Margaret Heffernan Quotes

When we care about people, we care less about money, and when we care about money, we care less about people.

— Margaret Heffernan

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

— Margaret Heffernan

“Silence is the language of inertia.”

— Margaret Heffernan

“The sooner we associate long hours and multitasking with incompetence and carelessness the better. The next time you hear boasts of executives pulling an all-nighter or holding conference calls in their cars, be sure to offer your condolences; it's grim being stuck in sweatshops run by managers too ignorant to understand productivity and risk. Working people like this is as smart as running your factory without maintenance. In manufacturing and engineering businesses, everyone learns that the top priority is asset integrity: protecting the machinery on which the business depends. In knowledge-based economies, that machinery is the mind.”

— Margaret Heffernan

“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

“Humans do not have enough mental capacity to do all the things that we think we can do. As attentional load increases, attentional capacity gradually diminishes.”

— Margaret Heffernan

“Dominant people, it appears, use snap judgements and conform to received wisdom more than do the less dominant. Those who need power, and those who have it, think differently.”

— Margaret Heffernan

“Money appears to motivate only our interest in ourselves, making us selfish and self-centered ... Money makes people feel self-sufficient, which also means they don't need or care about others; it's each man for himself”

— Margaret Heffernan

“In treating people as less important than things, work becomes both demoralised and demoralising and we become blind to the moral content of our decisions ... Money and wilfful blindness make us act in ways incompatible wiht what believe our ethics to be, and often even with our own self-interest ... the problem with money isn't fundamentally about greed, although it can be comforting to think so. The problem with money is that we live in societies in which mutual support and co-operation is essential, but money erodes the relationships we need to lead productive, fulfilling and genuinely happy lives. When money becomes the dominant behavior, it doesn't cooperate with, or amplify, our relationships; it disengages us from them.”

— Margaret Heffernan

“When we are tired or preoccupied - what psychologists call 'resource-depleted' - we start to economise, to conserve those resources. Higher-order thinking is more expensive. So too is doubt, scepticism, arugment. 'Resource depletion specifically disables cognitive elaboration,' wrote Harvard psychologist Daniel Gillbert ... Because it takes less brain power to believe than to doublt, we are, when tired or distracted, gullible. Because we are all biased, and biases are quick and effortless, exhaustion tends to make us prefer the information we know and are comfortable with. We are too tired to do the heavier lifting of examining new or contradictory information, so we fall back on our biases the opinions and the people we already trust”

— Margaret Heffernan

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

— Margaret Heffernan

“Clearing your head of distractions in order to notice and understand the people you are with can feel inefficient - there are so many other people and issues to think about. But being present makes you effective.”

— Margaret Heffernan

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

“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

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

— Margaret Heffernan

In our house, Mother's Day is every day. Father's Day, too. In our house, parents count. They do important work and that work matters. One day just doesn't cut for us.

— Margaret Heffernan

“Building businesses takes tremendous stamina, and success isn't achieved without it.”

— 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

“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

“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

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

— Margaret Heffernan

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

— Margaret Heffernan

“Very few entrepreneurs start their business on the back of market research. Instead, they have tremendous zeitgeist, honed by paying attention to where they are.”

— Margaret Heffernan

“A great advantage of a large corporation is supposed to be the large pool of talent in which its leaders can find and groom high achievers and successors.”

— 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

“British innovation in design, in the creative arts, in engineering and manufacturing is world class.”

— Margaret Heffernan

“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

“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

“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

I haven't always hated McDonald's. When my kids were little and I lived in the U.S., they were as susceptible as anyone to Happy Meals and tatty toys that subsequently littered our sitting room.

— 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

“The vast literature concerning whistleblowers shows that, far from weird extremists, they are really quite ordinary people: male and female, young and old, junior and senior, no more nerdy or obsessive than most hard workers.”

— Margaret Heffernan

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

— Margaret Heffernan

Companies are bought for their revenue, customer base, technology, or people. A few great companies offer all of these, but any valuable business offers one.

— Margaret Heffernan

“Everywhere I look, there are ads marking Mother's Day. Mostly they conform to stereotype: flowers, jewelry, perfume. Not a lot of books. Not many computers. Few tools. Little that's useful.”

— Margaret Heffernan

“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

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

— Margaret Heffernan

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

— Margaret Heffernan

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

— Margaret Heffernan

“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

If I have to spend a lot of time on planes, I try to think of this as time off. In certain ways, it's more restful than home: no Internet, no phones, no interruptions.

— Margaret Heffernan

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

— Margaret Heffernan

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

— Margaret Heffernan

“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

Certainty is no guarantor of correctness.

— Margaret Heffernan

“Any fool can buy talent; only real leaders develop it.”

— Margaret Heffernan

“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

“Openness isn't the end; it's the beginning.”

— Margaret Heffernan

“When we confront facts and fears, we achieve real power and unleash our capacity for change.”

— Margaret Heffernan

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

— Margaret Heffernan