Book Review: The Dawn of Everything

What Graeber and Wengrow’s “The Dawn of Everything” means for your career and organization?

I recently drove from Miami to California. With 13 hours behind the wheel each day for three days, I needed a meaty audio-book, so I chose Graeber and Wengrow’s recent opus. After guzzling it for three days, I saw my anxiety and despair over our nation’s soul-sickness fall out of view.? My heart is now exploding with hope, and my eyes have again become wild.

As numerous reviews, such as those in the New York Times and Atlantic suggest, this book does indeed change everything. I found it to be illuminating, hopeful and expansive. It cohered the last 30,000 years of world history in a new way that also places the last 500 years of U.S. history and western thought in a much more coherent, inclusive and inspiring context. While all works of non-fiction are necessarily imperfect and incomplete, as this review reminds us, on the whole, this piece of landmark scholarship is a hopeful cri du coeur that has massive implications for our political and economic structures, as well as for your career and organization.

I believe this book places our social movements, from Abolition to Labor to Suffrage to Civil Rights to the Poor People’s Campaign to the environmental movement to Occupy to MeToo to Black Lives Matter and even The Great Resignation, inside of what may become known as a Second Enlightenment. This is a new reckoning with the deeper truths that are in our hearts and spiritual traditions, but also those increasingly evident in our historical and scientific record.

Graeber and Wengrow are the first to cohere this record and paint the picture that our current understanding of human history and condition is deeply inadequate, omitting perhaps half of the story, e.g., the profound indigenous contributions to The Enlightenment, the large role of women in leadership, culture, and innovation, hundreds of experiments in political, cultural and economic life, the primacy of culture in driving economic and political structure, etc. They make the case that every polity and economy evolves to serve its culture's creative, spiritual and social fulfillment goals. They suggest that when it comes to society, economy and government that anything is possible, and if there ever was a time to dream a new dream about who we are and can be, it is now.

The authors remind us that when a structure no longer expresses the current reality - our understanding of the human and ecological condition-, it perishes, e.g., the Roman Empire, prima nocta, slavery, neoliberalism, lynching, over the counter opium, Purdue Pharmaceuticals, Blackberry, racist mascots, Theranos, etc. Historically, this has happened at the level of the institution, city-state and nation, however, as we are now increasingly inhabiting an interconnected economic, ecological and political paradigm, this suggests we are at the beginning of a global revolution in daily life, work, human potential, and economic and political cooperation.

We are also witnessing the death rattle of the old racist, sexist, aristocratic, paternalistic and exploitative paradigm in real time across our screens, in our schools, national character, and political climate. Those who wish to conserve the incorrect and inadequate Western, male-centric worldview, entrenched power structures, and way of being are becoming increasingly resistant, loud and violent. This era, like all eras of change, is one of increasing danger. With nuclear weapons, 400M guns and easily accessible ammonium nitrate, the cost of inaction, of failing to meet both the possibilities and risks of the day, will be much more than a guilty conscience.

To this end, as business leaders, there are numerous implications for you and your organization. To root yourself in this new reality and prepare for what looks to be an even more volatile and creative decade, below are some actions I believe The Dawn of Everything points towards:

1. Get the facts, by reading or listening to the book as soon as possible. As you do, reflect on your purpose in life and how it must be expressed newly to meet this moment.
2. Launch a book club with your ELT or entire organization, elevate culture to equal footing with your organization’s purpose, vision, and values and ponder how they must evolve to meet the new risks and opportunities of the moment, and the rapidly changing desires of your employees, customers and investors as they confront this moment.
3. Craft egalitarian and flexible people policies, such as living wages, and part-time, contract and flexible workforce planning, gender equity at all levels in the organization, and tripling your L+D and DEIB budgets to equitably prepare people for purposeful, inclusive and agile leadership.
4. Unleash the creative potential of your organization. As this is an all hands on deck moment, empower everyone in your organization to contribute their wild ideas and voice dissenting opinions. Begin by empowering your people to activate their purpose on the job and find their unique connection to the company’s purpose and values.
5. Create physical and psychological safety by nurturing authentic connections across gender, racial and political differences via small, diverse group learning and teaming.
6. Begin an ongoing process of re-imagining your core business, customer relationships, supply chain and USP in light of your purpose, values and culture, changing stakeholder demands and the economic, ecological and political picture painted by the book.

As we head into the longest nights of the year and prepare our hearts for year three of the pandemic, I also invite you to take time to dream a new world, one where you and everyone else get their needs met sustainably and equitably, where communities are safe, caring, dynamic and inclusive, where every person realizes their fullest potential, feels loved, honored and respected. What form this takes will depend on you and your dream.

In 2019, this may have seemed like the banter of soft-headed Californians, however, as the new picture of human history and potential suggests, a better world was, is, and will always be possible. Lastly, please consider giving this book to the influential leaders in your life, such as teachers, clergy and executives, and engage them in a discussion about what implications it may have on their work and legacy.

About the Author

Brandon is a best-selling author, the CEO of Unity Lab, and an expert in purpose, leadership + culture change. He's trusted as a keynote speaker, consultant and program leader by organizations such as Google, Johnson & Johnson, Stanford University, JDRF, Morgan Stanley, U.S. Marine Corps, University of California - Berkeley, LinkedIn, the U.S. Navy, Slalom Consulting, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the University of Minnesota.

He has written / co-written four books on purpose and leadership and has a new book, Purpose Work Nation, coming out in February 2022. His work has been featured by news organizations such as USA Today, U.S. News & World Report, and Forbes.

Brandon holds an MBA in Leadership from Columbia Business School, is an Imperative Certified Purpose Leader (TM), and serves on the Council of the Global Purpose Leaders and the Leadership Council of ManKind Project San Diego.