1.
If you have never failed at anything, then you haven't been trying hard enough, aren't very imaginative, or have had such extraordinarily good luck that you have come to believe you are invincible.
Margaret Heffernan
2.
For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate.
Margaret Heffernan
3.
Companies don't have ideas. Only people do. And what motivates people are the bonds of loyalty and trust they develop around each other.
Margaret Heffernan
4.
I don't think you ever know anyone until you see them in action.
Margaret Heffernan
5.
We know - intellectually - that confronting an issue is the only way to resolve it. But any resolution will disrupt the status quo. Given the choice between conflict and change on the one hand, and inertia on the other, the ostrich position can seem very attractive.
Margaret Heffernan
6.
A fantastic model of collaboration: thinking partners who aren't echo chambers.
Margaret Heffernan
7.
Bosses and leaders everywhere should cherish the people who bring them bad news, disappointing data or hard problems.
Margaret Heffernan
8.
Huge open source organizations like Red Hat and Mozilla manage the collaboration of hundreds of people who don't know one another and have spent no time hanging around the water cooler.
Margaret Heffernan
9.
As long as they are well-intentioned, mistakes are not a matter for shame but for learning
Margaret Heffernan
10.
Openness isn't the end. It's the beginning.
Margaret Heffernan
11.
The cell phone has become the adult's transitional object, replacing the toddler's teddy bear for comfort and a sense of belonging.
Margaret Heffernan
12.
[For constructive conflict,] we have to resist the neurobiological drive which means that we really prefer people mostly like ourselves.
Margaret Heffernan
13.
Making those around you feel invisible is the opposite of leadership.
Margaret Heffernan
14.
The healthiest companies are always characterized by organic talent development.
Margaret Heffernan
15.
We have to see conflict as thinking and then get really good at it.
Margaret Heffernan
16.
The truth won't set us free until we develop the skills and the habit and the talent and the moral courage to use it.
Margaret Heffernan
17.
As long as it (an issue) remains invisible, it is guaranteed to remain insoluble.
Margaret Heffernan
18.
A thinking partner who isn't an echo chamber... How many of us dare to have such collaborators?
Margaret Heffernan
19.
Customers who have to come back and spend, or customers who just don't want the hassle of leaving - those are the ones who are most worth attracting.
Margaret Heffernan
20.
If the company depends entirely on you - your creativity, ingenuity, inspiration, salesmanship or charisma - nobody will want to buy it. The risk and the dependency are too great.
Margaret Heffernan
21.
Words are how people think. When you misuse words, you diminish your ability to think clearly and truthfully.
Margaret Heffernan
22.
Those in powerless positions aren't about to complain about bullying bosses, abusive supervisors or corrupt co-workers. There is no safe way to do so and no process that promises redress.
Margaret Heffernan
23.
The biggest catastrophes that we've witnessed rarely come from information that is secret or hidden. It comes from information that is freely available and out there, but that we are willfully blind to.
Margaret Heffernan
24.
Instead, we have found ourselves gasping for air in a sea of corruption, dysfunction, environmental degradation, waste, disenchantment and inequality—and the harder we compete, the more unequal we become.
Margaret Heffernan
25.
Making a company fit to sell may be the only way to ensure you never need a buyer.
Margaret Heffernan
26.
I hate people walking down the street listening to the soundtrack of their lives which responds to them but not their setting. I hate the overspill of sound which metro and subway riders are oblivious to because they notice no one and nothing around them.
Margaret Heffernan
27.
I'm all for ambition and stretch goals. I set them for myself.
But leadership isn't the same as cheerleading. Believing
in something is a necessary but absolutely insufficient
condition for making it come true.
Margaret Heffernan
28.
You cannot fix a problem that you refuse to acknowledge.
Margaret Heffernan
29.
All businesses and jobs depend on a vast number of people, often unnoticed and unthanked, without which nothing really gets done. They are all human and deserve respect and gratitude.
Margaret Heffernan
30.
Certainty is no guarantor of correctness.
Margaret Heffernan
31.
On overnight flights, I have trained myself to get to sleep almost instantly after takeoff. I always listen to the same audiobook on my iPod so my brain knows, regardless of time zone, that that voice means it's time for bed.
Margaret Heffernan
32.
Many CEOs and leaders think that silence is indeed golden, that consensus is bliss. It is - sometimes. But more often what it signifies is that there are no respected processes for surfacing concerns and dissent.
Margaret Heffernan
33.
What do you want your business to do? Make money, of course. To pay for people and supplies, to be able to grow.
Margaret Heffernan
34.
As a mother, I work hard every day and I expect that work to be recognized and appreciated. Because I work for and with human beings, sometimes they're grateful and sometimes they aren't.
Margaret Heffernan
35.
In business, staying focused requires that you turn most opportunities down.
Margaret Heffernan
36.
Big data will never give you big ideas... Big data doesn't facilitate big leaps of the imagination. It will never conjure up a PC revolution or any kind of paradigm shift. And while it might tell you what to aim for, it can't tell you how to get there
Margaret Heffernan
37.
If we aren't going to be afraid of conflict, we have to see it as thinking.
Margaret Heffernan
38.
I don't think a true company - one that builds sustainable value - can ever only exist online or remotely.
Margaret Heffernan
39.
Everyone I know feels harassed by email which has invaded their waking and sleeping hours.
Margaret Heffernan
40.
Phones and soundtracks and Muzak and fountains replace genuine and unpredictable human contact with a seamless soundtrack from a bad movie and a cliche that makes us believe we must all be happy.
Margaret Heffernan
41.
The best remote companies I've seen do almost everything online, via email and telephone. But they also get together face to face on a regular basis.
Margaret Heffernan
42.
Most people have their best ideas when they take their minds away from problems they're trying to solve.
Margaret Heffernan
43.
I regularly take my entrepreneurship students out walking because I want to get them in the habit of noticing and thinking about what they notice. They have to leave their phones behind to learn the basic lesson: Be where you are.
Margaret Heffernan
44.
It is nobody's right to be waited on and nobody's fate to do the waiting.
Margaret Heffernan
45.
One of the sad truths about leadership is that, the higher up the ladder you travel, the less you know.
Margaret Heffernan
46.
Most executives I know are so action-oriented, or action-addicted, that time for reflection is the first casualty of their success.
Margaret Heffernan
47.
Once you have power, you are inevitably surrounded by people who have their own agendas and will tell you whatever advances them.
Margaret Heffernan
48.
Every organization has issues and concerns which are known about by many people who choose to remain silent.
Margaret Heffernan
49.
Silence is the language of inertia.
Margaret Heffernan
50.
Noise is a buffer, more effective than cubicles or booth walls.
Margaret Heffernan
