Margaret Heffernan

Margaret Heffernan (born 1955)^[1] is an international businesswoman, author, interviewer, and TED speaker. She is currently settled in the UK in the city of Bath and is a part-time lecturer at the School of Management of the University of Bath.

Heffernan is the author of five books: The Naked Truth: A Working Woman’s Manifesto about Business and What Really Matters, How She Does It (published in paperback as Women on Top), Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at our Peril, A Bigger Prize: Why Competition isn't Everything and How We Do Better, and Beyond Measure - a short book commissioned by TED.

Heffernan also speaks to corporations, associations, universities, and education conferences about such topics as managing high-achieving talent, continuous innovation and the role of leaders in serving the talent they hire. While Heffernan’s first two books focused on these issues as they impact women in the workplace, her overarching theme has been the need to recognize and release the talent that often lies buried inside organizations, under-valued and under-rewarded because it is unconventional. Heffernan’s voice is primarily one of critical challenge, taking little at face value and regularly questioning received wisdom.^[2][3][4]

Background and education

Heffernan was born in Texas, grew up in the Netherlands, and received an MA from Cambridge University.^[5] She was also awarded an Honorary Degree from the University of Bath in 2011, where she is a regular lecturer on the University's MBA programme.^[6] She now lives on the outskirts of Bath with her husband and their two children.

Early career

In the United States, she worked, bought, sold and ran businesses for CMGI, serving as Chief Executive of iCast Corporation, ZineZone Corporation and Information Corporation. In the UK, she ran IPPA and Marlin Gas Trading Ltd. Before running her own businesses, she worked for thirteen years for the British Broadcasting Corporation where she produced a wide range of radio and television programming. Her perspective as a writer is informed by her experience of running businesses that operated in markets that were highly competitive for creative talent. While her work has garnered respect and praise from academics, she has also secured serious attention from leading executives who value academic insight only insofar as it is tested by real world leadership.^[7]

Books

Heffernan writes from direct experience. She began writing about business because 'nothing she read captured the reality of running companies.^[5]

The Naked Truth

The Naked Truth: A Working Woman’s Manifesto about Business and What Really Matters was published in 2004, just as issues surrounding women at work started to return to the fore. The book looked at the classic barriers to women’s advancement and collected experiences and advice from successful business women who had overcome them. In particular, the book examined women’s attitudes to power and how they define and use power differently from men. The book argued that whereas men see power as expressed through personal or organizational dominance, women see power as derived from orchestration. Men express ambition as defined by getting to the top, whereas women see ambition as the ability to live and work as they please. The book concludes by arguing that what women bring to the workplace is distinctive and highly suited to the non-linear complexities of modern business.^[8]

Women On Top

How She Does It (republished in paperback as Women On Top) can be seen as the sequel to The Naked Truth insofar as it looks at women who have decided to eschew the struggle to succeed within traditional, male-dominated organizations in favor of running their own companies. The book examines the statistics underlying the growth and outsize success of women-owned businesses to ask: how is it that women achieve so much more when they get so much less in the way of institutional support and funding? This leads to an examination of women’s motivation, their neurological and social advantages, choice of markets, leadership styles, use of networks and advisors and their different approaches to mergers, acquisitions and exits. In effect, the book argues that women’s different motivations, thinking and leading styles specifically position them for entrepreneurial success. But much of what makes them succeed are approaches and strategies which men could also emulate if they understood how successful they are. The book concludes by arguing that women set a particularly high standard for business success which might provide a powerful antidote to some of the failed business cultures of the past.^[9]

Willful Blindness

Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at our Peril was published in 2011. In her latest book, Heffernan argues that the biggest threats and dangers we face are the ones we don’t see – not because they’re secret or invisible, but because we’re willfully blind. She examines the phenomenon and traces its imprint in our private and working lives, and within governments and organizations, and asks: What makes us prefer ignorance? What are we so afraid of? Why do some people see more than others? And how can we change?

Examining examples of willful blindness in the Catholic Church, the SEC, Nazi Germany, Bernard Madoff’s investors, BP’s safety record, the military in Afghanistan and the dog-eat-dog world of subprime mortgage lenders, the book demonstrates how failing to see—or admit to ourselves or our colleagues—the issues and problems in plain sight can ruin private lives and bring down corporations. The book explores how willful blindness develops and then goes on to outline some of the mechanisms, structures and strategies that institutions and individuals can use to combat it. In its wide use of psychological research and examples from history, the book has been compared to work by Malcolm Gladwell and Nassim Nicholas Taleb.^[10]

A Bigger Prize

Her book, A Bigger Prize: Why Competition isn't Everything and How We Do Better, published in the UK on February 27th 2014, looks at the perils of competition and how this over emphasis on competing is damaging our society in everything from big business all the way down to everyday family life.

