neatly organized, easy to refer to, and easily the best $30 I’ve spent on books in the last few years. If you’re even remotely interested in improving the effectiveness of your designs through an understanding of cognition, this is a great place to start.
A Smile in the Mind is an in-depth examination of the use of wit in graphic design. It’s also a cogent argument for wit as a technique for building mnemonic value. “The Gag” as I used to call it (before I learned fancy words like “mnemonic”) is a valuable tool in the job box in any good designer’s brain, and with good reason. A Smile in the Mind puts concrete names and concepts behind the hunches we all have about the most popular way to make things memorable.
A Smile in the Mind is an in-depth examination of the use of wit in graphic design. It’s also a cogent argument for wit as a technique for building mnemonic value. “The Gag” as I used to call it (before I learned fancy words like “mnemonic”) is a valuable tool in the job box in any good designer’s brain, and with good reason. A Smile in the Mind puts concrete names and concepts behind the hunches we all have about the most popular way to make things memorable.
Estimate time to read this page: 2 – 4 minutes Edition Reviewed: Paperback Recommendation: Read it if want a little summer fun reading that will be more than a “potato chip” book. Pattern Recognition is, at its core, a mystery-thriller like many
Estimate time to read this page: 2 – 4 minutes Edition Reviewed: Paperback Recommendation: Read it if want a little summer fun reading that will be more than a “potato chip” book. Pattern Recognition is, at its core, a mystery-thriller like many