Everything Connects Book Exploration by Laurie Hawkins

1. EVERYTHING CONNECTS
by Faisal Hoque with Drake Baer
BOOK EXPLORATION
by Laurie Hawkins

2. “Meditation is the batting cage for getting familiar with the fastballs and curveballs of
our conscious and unconscious habits.”
Think of mindfulness meditation as “a safari of the mind.” Try it for “10 minutes every day for three weeks.”
Follow these four steps:
Sit with both feet flat on the floor and your spine straight. Rest your hands on thighs.
Become conscious of your breathing by following your inhalations and exhalations.
Get in touch with all that your senses reveal – “the light on the walls, the sounds on the street, the
taste in your mouth.”
Don’t worry if your thoughts wander. That’s part of the process. Acknowledge these thoughts and
let them pass by simply saying the word “thinking” to yourself.
MINDFULNESS MEDITATION

3. “The less diverse an organization is – whether in the sense of race, class, gender or personality type – the
less it can empathize with people outside of it, and the fewer partnerships it can form.”
Star.
Commitment.
Bureaucracy.
Enginerring.
Autocracy.
CREATIVE DESTRUCTION
Five personality constructs:
The best workers who do the most demanding work.
Workers who believe in the company and dedicate themselves to it.
Workers who document everything and gain necessary approvals.
Technical people” who “do technical work.
Managers who make key decisions and reap the greatest rewards.

4. Deliver value to your customers by taking care of their needs. And, learn what they need by
listening to them. “Commitment-based” firms listen to their customers and their employees.
CONVERGED DISCIPLINES
Attitudes, practices and goals cross-pollinate throughout the organization. “Ideas
from one discipline aren’t isolated from another. Management isn’t removed from
technology. In the same way that rivers and streams converge to form a delta, the
disciplines in a sustainably innovative organization form a single entity.”
CROSS-BOUNDARY COLLABORATION
Connections within the firm drive productivity. “No person or element...operates in
a vacuum.”
SUSTAINABLY INNOVATIVE STRUCTURES
The structure of a firm determines the quality, quantity and nature of its products
and services. Innovative, visionary companies set their strategies for the long-term
and encourage “organizational mindfulness.”
FIRMS THAT LISTEN

5. WORKING TOGETHER
Employees working together accomplish much more than those who work independently. Relationships can
function as “the bandwidth within an organization,” but only when people share trust. To build trust, staff
members must transcend the functionality of their “lizard brains” – which stay alert for life-threatening danger
– and instead operate through their “mammalian brains” – which care about the collective and believe in
mutual protection and responsibility. These connections – the essence of partnerships – develop through a
sense of “shared experience” and kinship, which derives from empathy. Such relationships form the basis of
creative thinking. Managers must decipher the relationships within their organizations and understand how
they align.
“Innovation does not happen on a spreadsheet, slide show or product line.
Innovation occurs in the interaction between people"

6. ESTABLISHING CLUSTERS OF TALENT
TAILORED AGENDA.
Each cluster has a specific purpose.
TIME-BOUND EXISTENCE.
The group disbands when the project is complete.
EVOLVING MEMBERSHIP.
Talent comes and goes depending on project needs.
SELF-ORGANIZING RESPONSIBILITY.
The group answers to itself.
ADAPTIVE ETHOS.
The group’s personality adjusts to the purpose of its project.
“It is only when devotion turns into discipline – and discipline into devotion – that we
can begin to lead ourselves.”
Five traits of a cluster: