BOOK REVIEW: John Collinsreviews Tribesby Seth Godin; (Piatkus) 125 pp. £10.99

FOR THOSE not in the know, Seth Godin is a high-profile blogger, web entrepreneur and marketer.

This is his 15th book, including five which were published electronically. His Unleashing the Ideavirus, published in 2001, is the most downloaded e-book ever and became a marketing bible for dotcoms.

This slim tome suggests that humans naturally like to form tribes - whether it's classic car collectors in Sacramento or marketing professionals in Microsoft - and those tribes need leaders.

Tribes is a rallying call for people to become tribe leaders and explains how you can harness the power of the tribe for the benefit of your business.

Perhaps Chieftains would have been a better title.

Godin believes adopting this attitude to work will not only increase your profits but also make work fun for you.

Sadly, though, Godin doesn't tease out this thesis anywhere near enough in the 125 pages at hand.

Was Godin under deadline pressure from his publisher or did he want to get this out there before another blogger published something similar?

We get teasing suggestions of examples that support his thesis, but these are barely fleshed out or not at all. Who is the junior analyst who is shaking up the CIA and how is he doing it? I have no idea - you'll have to ask Godin.

One of the most detailed examples is the one that will probably be of least interest to business readers - how the San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals want from primarily putting down most of the dogs that ended up in its pound to rehousing them.

The subject matter might suggest this is a management book. Actually it's an anti-management book that attempts to subvert traditional models of management. It encourages readers to become charismatic mavericks rather than the management-by-numbers types that business schools churn out every year. The difficulty with that is with a company full of Steve Jobs-types who is actually going to follow the leader?

"Most of all, we're stuck acting like managers or employees, instead of like the leaders we could become. We're embracing a factory instead of a tribe."

One of the most interesting ideas that Godin puts forward is the idea of "sheepwalking", which he defines as "the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them brain-dead jobs and enough fear to keep them in line".

As Godin passionately pleads, this approach, while making life easy for staff and management, crushes people and ensures productivity is kept at an acceptable but low level.

Godin's advice is to simply not accept this kind of herd mentality, and while he admits it might be a little harsh, he advises everyone to start by taking a long hard look in the mirror.

So if this isn't a management title what it is it?

Basically it's a marketing book. As in common with much of his previous writing, Godin is telling you how to effectively sell your product or service.

"Most organisations spend their time marketing to the crowd," he writes. "Smart organisations assemble the tribe."

Although Tribes sits in the same cannon as The Long Tail by Wired editor Chris Andersen, Clay Shirky's recent Here Comes Everybody, and last year's bestseller Wikinomics (Paperback) by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams, Godin is more sanguine about the power of the web in the equation. He says that while the web enables tribes to find each other and communicate, it doesn't create them.

"The real power of tribes has nothing to do with the internet and everything to do with people," he writes.

"You don't need a keyboard to lead.. you only need the desire to make something happen."

If you wonder why some people spend hours publishing their blogs, hanging out on online message boards and generally contributing to a community for no direct material compensation, Tribes does provide answers.

But whether it will convince the sceptical to pick up digital tools and wade in seems unlikely - and that's largely because of his broad brushstrokes approach.

While Godin was a published author long before he became a blogger, Tribes has clearly been influenced by the blog as a medium.

In fact it reads like a series of blog posts that has been stitched together in book format - there are no chapters, just a series of short sections with different headings. To be fair he is marketing Tribes as "short and small and simple", and it certainly fits the bill.

On the last page Godin urges readers who have got "anything out of this book" to give their copy to someone else.

It's good advice, because at £10.99 a copy, you'll certainly feel a little short-changed by this slight book.

• John Collins is a business reporter with The Irish Timeswho covers the technology sector.