[Book Review] Tribal Leadership — Secret sauce to building a great organizational culture
What triggered me to write this blog, and re-read the book Tribal Leadership is this article on Bloomberg about Microsoft’s shares almost quadrupling since Satya Nadella took up the role of the CEO in 2014. Let me summarize what the book is all about before connecting the dots.
Birds flock, fish school and people tribe
In this book, the author David Logan, talks about the fundamental nature of human beings wired to be social. We’re deeply motivated to stay connected with our family, friends/groups and our identities are born out of the values shared by the groups(tribes) that we belong to. The choice of words we use has a great influence on our identity and behavior.
What differentiates one tribe to the other is the culture. Change the language of the tribe and you have changed the tribe itself.
IDEO’s CEO Kelley said, When you have a great culture going, it’s hard to ruin it. But when you have a bad culture, it’s hard to fix it.
The author draws a parallel between smaller teams in the organizations to smaller towns where people and culture are different but the nature of work largely remains the same. And tribes are the foundation of how work gets done. Tribal Leadership talks about the 5 different stages that the tribe could possibly be in, that makes or breaks the organization. Every organization has a collection of tribes and each tribe is at a certain stage at any given point in time. And tribal leaders play a key role in influencing the culture of the tribe and help them move from one stage to another. Tribes also decide whether the new leader will succeed or get thrown out.
5 stages of tribal leadership
Stage 1: Life Sucks
People in this stage are extremely hostile and would do anything for survival. Basis the author’s research, most organizations don’t have people from this set.
Stage 2: My life sucks
People in this stage mostly consider themselves as victims. They are not open to ideas and often always feel they have seen things before and watched it all fail.
Stage 3: I’m great and you’re not
People in this stage are “lone warriors”. They complain that they don’t have enough time or support and that the people around them aren’t as competent or as committed as they are. Winning gives them a high and winning is personal. They resist bringing people together, hoard information and take pride in being the best of the lot.
In stage 3, power is a zero-sum game, the more one takes from the others, the more they have and the lesser others have.
Stage 4: We’re great, they’re not
The entire tribe shares common values and takes pride in being part of the tribe itself. There is no room for a personal agenda and anyone who tries to pursue this will be outcasted by the tribe. They feel they succeed when the group succeeds. Their competition is outside the tribe. Leading this tribe is almost effortless for the tribal leader as everyone is aligned to the goal and they are all in it together.
Power in Stage 4 is abundant. The more one gives to others, the more they get in return
Stage 5: Life’s great
People in this stage feel they are working on a larger than life kind of a mission. Eg: When asked who your competitor is, to the employees of a health care company, the employees mentioned —” We’re in competition with cancer” and some others mentioned, “We’re in competition with untimely death — human disease”. This article from HBR talks about how changing the company’s culture is like a movement and cannot come as a mandate. People in this stage can almost work with anyone and form networked relationships provided others share the same commitment to the larger goal in front of them. These tribes typically make history!
The book offers tips and leverage points to be used at each stage and the leader needs to gain an understanding of where their tribe stands today before applying these tips. An easier way to do this is to observe the language and the type of relationships (2-way/triads/networked) the tribes' form.
Coming back to Microsoft’s article now,
This is a pretty famous image that made rounds on the internet to depict Microsoft’s culture before Satya Nadella became the CEO. This essentially is the Stage 3 culture of tribal leadership — where people think, I am good and you’re not and hold each other hostage.
In his book Hit Refresh, Satya Nadella says he set out to do 2 things first when he became the CEO —
Fix the culture
Go back to what they were good at — Building Technology
On observing what Satya did to the employees in the last 4+ years is brought them back the pride that the tribe was craving for, uniting them on what they were known for — Building cutting edge technologies. One of his famous quotes is changing the culture from “Know-it-all to Learn-it-all”. He brought back collaboration, innovation and an open culture where everyone can bring ideas that can help build the future, TOGETHER.
Essentially, transitioning the tribe from stage 3 to stage 4. From being “I am great, you’re not” to “We’re great” culture.
In the last few chapters of the book Hit Refresh, Satya writes about — How technology can play a crucial role in fuelling economic growth for countries. And in the recent Build: 2019 developers summit, he spoke about how to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Clearly taking the tribe to the final stage of the tribal leadership — on a larger than life mission!
