I’ve just downloaded Tribes Q&A, a fan book inspired by Seth Godin’s latest book “Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us”. The book talks about the basic need humans have to connect with other human beings from a social and a commercial perspective.
There’s one sentence that stood out for me: Connecting people and giving them a place in the world IS (what makes you a living).
I immediately thought, this affects technical authors. They connect people to information, rather than people. They help people find their place. They play a role in building and maintaining an organisation’s tribe. They show there’s more to the supplier-customer relationship than the moment of the sale.
The user assistance that technical authors provide is part of the longer term relationship that leads to customer loyalty.
The book asks and answers some great questions:
– How does a tribe awaken its “sheepwalkers”?
– How does the leader of the tribe walk the fine line between being inclusive and allowing the tribe to become a democracy? Between setting direction and becoming an autocratic factory?
It raised some questions in my mind:
– Does Cherryleaf have a tribe?
– To which tribes do you belong?
I think that one of Godin’s messages is that technology enables potential leaders to gather tribes around them more easily than was the case in the past, but that technology itself is not a substitute for a message. There must be meaningful content.
Technical writers are good at delivering messages, which may help some leaders. A related question is whether technical authors/writers/communicators are themselves a tribe, and if so, who is their leader?