Margaret Heffernan
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.Collection: Leadership
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.Collection: Fathers
For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate.Collection: Good
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.Collection: Computers
One of the sad truths about leadership is that, the higher up the ladder you travel, the less you know.Collection: Sad
British innovation in design, in the creative arts, in engineering and manufacturing is world class.Collection: Design
Making those around you feel invisible is the opposite of leadership.Collection: Leadership
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.Collection: Courage
The medical profession is - and knows itself to be - endemically conservative and conformist.Collection: Medical
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.Collection: Believe
Companies don't have ideas. Only people do. And what motivates people are the bonds of loyalty and trust they develop around each other.Collection: Loyalty
Most people have their best ideas when they take their minds away from problems they're trying to solve.Collection: Ideas
You cannot fix a problem that you refuse to acknowledge.Collection: Problem
We have to see conflict as thinking and then get really good at it.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Ostriches
Bosses and leaders everywhere should cherish the people who bring them bad news, disappointing data or hard problems.Collection: Data
Companies don't have ideas; only people do. And what motivates people are the bonds and loyalty and trust they develop between each other. What matters is the mortar, not just the bricks.Collection: Ideas
There is no more powerful weapon for change than honesty.Collection: Honesty
Any fool can buy talent; only real leaders develop it.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Motivation
When we care about people, we care less about money, and when we care about money, we care less about people.Collection: People
Openness isn't the end. It's the beginning.Collection: Graduation
The cell phone has become the adult's transitional object, replacing the toddler's teddy bear for comfort and a sense of belonging.Collection: Cells
As long as they are well-intentioned, mistakes are not a matter for shame but for learningCollection: Mistake
A fantastic model of collaboration: thinking partners who aren't echo chambers.Collection: Motivation
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.Collection: Organization
[For constructive conflict,] we have to resist the neurobiological drive which means that we really prefer people mostly like ourselves.Collection: Motivation
Certainty is no guarantor of correctness.Collection: Religion
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.Collection: Gratitude
The healthiest companies are always characterized by organic talent development.Collection: Development
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.Collection: Secret
As long as it (an issue) remains invisible, it is guaranteed to remain insoluble.Collection: Issues
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.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Together
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.Collection: Hate
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.Collection: Believe
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 thereCollection: Data
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.Collection: Mother
In business, staying focused requires that you turn most opportunities down.Collection: Opportunity
I don't think a true company - one that builds sustainable value - can ever only exist online or remotely.Collection: Thinking
Everyone I know feels harassed by email which has invaded their waking and sleeping hours.Collection: Sleep
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.Collection: Leaving
Britain is famous for being great at inventing and poor at commercializing.Collection: Poor
What do you want your business to do? Make money, of course. To pay for people and supplies, to be able to grow.Collection: People
Making a company fit to sell may be the only way to ensure you never need a buyer.Collection: Needs
Words are how people think. When you misuse words, you diminish your ability to think clearly and truthfully.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Inspiration
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.Collection: Sea
I don't think you ever know anyone until you see them in action.Collection: Thinking
A thinking partner who isn't an echo chamber... How many of us dare to have such collaborators?Collection: Thinking