We Need To Rebuild Our Tribes. Not By Blood, But By Choice.

Lessons From Leaders

“Le fabbriche sono fatte di uomini, di mezzi tecnici e di muri. La Ferrari è fatta soprattuto di uomini.”

“Factories are made of people, machines and bricks. Ferrari is made of mostly people.”

Enzo Ferrari. 

"The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team."

Phil Jackson.

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Often cited as an African proverb, though its exact origins are unclear.

“It's better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behaviour is better than yours and you'll drift in that direction.”

Warren Buffett.

We Are A Tribal People.

100,000 years ago, tribes worked. Living in small, close-knit groups of kin, Homo sapiens came to dominate all other hominid species and animals, eventually migrating out of Africa 50,000 years ago. 

Hardwired to live in groups of 30-150 people, who stand beside us come rain or shine, we developed language, culture and imagination. These unique skills were the backbone of our superpower – our ability to work in teams.

The Gorilla Debate

Consider a male gorilla. Now consider a strong man, say Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. In hand-to-hand combat, who would win? Well, most likely the 200kg gorilla would outlast Hollywood’s finest, weighing 120kg. Now, consider Tom Holland, Spiderman, weighing in at 65kg. Without his spiderweb spinning fingers, he would be crushed by the gorilla. Obviously. 

What if Tom was joined by an all-star cast of your favourite 100 light weight actors – I’d include anyone from the Superbad movie, maybe as bait. The gorilla would no sooner have beat its chest before our all-star cast of talented men would’ve formulated a plan and taken the gorilla down. 

Act 1: Tribes At Their Best

70,000 years ago, tribes slowly walked out of Africa, travelling a few kilometres each year as they searched for greener pastures.

Tribes worked. They survived the polar ice caps expanding to cover Chicago, New York, the UK and Central Asia. 20,000 years ago, how would the Rock have made himself a warm jacket, whilst hunting woolly mammoths, fending sabre tooth tigers, navigating the Bering Strait Land Bridge? He wouldn’t. He would be dead. Our small, determined, collectively organised ancestors did survive though. 

These unique skills were the backbone of our superpower – our ability to work in teams.

Once the ice thawed, climates became ripe for farming, and humans began to thrive with populations booming across the globe. In these farming civilisations, we were still tribal, still in groups of up to 150 people.

Humans had the same brains as we do now, they were smart. These were not cavemen. If you took a human baby and teleported it from the Fertile Crescent in 9,000 BCE and dropped it in Bangkok with me – it would fit right in. It wouldn’t know the difference. 

Act 2: Tribes Start To Unravel

Our environment has changed, but our emotional brain has not. Now, as I sit on my balcony in sunny Thailand, I couldn’t tell you the name of any of the 150 people that are most proximate to me right now. Hang on, my wife came home, there’s one, and my cat, if he counts? Two. So, how did we get here?

The Industrial Revolution began in the United Kingdom and spread throughout the world in the 1800s. Incredible progress was made to human civilisation, but at a cost. Tribes began to wither, fray, and move to the ever-growing cities. Mass migration on a scale never seen before, saw humans organised into working units, led by managers. Manage comes from the French word ménager, meaning to handle horses. Factories didn’t need tribes, they needed output, and like animals, humans were another capital investment. 

The dimmer switch was turned down on the human spirit at this time, a little bit of light lost behind the eyes. We lost connection, we lost rest, we lost play, we lost our tribe. Where tribes had leaders who inspired and protected, the industrial age gave us managers who treated us like bricks and widgets. 

But all was not lost. Over the coming centuries emerged visionaries who remembered that the essence of the tribe is people. 

“Factories are made of people, machines and bricks. Ferrari is made of mostly people.”

Enzo Ferrari. 

Three days ago Liv and I visited the Ferrari Museum at Maranello, just outside Modena. I was taken back to my childhood. I loved supercars, with posters of Aston Martins and Ferraris on my bedroom walls.

Maranello was full of Italians. Proud of their heritage, they flocked in and surrounded the beautiful cars dotted throughout the museum. In the first room there were some old car shells from the 1960s. Beautiful, curved metal, shaped incredibly by hand. Printed on the wall above it was that quote from Enzo Ferrari. He knew that people are at the heart of a great organisation. 

Act 3: Tribes Reimagined

The 21st century is just beginning – we have a wealth of opportunity ahead of us. We will not win by being tribal in the traditional sense of the word. Tribalism, belonging to one group, is always going to draw us in, but now we need to lean into a multi-tribal world. No longer do we belong to one village, community or race. We choose to belong to sports teams, workplaces, universities, nations, continents and the world. 

Diversity is being in the room; inclusivity is belonging in the room.

Enzo Ferrari understood it, he understood that to consistently add the most value to the world, we need to bring diverse individuals together to become one tribe. 

I started writing this piece two days after returning from our leadership retreat. Bringing together incredibly high performing people in Thailand, Patrick and I guide these 25–39-year-olds through growth of both the body and mind. 

This is the 21st Century tribe. Lebanese, English, Czech, Straight, Gay. The 21st Century tribe is founded on diversity and succeeds on inclusivity. Diversity is a statistic; inclusivity is connection that drives collective progress. Diversity is being in the room; inclusivity is belonging in the room. Inclusivity is a mindset, of coming together despite our differences and because of our shared values. 

There is far more power to belonging to a tribe of your choosing.

As a species our minds and bodies have not changed for 100,000 years. Our environment has been in constant flux. Over the last half millennium we have dropped the very essence of what makes us human – the tribe. In its place came isolation, loneliness, and the myth of the self-made individual. We don’t need to go back to tribes based on blood, on religion, on borders. There is far more power to belonging to a tribe of your choosing, one whose people come from different places, who have had different hardships, who have different goals in life. 

We now have this amazing ability to fly halfway around the world and discover places where we truly belong. I think it is okay that we are less close to our hallway neighbour. What is not okay, is to not take advantage of the wealth of communities that exist to cater to your passions, your interests and your needs.

Deepen Your Curiosity

1. The Evolution Of The Human Brain - William H. Calvin PhD on page 17.

2. History of the World by Andrew Marr.

3. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari.