Tribal Unity: Getting from Teams to Tribes by Creating a One Team Culture

by Em Campbell-Pretty, Gene Kim (Foreword), Steve Farber (Foreword)

Tribal Unity is a real world, practical guide, for leaders committed to making their organisation a great place to work. Based on the true story of how one inspiring leader transformed a highly toxic organisational culture into an internationally recognised case study of success, Tribal Unity shares proven patterns that are revolutionising the way teams of teams connect and perform.

Genres: Leadership, Nonfiction, Business, Management, Cultural, Buisness, Professional Development

150 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 27, 2016

Reviews

[Chuck · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have to admit, there is not a lot of new material here. However, Tribal Unity is proof that all business books do not have to outline a patented process to be valuable. Em does a fabulous job of mixing the practices and techniques of others into a winning formula for her tribe's world-class agile implementation. Each chapter is full of things it took me years to discover on my own, liberally annotated for those hungry to go deeper. I've had the pleasure of meeting Em in person, and I can attest this is a true reflection of Em's contagious enthusiasm. I recommend this book to anyone looking to understand the potential of agile from an experience report, with enough pointers to recreate her tribe's success!

[Rasoul Baghban · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nowadays, scaling teams to a tribe (team of teams) is a trend, not just in Agile world! In Tribal Unity, Em shares her fantastic, and practical, experience with EDW agile release train (ART). About how they formed a tribe with a clearly shared vision and mission.

I do recommend this book to those Agile/Non-agile leaders who want to uplift their teams from "working" to "amazingly performing".

[Tim Schwamb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great teamwork read even if you've already heard it all

This is a great book for anyone that is struggling with team productivity and/or cohesiveness in their Agile teams. If, like me, you've already heard this stuff many times, it's filled with great reminders of stuff you know but probably aren't doing -- getting back to basics. Some of it may seem corny or over-the-top, but there are tons of suggestions in here to at least get you started and begin to build some trust and momentum.

[Jody Mulkey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome meta book around leadership, agile and devops. Reading this book is like reading 10 books on these topics.

[Jeff Dutra · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was just okay to me. I was hoping for more. it seemed to rehash a lot of ideas and principles I have read elsewhere.

This content is ideal for someone who is somewhat new to the agile/lean community and is leading a large team.

In conclusion, it was still worth the investment. I will try to implement some of the ideas expressed.

[Stephanie Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a quick read with lots of good ideas that can be incorporated one step at a time. It was just what I needed when starting a journey with a new SAFe Agile Release Train and I am excited to try some of the suggestions. Em also provides many references and additional reading recommendations.

[Fiikske · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dense compilation of a lot of ideas and practices! Wonderful starting point for your own environment.

[Christopher Hawkes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found a lot of this ideas in the book were things that we already have in practice in the company I work for. However it was still a good read and reminded me why we use to do some of the things we've stopped doing and has inspired me to reinvigorate many of these "lost" practices.

The other nice thing about the book is the reference to other books and authors that the Author has found useful in her career. So she's helped me add to my "To Read" list.

It would have been nice to have had more real world examples beyond the one project that the Author references. This would have rounded out the concepts and proven the point across more than one instance

Is this book great? No. Is this book worth reading? Absolutely.

[Mario Sailer · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are a few nice ideas in the book. I liked the concept of the book club were the leadership team talked about a book one hour per week to get a common understanding and discussing if some of the contents could be applied to the project. And I found the eNPS concept interesting. This concept extents the Net Promoter Score (NPS) to teams.
Otherwise there are a lot of citations from other books and authors. Whilst the book describes how agility was introduced into the EDW (Enterprice Date Warehouse) project Ed was responsible for, it pretty much stays on the surface. So if one is already familiar with basic agile or group behavior concepts there is not much to learn.
Because of this, on the positive side, it it an easy read.

[Alexander Teibrich · Rating 3 out of 5]

In essence this book is about Em‘s story to launch Australia’s first SAFe Agile Release Train and her learnings. It’s definitely a story worth telling and I enjoy the format. The content is closely related to the SAFe recommendations but often with a bit of personal twist that adds authenticity. I would probably recommend SAFe resources first of all, but I do think the book provides value by giving embedding everything into personal learnings.

What I like especially:

- the idea of minimum viable agile (improve on cadence, visualize work and communicate daily
- the definition of a tribe: “A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea.”

[Marisa Martins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leitura recomendada a quem já tenha uma equipa que faz jus ao nome, aos que estão agora na fase de criarem novas ou que estejam apenas perante equipas que ainda não atingiram o seu potencial.
Neste livro podemos encontrar exemplos de sucesso e fracasso, bem como ideias e sugestões para ajudar os líderes a conhecerem e identificarem os problemas das duas equipas, apontando estratégias para ajudar todas as pessoas nas pequenas ou grandes organizações a fazerem parte da mudança (de gestores de topo a pessoas com menos responsabilidades) e a funcionarem como uma equipa de equipas, a que chamamos tribo.

[Matthieu Cornillon · Rating 2 out of 5]

My sense is that the author was a successful and inspiring leader of the organization they reference throughout the book. Unfortunately, I did not get from the book what got them there. They share tons of material, but it feels more like a collection of tips and tricks, books to read, and other resources than any clear and novel thesis. All of these would potentially be useful to someone just starting to explore this kind of organizational change work, but for those who have already spent time thinking about this, many of the shared resources will likely feel like greatest hits they’ve already seen.

