Every organisation is essentially a series of tribes, or groups made up of 20 to 150 people. Humans have been forming tribes for centuries, so naturally that they almost seem to be part of our genetic code.
Tribal organisation is the foundation of any human effort on any scale: their influence is greater than that of teams, administrators, and entire companies. The purpose of this book is to help you build a better tribe, in which people work at their best in order to have an impact on themselves, their organisation, and the whole world. The study of tribes as described in this book is based on the premise that tribes emerge from the language that people use to describe themselves, their work, and others. Each tribe, in fact, has its own dominant culture, which has its own specific way of speaking, its own "theme" that appears whenever people belonging to that tribe write, speak, joke, or relate to each other.
There are various stages of development in a tribe’s culture, ranging from 1 to 5. The stage which people are at and the culture surrounding them shape and influence one another. Over time, there comes a point when the language that a person uses and the language of their tribe tend to synchronise. Tribal Leaders are the only ones who have the ability to change the stage a tribe is in. This involves moving many people forward on an individual level as well as helping them to use a different language and, consequently, to adopt different behaviours and establish different connections. As this happens, the tribe itself begins to produce a new shared culture. Each person in the tribe embarks on a journey through the different stages. The job of the Tribal Leader is to accelerate this journey for every single person in the tribe, so that a new critical mass is formed, leading them all the way to the ideal Stage 4.
Once the culture of Stage 4 is reached, there are many benefits: people work together towards a noble cause; fear and stress decrease, individual participation increases; the tribe self-sufficiently sustains itself with teachings, techniques, and resources for its members; the physical health of individuals increases, as does their happiness and enjoyment at work. In a nutshell, companies whose tribes are able to reach Stage 4 earn more, employ people who perform better, serve their markets better, and do all this while having fun.
