The tribes we lead - Seth Godin

[Music] so sometimes I get invited to give weird talks I got invited to speak to the people who dress up in big stuffed animal costumes to perform its sporting events unfortunately I couldn't go but it got me thinking about the fact that these guys at least most of them know what it is that they do for a living what they do is they dress up as stuffed animals and entertain people at sporting events shortly after that I got invited to speak at the convention of the people who make balloon animals and again I couldn't go but it's a fascinating group they make balloon animals there's a big schism between the ones who make gospel animals and porn animals but they do a lot of really cool stuff with balloon sometimes we get in trouble but not often and the other thing about these guys is they also know what they do for a living they make balloon animals but what do we do for a living what exactly do the people watching this do every day and I want to argue that what we do is we try to change everything that we try to find a piece of the status quo something that bothers us something that needs to be improved something that's eating to be changed and we change it and we try to make big permanent important change but we don't think about it that way and we haven't spent a lot of time talking about what that process is like and I've been studying it for a couple years and I want to share a couple stories with you today first about a guy named Nathan Winograd Nathan was the number two person at the San Francisco SPCA and what you may not know about the history of the SPCA is it was founded to kill dogs and cats cities gave them a charter to get rid of the stray animals on the street and destroy them and in a typical year four million dogs and cats were killed most of them within 24 hours of being scooped off the street Nathan and his boss saw this and they could not tolerate it so they set out to make San Francisco a no-kill City create an entire city wherever dog and cat unless it was ill or dangerous would be adopted not killed and everyone said it was impossible Nathan his boss went to the City Council to get a change in the ordinance and people from SPCA s and humane shelters from around the country flew to San Francisco to testify against them to say it would hurt the movement and it was inhumane they persisted and Nathan went directly to the community he connected with people who cared about this non-professionals people with passion and within just a couple years San Francisco became the first no-kill city running no deficit completely supported by the community Nathan left and went to Tompkins County New York a place as different from San Francisco as you can be and still be the United States and he did it again he went from being a glorified dog catcher to completely transforming the community and then he went to North Carolina and did it again and he went to Reno and he did it again and when I think about what Nathan did and I think about people here do I think about ideas and I think about the idea that creating an idea spreading an idea has a lot behind it and I don't know if you've ever been to a Jewish wedding but what they do is they take a light bulb and they smash it now there's a bunch of reasons for that and stories about it but one reason is because it indicates a change from before to after it's a moment in time and I want to argue that we are living through and are right at the key moment of a change in the way ideas are created and spread and implemented we started with the factory idea that you could change the whole world if you had an efficient factory that could turn out change we then went to the TV idea that said if you had a big enough mouthpiece if you can get on TV enough times if you could buy enough ads you could win and now we're in this new model of leadership where the way we make change is not by using money or power to lever a system but by leading so let me talk about the three cycles the first one is the factory cycle Henry Ford comes up with a really cool idea it enables him to hire men who used to get paid 50 cents a day and pay him five dollars a day because he's got an efficient in a factory well with that sort of advantage you can churn out a lot of cars you can make a lot of change you can get roads built you can change the fabric of an entire country that the essence of what you're doing is you need ever cheaper labor and ever faster machines and the problem we've run into is we're running out of both ever cheaper labor and ever faster machines so we shift gears for a minute and say I know television advertising push push take a good idea and push it on the world I have a better mousetrap and if I can just get enough money to tell enough people I'll sell enough and you can build an entire industry on that if necessary you can put babies in your ads if necessary you can use babies to sell other stuff and if babies don't work you can use doctors but be careful because you don't want to get an unfortunate juxtaposition when you're talking about one thing instead of the other this model requires you to act like the king like the person in the front of the room throwing things to the peons in the back now you are in charge and you're going to tell people what to do next that you know the quick little diagram of it is you're up here and you are pushing it out to the world this method mass marketing requires average ideas because you're going to the masses and plenty of ads what we've done as spammers is trying to hypnotize everyone into buying our idea hypnotize everyone into donating to our cause hypnotize everyone into voting for our candidate and unfortunately it doesn't work so well anymore either but there is good news around the corner really good news I call it the idea of tribes what tribes are is a very simple concept that goes back fifty thousand years it's about leading and connecting people and ideas and it's something that people have wanted forever lots of people are used to having a spiritual tribe or a church tribe having a work tribe having a community tribe but now thanks to the internet thanks to the explosion of mass media thanks to a lot of other things that are bubbling through our society around the world tribes are everywhere the internet was supposed to homogenize everyone by connecting us all instead what it's allowed is silos of interest so you got the Red Hat ladies over here you got the Red Hat triathletes over there you've got the organized armies over here you got the disorganized rebels over here you got people in white hats making food and people in white hats sailing boats the point is that you can find Ukrainian folk dancers and connect with them because you want to be connected that people on the fringes can find each other connect and go somewhere every town that has a volunteer fire department understands this way of thinking now it turns out this is a legitimate non photoshopped photo people I know who are firemen told me that this is not uncommon and that what firemen do to Train sometimes is they take a house that's going to be torn down and they burn it down instead in practice putting it out but they always stop and take a picture so you know the pirate tribe is a fascinating one they got thrown flag they got the eye patches you can tell when you're running into someone in a tribe and it turns out that it's tribes not money not factories that can change our world that can change politics that can align large numbers of people not because you force them to do something against their will but because they wanted to connect that what we do for a living now all of us I think is find something worth changing and then assemble tribes that assemble tribes that spread the