Five Types of Tribes

This is an email excerpt I received from a community organizer I met at a Be the Cause Meeting:

Yesterday I attended the TED conference at USC, with an autidorium full of brilliant minds. One speaker, Dave Logan, spoke about the five type of tribes that exist in the world. According to his book on Tribal Leadership, all groups and organizations come together one of 5 different levels of consciousness:

* Life Sucks - those who hate life and seek to survive through destruction (gangs, terrorists, etc)
* My Life Sucks - ineffective hierarchichal organizations that stifle spontaneity, creativity, and individual expression (DMV, public utilities, bad companies) but understand that a better life exists elsewhere
* I'm Great - individual high achievers who come together to compete with one another for greater levels of recognition and accolade (professional orgs for doctors, lawyers, etc)
* We Are Great - groups of high achievers who transcend individual ego to work with the emergent properties of the individually great (Google, Zappos)
* Life is Great - tribes that emerge around shared, deeply cherished values (Desmond Tutu's Truth & Reconciliation Council)

Logan says that only 2% of organizations are in the 'Life Is Great' category, and they are the only ones that make fundamental and widespread changes in society.
Can you guess that I was smiling as I was thinking about our tribe? :-)

Life is Great.