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
Speaking is what most people work on. They forget the thinking and the breathing and instead try to occupy space with sound. – 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
How can any company know if its processes, products, people are safe? Only if everyone is watching and telling the truth. The first part can be assumed; the second cannot. – 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
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
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
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
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
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
Words are how people think. When you misuse words, you diminish your ability to think clearly and truthfully. – 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
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
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. – 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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
One of the sad truths about leadership is that, the higher up the ladder you travel, the less you know. – 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
The medical profession is – and knows itself to be – endemically conservative and conformist. – Margaret Heffernan
