Top 100 Heffernan Quotes
#1. Now let's make Virginia Heffernan a man. Can you imagine the same kind of spittle-flecked rage directed at a busy working father who admits to feeding his kids Annie's Organic Mac & Cheese?
Emily Matchar
#2. Bosses and leaders everywhere should cherish the people who bring them bad news, disappointing data or hard problems.
Margaret Heffernan
#3. 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
#5. Everyone I know feels harassed by email which has invaded their waking and sleeping hours.
Margaret Heffernan
#6. 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.
Margaret Heffernan
#7. Building businesses takes tremendous stamina, and success isn't achieved without it.
Margaret Heffernan
#8. 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
#10. One of the sad truths about leadership is that, the higher up the ladder you travel, the less you know.
Margaret Heffernan
#11. 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
#12. 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
#13. As long as they are well-intentioned, mistakes are not a matter for shame but for learning
Margaret Heffernan
#14. As long as it (an issue) remains invisible, it is guaranteed to remain insoluble.
Margaret Heffernan
#15. Reading fiction - excerpts from National Book Award finalists, winners of the Pen/O. Henry Prize for short stories, or even Amazon bestsellers - has been shown to enhance theory of mind:
Margaret Heffernan
#16. Cruise through the gargantuan sites - YouTube, Amazon, Yahoo! - and it's as though modernism never existed. Twentieth-century print design never existed. European and Japanese design never existed. The Web's aesthetic might be called late-stage Atlantic City or early-stage Mall of America.
Virginia Heffernan
#18. 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.
Margaret Heffernan
#19. Business is not a science; it is not susceptible to experiments that can be controlled and replicated. Everything in business is too unpredictable for that - every business, employee, product, market is different and keeps changing.
Margaret Heffernan
#20. 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
#21. [For constructive conflict,] we have to resist the neurobiological drive which means that we really prefer people mostly like ourselves.
Margaret Heffernan
#22. Tweets are not diseased rings of glitchy minds. They're epigrams, aphorisms, maxims, dictums, taglines, captions, slogans, and adages. Some are art, some are commercial; these are forms with integrity.
Virginia Heffernan
#23. 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
#25. 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
#26. Overall, people are about twice as likely to seek information that supports their own point of view as they are to consider an opposing idea.19
Margaret Heffernan
#27. 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
#28. I began to think that melancholy was a dialect that only some people knew-or could even hear-and in my conversations, I sought these people out.
Virginia Heffernan
#29. 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 there
Margaret Heffernan
#30. The combination of power, optimism and abstract thinking makes powerful people more certain. The more cut-off they are from others, the more confident they are that they are right.
Margaret Heffernan
#31. 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
#32. As I sat alone at the computer hour after hour it seemed I was learning "computers." In fact, I was learning culture.
Virginia Heffernan
#33. 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
#34. thinking: a rather prosaic, low-tech concept, easily forgotten and routinely underrated. But
Margaret Heffernan
#35. 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
#36. The turn away from the BlackBerry and toward the iPhone is a reckoning with our essential nature and how we currently process, deploy, and enjoy symbolic communication.
Virginia Heffernan
#37. According to the psychologist irving Janis, is that our sense of belonging (which makes us feel safe) blinds us to dangers and encourages greater risk-taking.
Margaret Heffernan
#38. Most executives I know are so action-oriented, or action-addicted, that time for reflection is the first casualty of their success.
Margaret Heffernan
#39. Humans do not have enough mental capacity to do all the things that we think we can do. As attentional load increases, attentional capacity gradually diminishes.
Margaret Heffernan
#40. 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
#41. It's just so hard to get movies made, especially comedies.
Kevin Heffernan
#42. We have to see conflict as thinking and then get really good at it.
Margaret Heffernan
#43. Companies don't have ideas. Only people do. And what motivates people are the bonds of loyalty and trust they develop around each other.
Margaret Heffernan
#44. Because that's what a comic is, ultimately: a collection of pages. It's not a flatpanel or a touchscreen, even though that's where it might eventually be displayed. It's a page.
John Heffernan
#45. 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
#46. It's a truism that love is blind; what's less obvious is just how much evidence it can ignore.
