Margaret Heffernan Quotes

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.

For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate.

Companies don't have ideas. Only people do. And what motivates people are the bonds of loyalty and trust they develop around each other.

I don't think you ever know anyone until you see them in action.

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.

A fantastic model of collaboration: thinking partners who aren't echo chambers.

Bosses and leaders everywhere should cherish the people who bring them bad news, disappointing data or hard problems.

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.

As long as they are well-intentioned, mistakes are not a matter for shame but for learning

Openness isn't the end. It's the beginning.

The cell phone has become the adult's transitional object, replacing the toddler's teddy bear for comfort and a sense of belonging.

[For constructive conflict,] we have to resist the neurobiological drive which means that we really prefer people mostly like ourselves.

Making those around you feel invisible is the opposite of leadership.

The healthiest companies are always characterized by organic talent development.

We have to see conflict as thinking and then get really good at it.

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.

As long as it (an issue) remains invisible, it is guaranteed to remain insoluble.

A thinking partner who isn't an echo chamber... How many of us dare to have such collaborators?

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.

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.

Words are how people think. When you misuse words, you diminish your ability to think clearly and truthfully.

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.

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.

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.

Making a company fit to sell may be the only way to ensure you never need a buyer.

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.

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.

You cannot fix a problem that you refuse to acknowledge.

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.

Certainty is no guarantor of correctness.

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.

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.

What do you want your business to do? Make money, of course. To pay for people and supplies, to be able to grow.

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.

In business, staying focused requires that you turn most opportunities down.

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

If we aren't going to be afraid of conflict, we have to see it as thinking.

I don't think a true company - one that builds sustainable value - can ever only exist online or remotely.

Everyone I know feels harassed by email which has invaded their waking and sleeping hours.

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.

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.

Most people have their best ideas when they take their minds away from problems they're trying to solve.

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.

It is nobody's right to be waited on and nobody's fate to do the waiting.

One of the sad truths about leadership is that, the higher up the ladder you travel, the less you know.

Most executives I know are so action-oriented, or action-addicted, that time for reflection is the first casualty of their success.

Once you have power, you are inevitably surrounded by people who have their own agendas and will tell you whatever advances them.

Every organization has issues and concerns which are known about by many people who choose to remain silent.

Silence is the language of inertia.

Noise is a buffer, more effective than cubicles or booth walls.