idea and spread the idea and it becomes something far bigger than ourselves it becomes a movement so when Al Gore set out to change the world again he didn't do it by himself and he didn't do it by buying a lot of ads he did it by creating a movement thousands of people around the country who could give his presentation for him because he can't be in 100 or 200 or 500 cities in each night you don't need everyone what Kevin Kelley has taught us is you just need I don't know a thousand true fans a thousand people who care enough that they will get you the next round and the next round and the next one that means that the idea you create the product you create the movement you create isn't for everyone it's not a mass thing that's not what this is about what it's about instead is finding the true believers it's easy to look at what I've said so far as I wait a minute I don't have what it takes to be that kind of leader so here are two leaders they don't have a lot in common they're about the same age but that's about it what they did though is each in their own way created a different way of navigating your way through technology so some people would go out and get people to be on one team and some people get people to be on the other team it also informs the decisions you make when you make products or services you know this is one of my favorite devices but what a shame that it's not organized to help authors create movements what would happen if when you're using your Kindle you could see the comments and quotes and notes from all the other people reading the same book as you in that moment or from your book group or from your friends or from the circle you want what would happen if authors or people with ideas could use version two which comes out on Monday and use it to organize people who want to talk about something now there is a million things I could share with you about the mechanics here but let me just try a couple the Beatles did not invent teenagers they merely decided to lead them that most movements most leadership that we're doing is about finding a group that's disconnected but already has a yearning not persuading people to want something they don't have yet when Diane hats worked on the meatrix her video that spread all across the internet about the way farm animals are treated she didn't invent the idea of being a vegan she didn't invent the idea of caring about this issue but she helped to organize people and help turn it into a movement Hugo Chavez did not invent the disaffected middle and lower class of Venezuela he merely led them Bob Marley did not invent Rastafarians he just stepped up and said follow me Derek Siver's invented CD Baby which allowed independent musicians to have a place to sell their music without selling out to the man to have a place to take the mission they already wanted to go to and connect with each other what all these people have in common is that they are heretics that heretics look at the status quo and say this will not stand I can't abide this status quo I am willing to stand up and be counted and move things forward I see what the status quo is I don't like it that instead of looking at all the little rules and following each one of them that instead of being what I call a sheep Walker somebody who is half asleep following instructions keeping their head down fitting in every once in a while someone says up and says not me someone stands up and says this one's important we need to organize around it and not everyone will but you don't need everyone you just need a few people who will look at the rules realize they make no sense and realize how much they want to be connected so Tony Hsieh does not run a shoe store Zappos isn't a shoe store Zappos is the one the only the best there ever was place for people who are into shoes to fight each other to talk about their passion to connect with people who care more about customer service than making a nickel tomorrow it can be something as prosaic issues and something as complicated as overthrowing a government it's exactly the same behavior though what it requires as Geraldine Carter has discovered is to be able to say I can't do this by myself but if I can get other people to join my climate ride then together we can get something that we all want we just waiting for someone to lead us Michelle Kaufmann has pioneered new ways of thinking about environmental architecture she doesn't do it by quietly building one house at a time she does it by telling a story to people who want to hear it by connecting a tribe of people who are desperate to be connected to each other by leading a movement and making change and around and around and around it goes so three questions I'd offer you the first one is who exactly are you upsetting because if you're not upsetting anyone you're not changing the status quo the second question is who are you connecting because for a lot of people that's what they're in it for the connections that are being made one to the other and the third one is who are you leading be because focusing on that part of it not the mechanics of what you're building but the who and the leading part is where change comes so you know Blake at TOMS shoes had a very simple idea what would happen if every time someone bought a pair of these shoes I gave exactly the same pair to someone who doesn't even own a pair of shoes this is not the story of how you get shelf space at Neiman Marcus it's a story of a product that tells a story and as you walk around with this remarkable pair of shoes and someone says what are those you get to tell the story on Blake's behalf on behalf of the people who got the shoes and suddenly it's not one pair of shoes 100 pair of shoes it's tens of thousands of pairs of shoes my friend red Maxwell has spent the last 10 years fighting against juvenile diabetes not far during the organization that's fighting and fighting with them leading them connecting them challenging the status quo because it's important to him and the people he surrounds himself with need the connection they need the leadership it makes a difference you don't need permission from people to lead them but in case you do here it is they're waiting we're waiting for you to show us where to go next so here's what leaders have in common the first thing is they challenge the status quo they challenge what's currently there the second thing is they build a culture a secret language a seven-second handshake a way of knowing that you're in or out they have curiosity curiosity about the people in the tribe curiosity about outsiders they're asking questions they connect people to one another do you know what people want more than anything they want to be missed they want to be missed the day they don't show up they want to be missed when they're gone and tribe leaders can do that and it's fascinating because all tribe leaders have charisma but you don't need charisma to become a leader being a leader gives you charisma and if you look and study the leaders who have succeeded that's where charisma comes from from the leading and finally they commit they commit to the cause they commit to the tribe they commit to the people who are there so I'd like you to do something for me and I hope you'll think about it before you reject it out of hand what I want you to do is only takes 24 hours is create a movement something that matters start do it we need it thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: TED-Ed

Views: 203,002

Rating: 4.8954844 out of 5

Keywords: \Seth Godin\, TED, \TED, Talk\, TEDEducation, TED-Ed, Ed\, tribes, internet, cyber, \cyber, power\, change, \change, the, world\

Id: 589tH-wtCak

Length: 17min 27sec (1047 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 03 2013