[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTkKSJSqU-I&feature=player_embedded]
I have been privileged to have some of the best teachers in the world. One of my teachers is Ken Wilber, one of America’s greatest contemporary philosophers and author of 25+ books. He is the first philosopher or psychologist to have his Collected Works published while still alive. Ken has taught me that development, in any of area of our life, happens in stages. We can see this in our children as they grow. We can observe the difference between high school sports, college sports, and professional sports teams. As an entrepreneur and retired CEO, I have experienced it in business but was never able to articulate the stages of development for a business. I am delighted that Ken interviewed author Dave Logan on his latest book, Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization and I was fortunate to have listened.
This was a huge WOW! It is awareness of the different stages that empowers us to develop or grow our companies. Dave Logan and his coauthors, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright inform us of the five stages and provide practical tips on how to move any organization up—from mediocrity to high performance. Based on research from a 10-year study of 24,000+ people, they demonstrate that the single greatest factor in determining quality and productivity is tribes.
The five stages of tribal development are as follows:
- Life sucks
- My life sucks
- I’m great (and you’re not)
- We’re great (and their not)
- Life is great!
As a Vistage Chair, I am committed to enhancing the lives and increasing the effectiveness of CEOs. I am a retired CEO that ran my own business for 20 years and I know how hard it is to run a company. I have charged payrolls on my credit card to survive. I lost years of sleep worrying over tough decisions. Instead of my dream of being in control of my destiny, my life sucked.
I learned to move from a Stage 2 CEO to a Stage 3 through my membership in Vistage. The way Vistage works is that about a dozen CEOs and business owners meet one time a month to help each other tackle their most challenging issues and opportunities. When I had difficult decisions to make, or needed someone knowledgeable and trustworthy to bounce ideas off, or just needed business advice, I could always count on my fellow Vistage members. It changed my life. I didn’t understand at the time but now I think it was like triads on steroids. After I sold my business, I felt called to give back—to help other CEOs because by helping them, I know that I help their employees work in a better environment.
Now, I am passionate about teaching business owners how to create Stage 4 companies so that business can be a place where the human spirit can become freed from the experience of life sucks.
If you are interested in a FREE Audio version of Tribal Leadership, Zappos.com has partnered with the authors of Tribal Leaderhsip to provide a free copy here. http://www.zappos.com/tribal.zhtml.
