Quick Take
- Narration: Christina Moore delivers Dhawan and Joni’s case studies with the measured clarity that complex social science arguments need, keeping the chapter transitions clean.
- Themes: Connectional intelligence, collaborative problem-solving, networked ambition and innovation
- Mood: Energizing and conceptually ambitious, like a TED talk stretched to full book length with real supporting evidence
- Verdict: A framework for professional achievement built around networked thinking rather than individual genius, backed by varied case studies that make the concept concrete.
I put Get Big Things Done on during a long train journey, the kind of travel where you have seven hours and no good excuse not to think seriously about something. Erica Dhawan and Saj-nicole Joni’s argument about connectional intelligence isn’t a complicated concept to grasp, but the audiobook does something worth noting: it builds the case across genuinely diverse examples in a way that keeps shifting what you think the concept is about.
Connectional intelligence, as Dhawan and Joni define it, is the ability to combine knowledge, ambition, and human capital to forge connections that create unprecedented value. At first, this sounds like a repackaging of networking. By the time you’re deep into the book’s case studies, the distinction has become clearer: this is about how people who don’t have obvious power or resources accomplish things that require resources and power, by building non-obvious combinations of people, ideas, and opportunities.
The Case Studies That Make the Framework Real
The book’s method is example-driven, and the examples are chosen with real diversity in mind. A small-town pumpkin grower affecting the global food crisis. A Fortune 500 executive changing company culture through video storytelling. A hip-hop artist launching an international happiness movement. A scientist using virtual reality games to lower pain for burn victims. These aren’t decorative illustrations. Dhawan and Joni work through each case to show which specific connective behaviors produced which outcomes.
Reviewer Robyn, a consultant specializing in corporate innovation, described the framework as a genuinely fresh approach to tackling big challenges. Reviewer Neal Gibson, working in marketing for a socially-minded tech company, noted the specific relevance to reaching large numbers of people in short timeframes. Both reactions reflect a book that can land differently depending on your professional context while staying coherent across those applications, which is a genuine achievement for a business framework.
The Emotional Intelligence Parallel
The book explicitly positions connectional intelligence as analogous to emotional intelligence in its potential impact. When Daniel Goleman’s concept of emotional intelligence emerged in the 1990s, it reframed what we thought made people effective at work. Dhawan and Joni are making the same kind of claim for their concept in the 2010s and beyond: that in a hyperconnected world, the ability to work across networks is a learnable, measurable skill rather than an innate trait of charismatic leaders.
Whether the comparison holds at scale, whether connectional intelligence will achieve the cultural traction emotional intelligence did, is a question the book can’t answer from the inside. But the underlying argument, that traditional success metrics like education, individual brilliance, and luck are necessary but insufficient, is persuasive and well-supported.
Christina Moore and the Tonal Challenge
The book’s register moves between inspirational and analytical depending on which section you’re in, and Christina Moore navigates those shifts cleanly. The inspirational passages, which lean on phrases about potential and breakthrough performance, are the ones most vulnerable to sounding hollow if the narration is too flat or too effusive. Moore threads this carefully. The analytical passages, where the framework is broken down and applied to specific cases, benefit from her clarity on complex structures without the unnecessary pausing that some narrators add to signal importance.
What the Book Asks You to Do
Unlike some framework books that stop at concept introduction, Get Big Things Done includes practical guidance on how to develop connectional intelligence as a skill. The strategies for identifying connective opportunities, for building diverse networks, and for framing ambitious goals in terms that attract collaborators are actionable in a way that the case studies alone wouldn’t be. This keeps the audiobook from being purely inspirational; there’s a workshop dimension to the later chapters that gives the framework real traction. At seven hours, it’s a substantial but not exhausting investment for what it delivers.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is connectional intelligence different from ordinary professional networking?
The book addresses this distinction directly. Networking is typically understood as meeting people who might be useful to you. Connectional intelligence, as Dhawan and Joni define it, is about creating non-obvious combinations of knowledge, ambition, and human capital across very different contexts to produce outcomes neither party could achieve alone. The emphasis is on synthesis and combination rather than accumulation of contacts.
Is Get Big Things Done useful for individual contributors, or is it primarily aimed at executives and founders?
The case studies are deliberately diverse in terms of who the protagonists are. The pumpkin grower, the hip-hop artist, and the burn pain researcher are not executives or founders. The framework is presented as applicable regardless of formal power or position, which is part of the authors’ central argument: that connectional intelligence compensates for traditional resource limitations.
The book compares connectional intelligence to emotional intelligence. Does it offer similarly concrete ways to develop the skill?
Yes, the later sections of the book include specific strategies for building and using connectional intelligence, not just a conceptual framework. This includes practical guidance on identifying connective opportunities and framing goals to attract collaborators. It’s more prescriptive than a pure conceptual introduction.
How does Christina Moore handle the range of tones in the book, from inspirational case studies to dense analytical passages?
Moore handles the tonal range well. She avoids the two common failures: over-enthusiastic delivery that makes inspirational passages feel performative, and monotone delivery that makes analytical sections feel like a lecture. The transitions between modes are managed smoothly, keeping the listener’s engagement consistent across the book’s shifting registers.
