Margaret Heffernan Quotes

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Instead, Tremendous

• When you use words loosely, without care and consideration, you erode trust in yourself and in what you’re saying. When you squander words, you diminish your power.

  Margaret Heffernan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Squander, Words

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Positions, Powerless

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in concerning, Extremists

• The single hardest part of leading any organization is knowing what is going on. There’s too much noise in the system, too much complexity: you absolutely depend on people speaking up and raising concerns.

  Margaret Heffernan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Raising, Knowing

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Available, Blind

• Research shows that when we read words on paper, it reduces our stress levels by nearly 70 percent. We also read more carefully than on tablets or laptops.

  Margaret Heffernan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Carefully, Words

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Genuine, Replace

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Instantly, Almost

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Consensus, Respected

• 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

  Topics in Father

  Tags in Parents, Count

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Ingenuity, Company

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Spend, Planes

• 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

  Topics in Ambition

  Tags in Insufficient, Stretch

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Entrepreneurship, Students

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Meals, Sitting

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Hate, Subway

• I don’t mind if the couple next to me is tense or the kids are whiny. I’d even be happy to hear an honest argument, evidence of thinking. I’d like to know these teeth-perfect families don’t just buy each other stuff but just occasionally can talk to one another.

  Margaret Heffernan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Tense, Thinking

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Spent, Manage

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Conform, Useful

Margaret Heffernan (53)

Birth:	1955
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Author, Businesswoman, Writer

About

Margaret Heffernan is an international businesswoman and writer. Born in Texas, raised in the Netherlands, educated at Cambridge University and now settled in the UK near the city of Bath. She is the Entrepreneur in Residence at the University of Bath's School of Management and a Visiting Professor at Simmons College School of Management.

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