[Katrina · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to take your team to the next level, this is a good resource. In this book, the author, Em Campbell-Pretty, shares the patterns she has found to be successful in creating a one team culture. If you know scrum well, some of the information will not be new. However, her story telling style makes this an entertaining and quick read that provides a number of ideas you can take and try within your own scrum team or with your ART.

[Jose M. Beas · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's pretty awesome that, without knowing each other, almost everything that the author explains in this book is part of my approach for Agile transformations.
This is an easy reading book plenty of examples (extracted from actual experience, which is very valuable) and references to her sources of inspiration. I enjoyed it!

[John Crook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short but packed with powerful ideas

This book took me back to my initial agile team experience where I was fortunate to experience the same cultural change and motivated tribe. This reminded me that change is built from the team up and the foundation is this thing called Tribal Unity

[Megan Butler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has given me some ideas on things to try with our relatively young ART. I actually created a list of ideas as I was reading. The biggest one being finding was to get our leadership and management/supervisors more involved in a positive way. Using their abilities to help remove blockers from teams instead of just pushing around paperwork.

[Vincent Vanderheeren · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really love Em’s books. The creativity and energy her books radiate are just contagious. This book is a practical guide of building a team of teams, helpful for coaches and leaders involved in Agile change. I also highly recommend it to anyone currently in an Agile dip. It might inspire you to get through it.

[Joseph Assaf · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best easy-going books I have read concerning Agile, Em has described it from her successful personal experience and I will certainly come back to it and read it again and again as it is more of a "Brain Dump" of Agile willingness to succeed and could be easily applied to your context if you're willing to!

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were some good points in this book and a validation that I'm doing some things right. However, there's not a lot of new information in here. It's really a good summary from varying sources for building a team and a tribe. It's worth reading, I enjoyed it.

[Gary Watts · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book on becoming more agile, scaling agility, creating great teams, and aligned tribes. Will be cheesier in part than some can tolerate but for me this is the kind of supportive, caring, happy, productive, and continually improving culture I would strive for in business.

[Brittany Forsman · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a very nice and quick refresher read I would say on many general agile principles that are familiar. Many tips and games for team cohesiveness! I personally just had a hard time getting through with the style and jump around writing. But an overall a nice summary book.

[Ruben Maldonado Tena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short read, great content

I like this book, is short, concise, and really useful. I strongly recommend you if you’re starting in the SAFe world.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

An easy, quick read with relevant information. Nothing new in this space, nor did I care for her casual tone and overuse of exclamation points. Feels like she wrote how she talks in a conversation.

[Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

Simple messages

This was ok, less about creating unity and more about techniques for agile teams, so read if you want to learn about agile teams.

[Javier Sánchez · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a practical guide to create and maintain high performance teams (like a Tribes). Useful.

[Manouane Beauchamp · Rating 1 out of 5]

Un livre franchement mauvais. Il est mal écrit - on dirait que l'auteur a réuni des notes écrites sur des post-it - et sans structure solide et convaincante. Au moins, l'auteur est honnête et indique les livres qu'il a lu et qu'il a appréciés. Ainsi, la bibliographie pourrait être utile. Autrement, un livre à éviter.

[Alex Yakyma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good guidance for building high-performing ARTs

It was an enjoyable read and I find it to be a good source of info on building strong, self-organizing teams-of-teams.

Pros:
- one in-depth example, based on Em's experience with EDW Agile Release Train
- a good description of specific practices with examples of how to make a tribe operate in a cohesive manner
- very importantly: quite a bit of attention to helping leaders cross the chasm and not only become a part of the game but actually enable the tribe to achieve more
- besides, a very good in-line overview of literature on related topics

Cons:
- I think the book would benefit from a bit more parallels between specific tribe practices and SAFe events (other than just PI Planning).
- in the future (let's say, 2nd edition) it would be great to see other companies' experiences and other release trains. That would allow to compare different tribe practices in terms of where they work best and where they don't and how to make adjustments based on the context.

I think I would like to organize a book club meeting at my company on "Tribal Unity".

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

This short book describes best practises scaling up Agile in an enterprise environment, focusing a lot on encouraging the right culture. The author has a business background, which nicely contrasts with other books about Agile written by more technical people. The highlights for me were: it gives a great overview of how to create and maintain a scaled agile setup, without going into too many process-specific details (e.g. this can be applied to both Scrum and Kanban, and although it's based on SAFe practises and terminology it can easily be applied to other scaling methods for agile), with a nice 'Tribal Unity' checklist at the end, it's very practical instead of supplying a lot of theory, it contains great references to background material, in particular books for further reading, and it's very short (109 pages). You won't find anything groundbreaking here, but it's a great collection of Agile common sense and tips.

[Kiril Kirilov · Rating 4 out of 5]

2nd review: Further rereads add diminishing value but my rating stay the same.

I’m not impressed by this book. It repeats truisms in the field:
- an optimal team contains 7 +/- 2 people
- team-building exercises help the integrity of the team

The part with chapters and guilds is relatively new. But it does not explain why we need them and how they help us. We need to have chapters and guilds in our tribe (company). Ok, but why?

The good thing is that the book contains a large set of references to other books.

3.5 stars

[Gereon Kåver · Rating 4 out of 5]

A personal case study of agile management. More of a compilation than new ideas but a nice compilation