Tribal Leadership: Because Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast

The leadership model for the 21st century requires that people in every role in the company be leaders in the positions they happen to hold. Leadership is no longer about executives and senior managers dictating what needs to happen. The solution is found in how you establish and master relationships and partnership as a leader. Ultimately, you have to develop the leader within you and then support those around you to do the same.

Once it takes hold, a person is never the same again. This methodology will enable you to:

Increase production from three to five times

Hire and staff the ideal talent for your team or department

Achieve things you never thought you could realistically accomplish

These principles were validated and tested in a 12-year study on 24,000 people (published as the NY Times bestselling book Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan and John King) that mapped, for the first time, five stages of corporate culture and the unique leverage points to nudge a group forward. The five cultures are:

Stage One: Criminal clusters, such as gangs and prisons, where the theme is “life sucks,” and people act out in despairingly hostile ways

Stage Two: The dominant culture in 25 percent of workplace tribes where people say, in effect, “my life sucks,” and exhibit behavior of apathetic victims

Stage Three: The dominant culture in almost half of U.S. workplace tribes, where theme is “I’m great.” This personally competitive cultural stage produces only limited innovation and almost no collaboration.

Stage Four: Representing 22 percent of tribal cultures, where the theme is “we’re great.” Stage four is the zone of Tribal Leadership where the leader upgrades the tribe as the tribe embraces the leader. Stage Four is the beginning of high performance.

Stage Five: The culture of 2 percent of the workforce tribes, where the theme is “life is great” and people focus on realizing potential by making history. Teams at Stage Five have produced remarkable innovations, leading their industries and the economy.

Value: Participants will leave with the ability to assess their workplace tribes and upgrade each, one stage at a time, until all are all at least Stage Four. The result is industry-leading productivity, innovation, collaboration, and job satisfaction.

Biography: Mark Taylor, a results-oriented executive with a 35-year history as an accomplished CEO and corporate manager, runs “think tanks” for CEOs in Manhattan. He is a Senior Trainer & Consultant for CultureSync, the consulting company created by Dave Logan, co-author of the book, Tribal Leadership. Mark is a retired CEO that founded several companies, one became the 58th fastest growing company in the state (which he sold in 2005) and a high-tech Internet startup that raised $20 million and went public. Mark holds a MBA and is a certified organizational coach.