Tribal Leadership

Halee Fischer-Wright, Dave Logan and John King argue that every organization is a tribe, or a network of tribes, made up of groups of 20 to 150 people who all know, or know of, one another. Drawing on an eight-year study of about 24,000 people in more than two dozen companies, they rate tribal culture on a five-stage scale and offer tools for moving a group up one stage at a time. Their research found that more than three quarters of the organizations studied had merely adequate cultures, no higher than the third stage. Interviews range from NASCAR chief executive Brian France to Dilbert creator Scott Adams, and the advice covers corporations, small businesses and nonprofits.

Tony Hsieh of Zappos told USA Today that it sets down much of what his company had been doing by instinct and gives any company a framework for taking its culture further.