Margaret Heffernan quotes

For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate. (Margaret Heffernan)
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
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
Building businesses takes tremendous stamina, and success isn't achieved without it.
Margaret Heffernan
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
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
Making those around you feel invisible is the opposite of leadership.
Margaret Heffernan
The healthiest companies are always characterized by organic talent development.
Margaret Heffernan
Words are how people think. When you misuse words, you diminish your ability to think clearly and truthfully.
Margaret Heffernan
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
A great deal of creativity is about pattern recognition, and what you need to discern patterns is tons of data. Your mind collects that data by taking note of random details and anomalies easily seen every day: quirks and changes that, eventually, add up to insights. (Margaret Heffernan)
Most executives I know are so action-oriented, or action-addicted, that time for reflection is the first casualty of their success.
Margaret Heffernan
One of the sad truths about leadership is that, the higher up the ladder you travel, the less you know.
Margaret Heffernan
British innovation in design, in the creative arts, in engineering and manufacturing is world class.
Margaret Heffernan
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
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
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
Everyone I know feels harassed by email which has invaded their waking and sleeping hours.
Margaret Heffernan
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
In business, staying focused requires that you turn most opportunities down.
Margaret Heffernan
Britain is famous for being great at inventing and poor at commercializing. (Margaret Heffernan)
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
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
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
Noise is a buffer, more effective than cubicles or booth walls.
Margaret Heffernan