Everything Connects: How to Transform and Lead in the Age of Creativity, Innovation and Sustainability

Everything Connects: How to Transform and Lead in the Age of Creativity, Innovation and Sustainability Faisal Hoque and Drake Baer McGraw-Hill Education, 2014 269 pages, Hardcover, $30.00Everything Connects: How to Transform and Lead in the Age of Creativity, Innovation and Sustainability proposes the overarching premise that if leaders and their organizations want to do well in the long term, they must have a clear path for orientation to the long term. This book is a guide for reaching this goal. The text begins with a forward by Marshall Goldsmith commenting that its cover sports a bicycle chain that metaphorically likens the ideas in the book as being challenging, self powered and sustainable just as a bicycle chain is self powered and sustainable in nature. The book describes holistic solutions to problems in organizations and in our lives. In doing so, the authors demonstrate with philosophically, organizational and leadership examples that "everything connects".In our ever changing environment, leaders are continuously challenged to provide a context for followers and their organizations to keep creating, innovating and "untying the knots inside and outside the organization" that stop progress. Faisal Hoque, a self described "serial entrepreneur" and creative thinker, who with journalist, Drake Baer present the reader with a holistic approach to problem solving and creative solutions for their businesses and for their lives in Everything Connects: How to Transform and Lead in the Age of Creativity, Innovation and Sustainability. The authors combine organizational behavior and management theory, Eastern philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, self-improvement and spirituality to connect the understanding of ourselves and our businesses. The journey that the reader takes in Everything Connects leads to a discovery of what psychological practices predict creativity, what behaviors predict innovation and which organizational structures initiate continuous sustainability. Organizations must continually adapt and its leaders need to understand and embrace the "holistic" nature of its people.Hoque and Baer begin the book with the metaphor of an organization being like a Russian "matryoshka" or nesting doll, with layer upon layer found within. The wise leader is one who understands all the layers of the "matryoshka " doll or the organization and all the layers of his/her people. The role of the leader is to provide alignment of the humanity of their employees and the business. This is what Everything Connects is about and what holistic business is about; to show leaders how to provide alignment to propel those human beings in their organizations to accomplish something together by understanding our collective humanity. These layers all connect. In understanding and nurturing that connection, long term value is provided in our organizations.The book is divided into three sections, which sequentially show how being holistic, humanistic and oriented toward others is "pro-business." This leads to long term value for the organization. The first section looks at the mental experiences, social interactions and the mindset to focus on this holistic, long term view. This sets the stage for the overarching theme of the book which is "if leaders and their organizations want to do well in the long term, they must have a clear path to be oriented toward the long term." The next section delves into the structures that lead to long-term innovation with leaders encouraging followers along this path. The final section shows how to arrange our organizations and lives to create long-term value.Part I of the book, entitled "When, Who and How are You?" has four chapters which map out the fluid landscape that business leaders and entrepreneurs encounter in the world. Chapter 1 sets the scene of this world, as described by Schumpeter, as a "cult of disruption" that must be thoroughly understood by leaders in order for businesses to flourish. …