Leadership as the New Means of Growing Ideas

One of my favorite informative series is the TED Talks. TED stands for "Technology, Entertainment, Design," and TED Talks is a semi-annual series of lectures held by TED, where the world's top minds are given a stage to talk about their passions. They've hosted everyone from Al Gore to Bill Gates, from Karen Armstrong to Billy Graham, and everyone in between. They discuss everything from religion to science, from social justice to war, from personal creativity to mass movements.

Recently Seth Godin, an entrepreneur and social activist, gave a talk titled, "Why Tribes, Not Money or Factories, Will Change the World." In it, he makes a fascinating argument: how change is created, and how people are led to a new conclusion, is in a state of transition. And more importantly, that leadership is becoming the new currency needed to promote an idea, in a way it hasn't been needed in the past.

He begins by arguing that there have been two distinct periods in the way ideas are created, spread, and are implemented on a global scale: we began with the concept that you could change the world with factories (think Henry Ford's assembly lines, the Industrial Revolution, and the thought that we could create bigger and better ideas through bigger and faster machines). The second stage was influenced largely by mass media: ideas were promulgated, pushed, and argued for by television and large-scale media marketing (political ads, commercials, infomercials, etc., designed to push everyone toward buying a single idea/product). The goal here was to influence everyone: to get everyone to buy your product, to vote for you. And because of that, Seth says, the ideas were always average, never extraordinary. When you have to appeal to everyone, you arrive at the middle ground; and because of this, change was relatively uninspired and slow.

Seth argues, and I think pretty effectively, that we are now in a third stage in which ideas are not created through manufacturing or television, but through leadership that unites similarly-minded people. He calls it the "idea of tribes": the spread of technology and the 'flattening' of the world - rather than creating an homogeneous population - instead allows individuals with shared interests or ideas to connect with each other and influence others. This blog is an example of that happening: a group of people interested in fostering leadership in Tulsa can centralize here to share ideas, concepts, and promote these ideas to others.

What these "tribes" require, he goes on to say, is a leader to challenge the status quo - a leader to find a part of society they are unhappy with, and work to change it. These tribes, these movements, do not rise up by themselves - they require that a leader with an idea on how to challenge the status quo connect with individuals who share his/her passion and willingness to work toward that larger goal.

Prior to this video, I had always thought of "leadership" as bound to a person: an individual was a leader, he/she possessed leadership characteristics, etc. The concept of "leadership" based on ideas makes leadership more transportable for me - more able to transcend geographic limitations by creating movements not necessarily grounded in an individual. Ultimately, I think this makes leadership more powerful, and a more effective tool for today's world in effecting social change.

---

Check out the video, and let me know what your thoughts on his concept of leadership are. He hits on so many broad concepts it's tough to tap in to one coherent message, and dialogue on the issues he raises would certainly help to clarify on my end.