A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea.

At the end of February 2008, I was lucky enough to read Adam Gopnik’s great New Yorker piece about the long-lived worldwide tribe of magicians. Jamy Ian Swiss embodies, in some ways, the leadership I’m talking about.

Initiating is really and truly difficult, and that’s what leaders do.

Corporations might as well have been run by Joseph Stalin—they had unalterable five-year plans, sharply controlled channels of communication, and a royal court surrounding the monarch.

Simple example: ten years ago, if you wanted to publish a book, you needed to find a publisher that would say yes. No publisher, no book. Today, of course, you can publish a book all by yourself. Just visit Lulu.com and you’re done. Without someone to say yes, all that’s left are unpublished writers who tell themselves no.

What leaders do: they give people stories they can tell themselves. Stories about the future and about change.

The secret of being wrong isn’t to avoid being wrong! The secret is being willing to be wrong. The secret is realizing that wrong isn’t fatal.

When the Los Angeles Philharmonic, one of the most prestigious in the world, went looking for a new conductor, they had their pick of perhaps a thousand qualified individuals. These were world-class people who had been tested and proved at doing the work of running an orchestra the traditional way. They hired Gustavo Dudamel. He is a

Heretics are the new leaders. The ones who challenge the status quo, who get out in front of their tribes, who create movements.