I read and listen to about fifty books a year. Depending on my mood, I may be reading fiction, biography’s or two of my favorites, business and self improvement. As an avid reader, I am constantly searching for new and interesting books. Recently, It was suggested that I should read Seth Godin. As I perused the books in the the business section for this new author suggestion, I was lucky enough to pick up his newest novel titled “Tribes”. Now, my friends, you can now add one more person to Seth’s tribe. This book touched a nerve that continues to resonate to this minute. Whenever I read, I have a handy highlighter and notebook with me at all times. I truly believe that if you want to be successful, you need to learn from everything you read. This is the system that I set up for myself, it may not work for you, but you need to find a system. In this age of constant information overload, you need to write the important things down to remember them.
I would like to share a few gems from Mr. Godin’s wisdom in Tribes:
Pg 41 – “The organizations of the future are filled with smart, fast, flexible people on a mission. The thing is, that requires leadership. If you don’t have a time-tested manual, you can’t manage your way through this. In unstable times, growth comes from leaders who create change and engage their organization, instead of from managers who push their employees to do more for less.”
Pg 69 – “Almost all the growth that’s available to you exists when you aren’t like most people and when you work hard to appeal to folks who aren’t most people.”
Pg 138 – “People don’t believe what you tell them. They rarely believe what you show them. They often believe what their friends tell them. They always believe what they tell themselves.”
I think I got more out of this relatively small book about leadership now and in the future then anything else I have read in the last two years. If you have not read this novel yet, do yourself and your career a favor and pick it up. Don’t just read it and place it on the shelf, that would be a waste. Put the practices into place in your own career, that’s exactly what I have done with this blog. For months now I have been on the fence about creating it, afraid that people wouldn’t care what I had to say, or that I might make a mistake. If Tribes taught me anything, it taught me to throw myself out there and let the tribe decide. So, here you go world, I want to help you by sharing the interesting things that I come across. Maybe you will find it interesting, maybe you will not. I guess the Tribe will decide.
So, can you imagine my delight when I picked up my weekly Time magazine and found that Mr. Godin contributed to a story about the future of work. His dead on analysis reinforced my thought process on the future of mine and probably every one’s job. I suggest all of you out there thinking you don’t have to take charge of your own career and education read this carefully. You can find the Time article here: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1898024_1898023_1898077,00.html I have also included the last few paragraphs below.
“In order to understand what your workplace is going to be like in five or 10 years, you need to think about what your work is going to be like. Here’s a clue: employers no longer need to pay you to drive to a building to sit and type. In fact, under pressure from an uncertain economy, bosses are discovering that there are a lot of reasons not to pay you to drive to a central location or even to pay you at all. And when work gets auctioned off to the lowest bidder, your job gets a lot more stressful.
The job of the future will have very little to do with processing words or numbers (the Internet can do that now). Nor will we need many people to act as placeholders, errand runners or receptionists. Instead, there’s going to be a huge focus on finding the essential people and outsourcing the rest.
So, are you essential? Most of the best jobs will be for people who manage customers, who organize fans, who do digital community management. We’ll continue to need brilliant designers, energetic brainstormers and rigorous lab technicians. More and more, though, the need to actually show up at an office that consists of an anonymous hallway and a farm of cubicles or closed doors is just going to fade away. It’s too expensive, and it’s too slow. I’d rather send you a file at the end of my day (when you’re in a very different time zone) and have the information returned to my desktop when I wake up tomorrow. We may never meet, but we’re both doing essential work.
When you do come in to work, your boss will know. If anything can be measured, it will be measured. The boss will know when you log in, what you type, what you access. Not just the boss but also your team. Internet technology makes working as a team, synchronized to a shared goal, easier and more productive than ever. But as in a three-legged-race, you’ll instantly know when a teammate is struggling, because that will slow you down as well. Some people will embrace this new high-stress, high-speed, high-flexibility way of work. We’ll go from a few days alone at home, maintaining the status quo, to urgent team sessions, sometimes in person, often online. It will make some people yearn for jobs like those in the old days, when we fought traffic, sat in a cube, typed memos, took a long lunch and then sat in traffic again.
The only reason to go to work, I think, is to do work. It’s too expensive a trip if all you want to do is hang out. Work will mean managing a tribe, creating a movement and operating in teams to change the world. Anything less is going to be outsourced to someone a lot cheaper and a lot less privileged than you or me.”
OK people. What are you waiting for? A golden invitation? It’s not coming. You need to take stock of yourself and where you are heading in the future, because if it hasn’t hit you yet, it will. The writing is on the wall and your job and lively hood are in jeopardy. Maybe not now, or in a year from now, but it will come. The question is, are you going to be ready for it. I can tell you I will. Mr. Godin’s word’s have propelled me into living my dream and helping others to live theirs.
So, hopefully you will come along for the ride as part of my tribe. Through this blog and other endeavours, I want to share and collaborate with any and all whom wish it. I want to help others achieve the life they envision living and as a community, I feel we can accomplish this together. Why do I feel that I can help people with this? Because I want too, and if someone is dedicated, they will succeed! I think people will help like minded individuals, without keeping a scorecard or worrying what they get in return. I am convinced that the return with be worth the investment.
Thanks Seth Godin. I hope to return the favor in the future.
- Seth Godin
– Seth Godin
– Jeff Jarvis
– Jeffery Gitomer
- Jeffery Gitomer
– Malcom Gladwell
- Thich Nhat Hanh
- Vikto Frankel
– Randy Pausch, Jeffery Zaslow
– Stephen Covey
– Napoleon Hill
– Robert T. Kiyosaki & Sharon L. Lechter
– Michael Gerber
– Timothy Ferriss
– Jack Canfield
– David Allen
– Janet Fisher
– Seth Godin
– Seth Godin
– Jack Covert & Todd Sattersten
