No one achieves success alone

What is success?

Success is the end result of a process. It’s the outcome after all the inputs, actions and behaviours have been totalled up. It’s the prize on offer and the reason for trying so hard to achieve it.

Generally speaking, the more people that contribute to a process, the more likely you’ll achieve it. The more diversity of thinking you have in your team, the more ideas and solutions it will produce. The more determined everyone is, the more likely you’ll get the success outcome you want. Yet if there’s no agreement on what success means, what are the chances of motivating everyone?

It’s also important to note that success is not an absolute. Relative success is still success. By defining what success means, in terms of absolute success, relative success, relative failure and absolute failure, we can plan, resource and reward accordingly.

We are not alone

There are practical limits to how much we can do as individuals. No one truly does anything alone. We all need help, whether we accept that or not. And our need for help invariably means persuading other people to join us and work with us. The World over, we team up to deliver all sorts of success. Whether that’s in business, sport, government, music, education or any number of other occupations and pastimes. Teams win more than individuals do. But that’s only part of the equation. Tribes win more than teams and Super-tribes* win most of all.

We can think better, produce more and enjoy the process by working together. We can achieve even more success when we all want the same version of it. Alignment is the key to success. So why settle for a demotivated, misaligned and disengaged team? Why not collaborate inside and outside your organisation?

The seismic shift from being a world of lonely individuals, to becoming part of the highest form of ‘team’ is the process of building a Super-tribe. It’s a process that involves an inclusive mission, joint thinking, shared contributions and fair rewards for all. It’s a process that thinks simultaneously about the past, present and future.

*What’s a Super-tribe?

It’s an inclusive, mission-focused, highly-motivated and well-aligned tribe. On the inside Super-tribes master the twenty elements of modern tribes, starting with the core trio of vision, purpose and values; and including hierarchy, heritage and language. On the outside a Super-tribe is part of a well-chosen network of similar-thinking tribes, developed through partnerships, mergers and other collaborations. And it’s that combination of being a tribe inside and a tribe outside which transforms an informal group of people into a Super-tribe.

There are some thought-provoking questions you can ask of your team or organisation, to see where it’s at. They will help you to find out what else you need to do together. Those questions include: Why am I here? How clear is our mission? Do all of stakeholders feel equally included? Do we enforce our values? How motivated are all our people? How joined-up is our thinking? Is there really an equality of effort here? How aligned are our processes? How fair are our rewards? Would I work anywhere else? The more inquisitive and self-challenging we all are, the more we learn and the faster we develop.

The answers will help you discover how much more work is needed to move from an informal group or team, to becoming a Super-tribe and all the success that brings. Good luck building your Super-tribe.