Learning tribes

It’s been a good week: i’ve been in New York, working with a small team, sharing ideas and learning. Most of the sessions have been around leadership, with me trying to bring a perspective of the Social Age, exploring the impact of new social dynamics and technologies.

Much of the knowledge being shared is formal: captured in books and programmes, but so much more is tribal, the collected experience of the group. As with many tribes, this group don’t spend all their time together: they go out into the world, gathering new ideas, hunting for inspiration and knowledge and coming back together to share it (not around the camp fire, but rather around a collection of laptops and iPads).

We can’t afford to have hotspots of collaboration in a world that is unequal. We need to strive to build bridges, through generosity and sharing.

Tribal knowledge is co-created within the group, through the discussions and conversations, in the room, at the bar and around the edges. It’s narrated through emails, through blogs like this and through the building of shared experiences and memories.

These days we belong to many tribes: some formal, others social, many that stay with us throughout our careers and our lives. Thinking about how we come together, how we share, how we narrate that knowledge is important.