Everything Connects: How to Transform and Lead in the Age of Creativity, Innovation, and Sustainability
Faisal Hogue with Drake Baer
McGraw-Hill (2014)

How and why having more and better connections creates more and better opportunities

Faisal Hoque wrote this book with assistance from Drake Baer. He acknowledges that “we now live in a time of creativity, innovation, and sustainability — for these are the skills organizations need to be continually adaptive.” He then suggests there is a three-part question hidden within the need for continued adaptability: “Which kind of psychological practices predict creativity, which social behaviors predict innovation, and which organizational structures lead to the sustainability of all these things?” The information, insights, and counsel he provides in this book are in response to that question.

I agree with Hoque that thinking and being holistic as well as humanistic are among the keys to personal growth and professional development. They are also among the keys to helping others to do so. I also agree that everyone and everything can be connected, directly — or at least indirectly — and that having more and better connections creates more and better opportunities. However, that is true only if (HUGE “if”) connections are constantly nourished and, when necessary, protected by those involved. This is true of teams but also of companies and even societies and connections are more important now than ever before, given the nature and extent of breakthrough technologies that enable almost unlimited interactivity between and among almost anyone…anywhere…anytime.

These are among the dozens of business subjects and issues of special interest and value to me, also listed to indicate the scope of Hoque’s coverage.

o The Qualitative Is the Quantitative (Pages 12-17)
o Enabling Technology: The Game Changer (22-28)
o The Need for Better Tools (33-37)
o So What Is Mindful Meditation? 39-42)
o Taking Responsibility (51-53)
o How Einstein Managed Time, and, Time, Stimulation, and Success (67-71)
o Keystones to Building Partnerships (71-74)
o Three Mini-Profiles: Amazon, Nike, and IKEA (85-88)
o Finding the Platforms That Are Already There, and Platforms Connect with Ecosystems (89-95)
o Blockbuster, Yammer, and Petrified Organizations, and, Connectivity Predicts Success (108-114)
o Organizing with Talent Clusters (118-124)
o The Actors: Role as Performance (131-134)
o Love Your Colleague? (143-147)
o Where the Individual Meets the Organization (157-161)
o Rooting Out Ideas: Cultivating Curiosity (177-181)
o Meeting the Blueprint (199-202)
o Da Vinci’s Ever-Growing Value (222-229)

I commend Faisal Hoque and Drake Baer on their lively and eloquent as well as rigorous and substantive narrative. They invite their readers to embark upon a journey of discovery to obtain self-knowledge they do not now possess. There are dots within each of us that need to be connected, some of which need to be connected externally as well. The stronger people become, the stronger their connections with others will be. Individuals as well as organizations and even nations can achieve the transformation to which the book’s subtitle refers. Ultimately, the value of the material will be determined by how well each reader absorbs, digests, assimilates, and then applies what has be learned. Obviously, no brief commentary such as mine can do full justice to the abundance of material provided in this volume. However, I hope I have at least indicated why I think so highly of it.