Seth Godin wrote on his blog today about what it means to be a lifelong fan -- whether it be of a sports team, a car company, a political party, or, in his words, "anything where affiliation drives our sense of self and community."

There's a powerful sentence in the middle of his post and it's this one here:

"People like us do things like this."

We often make decisions about products, brands, and even where to live based on a narrative that we craft for ourselves. We tell ourselves that I am the kind of person who lives in this neighborhood and drives this car. People like us do things like this.

There's an innate, emotional, and sometimes nonsensical desire to be part of what Seth calls our chosen "tribe." And tribe does really feel like the right word. We all want to be a part of something. It helps to create meaning.

So what's your internal narrative? It probably determines how you hire for many of the "jobs" you need filled.

Today's Seth Godin post on innovation, guts, and generosity is Seth Godin at his best. One of the reasons why I like it is that I keep thinking that "innovative" has become too much of a buzzword. It's similar to walking around and telling everybody you're a cool person. If you have to explain it to everyone, then you're probably not cool. At the same time, I also find his generosity angle to be a clever one. Here is Seth's post in its entirety (short and sweet, as usual):

Innovation is guts plus generosity

Guts, because it might not work.

And generosity, because guts without seeking to make things better is merely hustle.

The innovator shows up with something she knows might not work (pause for a second, and contrast that with everyone else, who has been trained to show up with a proven, verified, approved, deniable answer that will get them an A on the test).

If failure is not an option, then, most of the time, neither is success.

It’s pretty common for someone to claim that they’re innovative when actually, all they are is popular, profitable or successful. Nothing wrong with that. But it’s not innovative.

Allow generosity to take the lead and you’ll probably discover that it’s easier to find the guts.

If any of you have gone to architecture school (or know someone who went to architecture school), you’ll know that everything revolves around something called studio. Studio – that’s really all you need to say – is worth many multiples of your other classes and consumes an even greater multiple of your time. What time will you be in studio? How’s studio going? I was in studio really late last night. This is how the conversations go.

So I was intrigued by Seth Godin’s post this morning comparing “working in a studio” to working in a factory. The latter, he says, relies on compliance: “More compliance leads to more profits. Do what you’re told, faster and cheaper, repeat.” And this was very much the narrative of the 20th century and was the model that empowered small-town America to thrive (see yesterday’s post).

However, the studio is different. Here is how Godin defines it:

The studio, on the other hand, is about initiative. Creativity, sure, but mostly the initiative to make a new thing, a better thing, a process that leads to better.

It’s peer to peer. The hierarchy is mostly gone, because the tasks can be outsourced. So all that’s left is leadership.

Initiative plus responsibility. Authority is far less important, as are the traditional measures of productivity.

It is not difficult to tell the two apart, which is how Godin ends his post. But it is worth noting that the studio model also thrives in a different kind of geography, compared to the factory model. So not only is the studio itself a different place, it also wants to situate itself in a different kind of place. So in a way, what we are seeing today is the new studio geography.