More women are starting successful businesses than ever before. But what makes women leaders different? And how can others learn to capitalize on their strengths? Through interviews with hundreds of women entrepreneurs, Margaret Heffernan discovered that women are more values-oriented, more flexible, and less ego-driven than their male counterparts; as a result they're creating company cultures that are better able to meet the demands of the new economy. Heffernan's stories about real women making really serious profits is a must- read for all entrepreneurs-male or female, whether well established or just starting up-as well as anyone seeking to understand what it takes to do business today.

Women on Top: How Women Entrepreneurs Are Rewriting the Rules of Business Success

Business & Money

HEFFERNAN, MARGARET

Job Hunting & Careers

Penguin Publishing Group

A book that will open eyes to the most serious problem of our times. In the case of the US Government versus Enron, the presiding judge chose to employ the legal concept of willful blindness: you are responsible if you could have known, and should have known, something which instead you strove not to see. The guilty verdict sent shivers down the spine of the corporate world. In this book, Margaret Heffernan draws on psychological studies, social statistics, interviews with relevant protagonists, and her own experience to throw light on willful blindness and why whistleblowers and Cassandras are so rare. Ranging freely through history and from business to science, government to the family, this engaging and anecdotal book will explain why willful blindness is so dangerous in a globalized, interconnected world, before suggesting ways in which institutions and individuals can start to combat it. Margaret Heffernan's thought-provoking book will force us to open our eyes.

Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril

Doubleday, Canada

Anchor Canada

A visionary business writer shows how to acheive success in all areas of life--by not competing for it. Tiger mothers stand by with tutors to make sure schoolchildren keep pace. At college, deepening debt is the only way to stay ahead. In the world of work, bond traders and derivatives sellers push ever-riskier products onto unsuspecting customers, themselves eager to pay for a lifestyle that demonstrates how well they're doing. How did we get sucked into a worldview that has proved so destructive, anti-social and wasteful? Whatever made us believe that competition would reward the smartest people, the greatest products, the best companies? Why do we trust that competitive games, markets and tests will magically identify the just winner? Surrounded by over-complex technology and cheap and tawdry merchandise, how could we imagine that competition is anything other than a forcef or devastation and waste? In her brilliant new book, Margaret Heffernan reveals how blind pursuit of success in business and life limits our opportunities and keeps us from positive choices. She argues that instead of allowing ourselves to be slaves to competition, we should tap into natural reserves of altruism, collaboration and cooperation. Those talents are innate and genetically hardwired, ripe for development, primed for innovation. Drawing on the latest scientific and economic research and her own numerous interviews with everyone from captains of industry to neuroscientists to Olympic athletes, Margaret Heffernan debunks competition as the ultimate answer to our biggest questions. But in doing so she reveals its positive aspects that until now have gone largely unacknowledged. This superbly readable book shows us how to do competition differently--and better--in business and in life.

A Bigger Prize: How We Can Do Better Than the Competition

Citing a rising number of successful women-owned businesses, a five-time CEO identifies the qualities of today's top-performing businesswomen to reveal how the demands of the new economy are particularly compatible with the professional talents of women.

How She Does It: How Women Entrepreneurs Are Changing the Rules of Business Success

Viking Adult

Margaret 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. A distinguished businesswoman and writer, 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? Covering everything from our choice of mates to the SEC, Bernard Madoff's investors, the embers of BP's refinery, the military in Afghanistan, and the dog-eat-dog world of subprime mortgage lenders, this provocative 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. Heffernan explains how willful blindness develops before exploring ways that institutions and individuals can combat it. In the tradition of Malcolm Gladwell and Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Margaret Heffernan's Willful Blindness is a tour de force on human behavior that will open your eyes.

Walker Books

“With deft prose and page after page of keen insights, Heffernan shows why we close our eyes to facts that threaten our families, our livelihood, and our self-image--and, even better, she points the way out of the darkness.” --Daniel H. Pink
 In the tradition of Malcolm Gladwell and Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Margaret Heffernan's Willful Blindness is a tour de force on human behavior that will open your eyes.
Why, after every major accident and blunder, do we look back and say, How could we have been so blind? Why do some people see what others don't? And how can we change? Drawing on studies by psychologists and neuroscientists, and from interviews with business leaders, whistleblowers, and white collar criminals, distinguished businesswoman and writer Margaret Heffernan examines the phenomenon of willful blindness, exploring the reasons that individuals and groups are blind to impending personal tragedies, corporate collapses, engineering failures-even crimes against humanity.
We turn a blind eye in order to feel safe, to avoid conflict, to reduce anxiety, and to protect prestige. But greater understanding leads to solutions, and Heffernan shows how-by challenging our biases, encouraging debate, discouraging conformity, and not backing away from difficult or complicated problems-we can be more mindful of what's going on around us and be proactive instead of reactive.

