Margaret Heffernan famous quotes

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

#Loyalty #Ideas #People

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

#Believe #Good Luck #Trying

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

#Thinking #Action

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

#Data #People #Leader

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

#Ideas #Innovation #Needs

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

#Thinking #Echoes #Collaboration

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

#Ostriches #Hands #Issues

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

#Opposites #Invisible #Feels

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

#Motivation #Inspiration #Skills

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

#Phones #Cells #Bears

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

#Motivation #Inspiration #Mean

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

#Issues #Long #Invisible

Business is not a science; it is not susceptible to experiments that can be controlled and replicated. Everything in business is too unpredictable for that - every business, employee, product, market is different and keeps changing.
-- Margaret Heffernan

#Different #Employee #Unpredictable

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

#Thinking #Silence #Leader

The healthiest companies are always characterized by organic talent development.
-- Margaret Heffernan

#Development #Talent #Company

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

#Air #Sea #Dysfunction

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

#Cheerleading #Believe #Ambition

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

#Gratitude #Jobs #Numbers

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

#Mistake #Long #Matter

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

#Thinking #Conflict #Get Real

When we care about people, we care less about money, and when we care about money, we care less about people.
-- Margaret Heffernan

#People #Care

Silence is the language of inertia.
-- Margaret Heffernan

#Silence #Language #Inertia

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

#Thinking #Online #Company

Openness isn't the end; it's the beginning.
-- Margaret Heffernan

#Ends #Openness

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

#Organization #Issues #People

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

#Leaving #Want #Hassle

Certainty is no guarantor of correctness.
-- Margaret Heffernan

#Religion #Certainty

Building businesses takes tremendous stamina, and success isn't achieved without it.
-- Margaret Heffernan

#Building #Stamina

Britain is famous for being great at inventing and poor at commercializing.
-- Margaret Heffernan

#Poor #Britain

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

#Bullying #Boss #Promise

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

#Thinking #Phones #Want

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

#Fate #Waiting

British innovation in design, in the creative arts, in engineering and manufacturing is world class.
-- Margaret Heffernan

#Art #Class #Engineering

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

#Mother #Grateful #Hard Work

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

#Thinking #Conflict

You cannot fix a problem that you refuse to acknowledge.
-- Margaret Heffernan

#Problem #Acknowledge #Refuse

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

#Opportunity #Stay Focused #Turns

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

#Together #Telephones #Email

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

#Wall #Cubicles #Noise

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

#People #Want #Pay

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

#Thinking #People #Misuse

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

#Organization #People #Water

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

#Hate #People #Listening

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

#Inspiration #Creativity #Risk

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

#Ideas #People #Mind

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

#Believe #Phones #Cliche

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

#Secret #Information #Blind

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

#Ideas #Data #Imagination

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

#Reflection #Firsts #Action

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

#Needs #May #Way

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

#Sleep #Mean #Ipods

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

#Thinking #Echoes #Partners

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

#Sleep #Email #Waking

When we confront facts and fears, we achieve real power and unleash our capacity for change.
-- Margaret Heffernan

#Real #Facts #Achieve

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

#People #Agendas