ToolKit: Architecting Tribal Performance - Triads, Symbols, and Rituals

Implementation support for the MANAGER-EDGE MEMO:
Baboons Stole Your Brain, And They’re Eating Your Company Alive.

This is the next tool in the series on Tribal Performance Architecture(™)

If you’ve digested British anthropologist Robin Dunba’s research, you realize this biologically-driven tribal fragmentation impacts your ability to scale:

• You feel the stress on your team’s performance as a project manager

• You struggle with inter-departmental cooperation as a VP or Director

• Your worry about corporate strategic execution declining if you’re a CEO

The following is a good starter toolkit of methods to architect solutions that don’t ignore our biology but uses it.

Implementing this in corporations brings me the opportunity to meet really brilliant people. In working with anthropologists I learned about some great techniques used in ethnographic analysis.

Here’s the evolutionary hack that lets you not transcend Dunbar’s ~150-person limit, but bridge clusters created by it. This addresses the baboon issues in your larger organizations.:

Triads.

Tribes organize through triads: three-person relationships built around shared values. Triads are the smallest stable coalition unit that diffuses rivalry.

Why triads work:

Triads are powerful because:

• They stabilize alliances

• They reduce binary rivalry

• They distribute status

• They create coalition overlap

In this example let’s assume you’re the CEO, but it can apply if you’re a project leader with various teams under you.

One-on-one relationships have limits:

• You → VP of Sales (who optimizes for Sales tribe)

• You → VP of Operations (who optimizes for Operations tribe)

• Sales and Operations compete for CEOs favor

• The CEO becomes the bottleneck and referee

• Tribal boundaries remain solid

Triadic relationships:

• You + VP of Sales + VP of Operations = one unit

• The triad’s identity: “We solve cross-functional problems together”

• Sales and Operations now share tribal identity within the triad

• Tribal boundary between Sales and Operations weakens

• Information flows through the triad

The triad creates a new mini-tribe that transcends the functional tribal boundaries.

• A triad must own a shared measurable outcome.

• A triad must meet on a fixed cadence.

• A triad must have decision rights, not advisory status.

So, if you’re a manager with functional areas competing under you, experiment with creating a mini-tribe triad.

If you don’t control org design or strategic structuring, then use this to:

• Form informal triads across peer leaders.

• Create shared metrics inside your span.

• Start with one high-friction project.

• Build proof before executive blessing.

Phase 1: Identify Your Biggest Tribal Conflict

Where are your tribes fighting most intensely?

Common examples:

• Sales vs. Operations (promises vs. delivery)

• Engineering vs. Product (architecture vs. features)

• Finance vs. Everyone (cost control vs. investment)

Pick the one that’s causing the most company damage.

Phase 2: Form the Triad