Margaret Heffernan
#47. 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
#50. I remember I was supposed to take the bar exam that summer just when we got the chance to make our first feature. I told my parents I wasn't going to take the bar exam, and they were pretty upset about it.
Kevin Heffernan
#51. British innovation in design, in the creative arts, in engineering and manufacturing is world class.
Margaret Heffernan
#52. I don't think a true company - one that builds sustainable value - can ever only exist online or remotely.
Margaret Heffernan
#53. 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
#54. 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
#56. The medical profession is - and knows itself to be - endemically conservative and conformist.
Margaret Heffernan
#57. Once you have power, you are inevitably surrounded by people who have their own agendas and will tell you whatever advances them.
Margaret Heffernan
#58. 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.
Margaret Heffernan
#59. 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
#60. When we care about people, we care less about money, and when we care about money, we care less about people.
Margaret Heffernan
#61. Companies are bought for their revenue, customer base, technology, or people. A few great companies offer all of these, but any valuable business offers one.
Margaret Heffernan
#62. 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
#64. Digital forms are best illuminated by cultural criticism, which uses the tools of art and literary theory to make sense of the Internet's glorious illusion: that the Internet is life. Because
Virginia Heffernan
#65. A thinking partner who isn't an echo chamber ... How many of us dare to have such collaborators?
Margaret Heffernan
#66. When I come out to do my stand-up set, I pretty much get bombarded with lines from movies. You try to play off it a little bit, but that's what people want to see. Some clubs, the drunker the audience gets, the more they heckle.
Kevin Heffernan
#67. When we confront facts and fears, we achieve real power and unleash our capacity for change.
Margaret Heffernan
#68. Making a company fit to sell may be the only way to ensure you never need a buyer.
Margaret Heffernan
#69. 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
#70. Speaking is what most people work on. They forget the thinking and the breathing and instead try to occupy space with sound.
Margaret Heffernan
#71. A fantastic model of collaboration: thinking partners who aren't echo chambers.
Margaret Heffernan
#72. Unless you are rich, and can con vales center in a sanatorium estate (where visitors came down a tiered, oceanside lawn to found you ato your easel) you have to keep going when you're depressed. That means phone calls, appointments errands, holidays, family, friends, and colleagues.
Virginia Heffernan
#73. 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.
Margaret Heffernan
#74. The healthiest companies are always characterized by organic talent development.
Margaret Heffernan
#75. If it's ever fair to say that anything has "changed everything," it's fair to say so about the Internet.
Virginia Heffernan
#76. 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
#78. 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
#79. The only consequence of their (employee) silence is that the blind (employer) lead the blind.
Margaret Heffernan
#80. 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
#81. Money appears to motivate only our interest in ourselves, making us selfish and self-centered ... Money makes people feel self-sufficient, which also means they don't need or care about others; it's each man for himself
Margaret Heffernan
#82. 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
#83. The beautiful thing about stand-up is you can create and immediately deliver, perform, and get paid for what you do.
Kevin Heffernan
#84. Making those around you feel invisible is the opposite of leadership.
Margaret Heffernan
#85. Those who consistently attempt multitasking find it harder to ignore irrelevant information and take longer moving between tasks - in other words, for all their frantic activity, they're actually wasting time. And
Margaret Heffernan
#86. If we aren't going to be afraid of conflict, we have to see it as thinking.
Margaret Heffernan
#87. 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
#88. It's when we stop and think that we rediscover the courage, wit, compassion, imagination, delight, frustration, discovery, and devotion that work can provoke - in short, all the things at work that do count, beyond measure.
Margaret Heffernan
#89. Questions are the heart and soul of constructive conflict. They open up the exploration, bring in new information, and reframe debate. When
Margaret Heffernan
#90. 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
#91. 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
#92. In business, staying focused requires that you turn most opportunities down.
Margaret Heffernan
#93. It is nobody's right to be waited on and nobody's fate to do the waiting.
Margaret Heffernan
#94. 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
#95. Dominant people, it appears, use snap judgements and conform to received wisdom more than do the less dominant. Those who need power, and those who have it, think differently.
Margaret Heffernan
#97. For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate.
Margaret Heffernan
#98. 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
#99. It's like you work with people, and based on the size of the budget, you sometimes can't pay them what they deserve.
Kevin Heffernan
#100. 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
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