THE Book You Need Today

"Tribes: We need you to lead us" by Seth Godin will scare you, embarrass you, piss you off, and, if you're smart and lucky, inspire you.  This is the kind of book that just might make your life the envy of others, even if you're never famous.  It's the book psychiatrists should prescribe to patients with esteem issues before passing out pills. It's the book that bad bosses don't want you to read, and one that great bosses will buy for you.  

By challenging the "sheepwalkers," Seth sets them (us) up for resounding success.  

"Tribes" is a manifesto that calls upon the play-it-safe, get-a-check, retire crowd to realize something important:  IT AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN.    Even before idiots with MBAs crashed the world economy by placing trillion dollar bets on bad loans, your safe job wasn't safe.  

What is safe--or at least feasible--is leading change, daring to break the rules.  (By "break the rules" I refer to the corporate ladder rules, not the sexual harassment and "no weapons in the lobby" rules--those you still need to follow.)   

I recognized both sides of myself.  I am both a leader and a sheep.  At times my leader side is dominant, like when I hooked up rogue server to the corporate network and launched a  social networking application to build internal communities of company fanatics.  The tool is open to anyone to write anything that won't get the company fined or sued.  At other times, my sheepwalker dominates,   and I don't fix problems that I know are fixable if the fix would piss off some senior people at a time when the company's looking to lay people off. 

As I said, "Tribes" can be an embarrassing read.

But read it.  In fact, read it and give a copy to someone you want to see succeed.  I'm giving a copy to my boss and to at least two of my friends.  If nothing else, maybe they'll understand why I'm so "dangerous" sometimes--like when my leader side emerges.