Open source for the mind on Culture & Tribes.
Here’s open source knowledge for the mind made possible by Tony Hsieh, CEO Zappos and a consulting group. It’s a free audio book 
download about what it takes to create an organization’s culture. Kudos to CultureSync a boutique management consulting firm specializing in creating great workplace cultures supported by vibrant strategies. I’m going to appreciate listening to the audio as I’m sure you will too. Here’s what they say about their gift:
Our work is based on a 24,000-person study recently published as Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization (Collins, 2008), which reveals a ten-year, 24,000-person study that shows corporate leaders how they can use their tribes—the groups that naturally form within any company—to maximize productivity and profit within their own firms.
Why should culture be important to you? Because it’s the invisible glue that holds a group of people together – any group, your family, the people you like to hang out with, your online community, Positively Powerful People, etc. Culture is the system of agreements, the experiences, the beliefs, values, attitudes, that are subscribed to, that are bought into willingly or unwittingly. A group so aligned is a “tribe” (aka community) a term I also read about on Seth Godin’s blog. By the way, if you’re interested in more great open source knowledge, get Seth’s Tribe’s Casebook. There are many entries about different tribes. Here is one about a tribe of courageous people.
Tribes You Don’t Want to Belong to Jon Morrow
Sometimes, you don’t get to choose the tribes that you belong to. They choose you, and there’s nothing you can do about it. I’m a member of one of those tribes. It’s called the Tribe of the Disabled. Some of us were born into the tribe. Others were brought into it by an accident or mistake. But regardless of how we arrived, no one wants to be a member….
Still, we have common leaders, people that inspire us. Christopher Reeve was one of those leaders. He inspired us with his audacity, his activism, and his compassion. We were so sad when he left us, but that’s the way this tribe is. Our leaders don’t last long.
It’s an unusual tribe, I know. For the longest time, I didn’t want to be a part of it. I believed that accepting my membership would weaken me, like I would be accepting my own death. So many of us die, after all. It’s the most common way out of the tribe.
But you know what? I was wrong. This tribe isn’t about death. It’s about courage.