Margaret Heffernan Quotes
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The healthiest companies are always characterized by organic talent development.
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Once you have power, you are inevitably surrounded by people who have their own agendas and will tell you whatever advances them.
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Building businesses takes tremendous stamina, and success isn't achieved without it.
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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.
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One of the sad truths about leadership is that, the higher up the ladder you travel, the less you know.
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Making those around you feel invisible is the opposite of leadership.
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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.
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Making a company fit to sell may be the only way to ensure you never need a buyer.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The medical profession is - and knows itself to be - endemically conservative and conformist.
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Everyone I know feels harassed by email which has invaded their waking and sleeping hours.
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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.
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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.
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If we aren't going to be afraid of conflict, we have to see it as thinking.
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Most executives I know are so action-oriented, or action-addicted, that time for reflection is the first casualty of their success.
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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.
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Words are how people think. When you misuse words, you diminish your ability to think clearly and truthfully.
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Noise is a buffer, more effective than cubicles or booth walls.
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Britain is famous for being great at inventing and poor at commercializing.