Very rarely in your life, you meet people who have the capability to think with you, and more rarely do you get an opportunity to work with them, spend most of your waking time having fun. (Cause with this set, work feels like fun) You really cannot make it happen yourself. It happens. And while it may not last forever, you can’t help but feel extremely grateful that you got a taste of how a tribe, the most primitive organisation in the history of humans, would have felt like when they worked together towards a cause.

Positive Sum Games

The tribe plays to win as a tribe. Success of one tribe member cannot come at the expense of the other. Resources are equally shared, and credits equally distributed. Even if there are conflicting pathways, a mutual agreement based on capabilities and availability takes precedence rather than a hierarchal rule book which dictates who does what.

Unfortunately specially in our country, the way we grow up, and the circumstances around these growing up scenarios, make us go as far away from positive sum games as possible.

• Limited seats in education institutes of choice.
• Limited opportunities in jobs of choice.
• Limited houses in a neighbourhood of choice.
• Stock markets

and the list goes on. In a lot of these scenarios, not playing positive games, wires the brain to choose for accumulation, choose for personal gains. Which is all great. But in the process creates a negative loop of wanting to do absurd negatives with people in competition as well.

High performing teams (tribes) are far from away from the tidbits of personal wins at the cost of others. While they recognise their best folks in a certain skill, and give them responsibility proportionally, they do not squander the larger potential or opportunity at hand for this personal achievements.

What are the key traits that make these tribes though?

• High Trust: If you can’t be trusted with what you say and the variations in your behaviour make it very hard to predict what would you do in a particular situation, it will be very hard to find a tribe. You have to be consistent in action and in thought.
  
  Once trust is built and placed in the ability to keep your word is also super important.
  
  If you said it will be done by dd-mm-yyyy, the tribe won’t question you how it will be done and ask about it everyday. Rather, they would ask you what help is needed to get it done by dd-mm-yyyy.
  
• Celebrate Success: Not all tribe members, live on the same timeline. Some started earlier, some are still in their childhood. The team which recognises this and celebrates all achievements, irrespective of the magnitude of the win builds in a environment of winning and supporting each other to get wins.
  
  To get these wins, tribe members not only capture existing value, but also generate value for others by thinking with and for the tribals members. Ideas in tribe are not owned by the generator. The entire tribe owns the idea. Wins thus feel more ecstatic, and loses feel more like a learning for all.

There are many more, but these two by far, creates tribal teams.

More personal characteristics of people in tribal teams that I have observed are:

• Optimistic: A team member will care about what the team does, and will be willing to shut down pessimism/interference aggressively, wherever it emanates from. They wear their heart on the sleeve.
  
• Passionate but no Vendetta: A potential member of this team feel strongly about topics they have belief in (and they are usually experts). They will express anger, if something goes against this belief, but will never hold a vendetta.
  
• Long Term thinkers: They will be willing to leave money at the table, and not bicker over short term gains, only to keep a long term optionality intact. The long term game might play out only 1 in 100 times but they are okay to take these chances.

Constructive connections are made by the team members even when the tribe dismembers. Its a pain when the group dissociates, but everyone realises that the potential of this group is to create multiple tribes and try to preserve the organism at new places, for more people to realise the beauty of working towards positive sum outcomes for everyone.

That is what they owe to the world.

I am fortunate to have been a part of such a team. Looking to recreate the magic.

General life philosphy teams vision