Margaret Heffernan Quotes

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

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.

Companies don't have ideas. Only people do. And what motivates people are the bonds of loyalty and trust they develop around each other.

You cannot fix a problem that you refuse to acknowledge.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

There is no more powerful weapon for change than honesty.

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.

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

The cell phone has become the adult's transitional object, replacing the toddler's teddy bear for comfort and a sense of belonging.

Openness isn't the end. It's the beginning.

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

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

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.

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

Certainty is no guarantor of correctness.

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

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.

The healthiest companies are always characterized by organic talent 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.

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