Bloomsbury USA

A powerful manifesto for CEOs and employees alike: Influential and award-winning business leader Margaret Heffernan reveals how organizations can build ideal workplace cultures and create seismic shifts by making deceptively small changes. By implementing sweeping changes, businesses often think it’s possible to do better, to earn more, and have happier employees. So why does engagement prove so difficult and productivity so elusive? 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. Packed with incredible anecdotes and startling statistics, Beyond Measure takes us on a fascinating tour across the globe, highlighting disparate businesses and revealing how they’ve managed to change themselves in big ways through incremental shifts. How did the CIA revolutionize their intelligence gathering with one simple question? How did one organization increase their revenue by $15 million by instituting a short coffee break? How can a day-long hackathon change the culture of a company? Told with wry wit and knowing humor, Heffernan proves that it’s often the small changes that make the greatest, most lasting impact.

Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes (TED Books)

Business Culture

Simon & Schuster Audio / TED

The Olympics. X-Factor. The Rich List. The Nobel Prize.Everywhere you look: competition - for fame, money, attention, status. Being top seems to be everything - but what is it costing all of us? We depend on competition and expect it to identify the best, make complicated decisions easy and to motivate the lazy and inspire the dreamers. But, as Margaret Heffernan shows in this eye-opening look at competition, competition regularly produces just what we don't want: rising levels of fraud, cheating, stress, inequality and political stalemate. Siblings won't speak to each other. Children burn out at school. Doping proliferates among athletes. Auditors and fund managers go to jail for insider trading. Winners seem to take all while the desire to win consumes all, inciting panic and despair. We now know that competition often doesn't work, that the best do not always rise to the top and the so-called efficiency of competition creates a great deal of waste. So what are our alternatives? What are the skills needed for creative collaboration and how do we hone them? Talking to scientists, musicians, athletes, entrepreneurs and executives, in the follow-up to her bestselling Wilful Blindness, Margaret Heffernan has discovered that, around the world, individuals and organizations are finding creative, cooperative ways to work that don't pit people against each other but support them in their desire to work together. While the rest of the world remains mired in pitiless sniping, racing to the bottom, the future belongs to the people and companies who have learned that they are greater working together than against one another. Some call that soft but it's harder than anything they've done before. They are the real winners, sharing a bigger prize.

A Bigger Prize: When No One Wins Unless Everyone Wins Heffernan, Margaret

Simon&Schuster

'An urgent read … Karl Popper for the 21st century' Robert Phillips, former CEO, Edelman EMEA and author of Trust me, PR is Dead 
'Heffernan is ... a deft storyteller. Uncharted is ... wise and appealingly human' Tim Harford, Financial Times\nHow can we think about the future? What do we need to do – and who do we need to be?\nIn her bold and invigorating new book, distinguished businesswoman and author Margaret Heffernan explores the people and organisations who aren’t daunted by uncertainty. We are addicted to prediction, desperate for certainty about the future. But the complexity of modern life won’t provide that; experts in forecasting are reluctant to look more than 400 days out. History doesn’t repeat itself and even genetics won’t tell you everything you want to know. Ineradicable uncertainty is now a fact of life.\nIn complex environments, efficiency is a hazard not a help; being robust is the better, safer option. Drawing on a wide array of people and places, Margaret Heffernan looks at long-term projects developed over generations that could never have been planned the way that they have been run. Experiments, led by individuals and nations, discover new possibilities and options. Radical exercises in forging new futures with wildly diverse participants allow everyone to create outcomes together that none could do alone. Existential crises reveal the vital social component in resilience. Death is certain, but how we approach it impacts the future of those we leave behind. And preparedness – doing everything today that you might need for tomorrow – provides the antidote to passivity and prediction.\nRanging freely through history and from business to science, government to friendships, this refreshing book challenges us to resist the false promises of technology and efficiency and instead to mine our own creativity and humanity for the capacity to create the futures we want and can believe in.

Uncharted: How to Map the Future

Reference

Simon Schuster(uk)

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by HEFFERNAN, MARGARET. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by HEFFERNAN, MARGARET

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by HEFFERNAN, MARGARET. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Women on Top: How Women Entrepreneurs Are Rewriting the Rules of Business Success

Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril

Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril

A Bigger Prize: How We Can Do Better Than the Competition

How She Does It: How Women Entrepreneurs Are Changing the Rules of Business Success

Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril

Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril

Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes (TED Books)

A Bigger Prize: When No One Wins Unless Everyone Wins Heffernan, Margaret

Uncharted: How to Map the Future