In A Bigger Prize Heffernan examines the competition culture that is inherent in life today. Instead of breeding innovation, new ideas and inspiring us to do better, competition regularly produces instead more cases of fraud, cheating, stress and inequality whilst suffocating the creative instinct we desperately need to nurture. Burn outs, scandals and poor ethics abound in the race to be the best.

So what can we do instead she asks? By speaking to scientists, musicians, athletes, entrepreneurs and executives Heffernan has found a plethora of examples of individuals and organisations who have implemented creative, cooperative ways of working together. Methods which don't set people against each other but which establish supportive environments that lead to success and happiness. "They are the real winners, sharing a bigger prize."

Beyond Measure

In Beyond Measure, Margaret Heffernan looks back over her decades spent overseeing different organizations and comes to a counterintuitive conclusion: it’s the small shifts that have the greatest impact. Heffernan argues that building the strongest organization can be accelerated by implementing seemingly small changes, such as embracing conflict as a creative catalyst; using every mind on the team; celebrating mistakes; speaking up and listening more; and encouraging time off from work. Published by Simon & Schuster, this book was commissioned by TED.

Awards

Heffernan was named one of the Internet’s Top 100 by Silicon Alley Reporter in 1999, one of the Top 25 by Streaming Media magazine and one of the Top 100 Media Executives by The Hollywood Reporter.^[11]

In 2001 her "Tear Down the Wall" campaign against AOL won the Silver SABRE award for public relations^[11] and in 2008 her documentary for BBC Radio 4 on the rise of female entrepreneurship, Changing the Rules, won the Prowess Media Award.

Her two radio plays about Enron; Power Play, were broadcast on Radio 4 and nominated for a Sony award.

In 2011, Wilful Blindness was a finalist for the FT Best Business Book award.^[11]

Power Play

Power Play was a 2-part drama about Enron commissioned and broadcast by the BBC.^[12] The first play dramatized the scandal of fixing energy prices in California, while the second play postulated that the death of Ken Lay, after being found guilty but before being sentenced, was caused by his recognition that he had been willfully blind to the corruption at the heart of Enron.

Secret Millionaire

In 2008, Heffernan appeared in the British Channel 4’s series Secret Millionaire, in which successful entrepreneurs go ‘under cover’ to identify and support community heroes. In her episode, Heffernan asked how any individual could choose which people, causes and organizations to support when so many are so needy. Ultimately, she gave money to the Bright Waters Laundry and a carnival troupe, both based in Nottingham.^[13]

TED

In June 2012 Heffernan spoke at TEDglobal. Her talk 'Dare to Disagree' ^[14] illustrates the role that debate and disconfirmation play in the development of great research teams and businesses.

In March 2013 she gave another talk for TED at TEDxDanudia, this time concentrating on the dangers of wilful blindness.^[15]

In May 2015 Margaret Heffernan gave a TED talk at TEDWomen 2015, about 'Why it's time to forget the Pecking Order at Work', highlighting how social capital makes candor safe, encouraging more frequent conflicts, leading to better outcomes.

Publications

Margaret Heffernan talks about Willful Blindness on Bookbits radio.

• A Bigger Prize. Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2014. ISBN 978-1471100758
• Willful Blindness. Walker & Company, 2011. ISBN 978-0-8027-1998-0
• Women on Top. Penguin, 2008. ISBN 0-14-311280-5
• How She Does It. Viking Adult, 2007. ISBN 0-670-03823-7
• The Naked Truth. Jossey-Bass, 2004. ISBN 978-0-7879-7143-4

Articles

Heffernan’s articles on business leadership, entrepreneurship and innovation have appeared in Fast Company, Huffington Post, BNet, Real Business, Reader’s Digest, London Business School’s Strategy Review and on Inc.com.

• How to Be Productive: Stop Working (BNet)
• How to Write Job Descriptions that Actually Mean Something (BNet)
• Is It Okay for Women to Breastfeed at Work? (BNet)
• Dog Eat Dog (Fast Company)
• In Good Company (More Magazine)
• Recreating Milgram: the French ‘game of death’ (Huffington Post)

References

External links

• Official website