Margaret Heffernan

A provocative analysis of the human tendency towards selective ignorance assesses the impact of the phenomenon on private and working lives as well as within governments and organizations to consider why people may prefer ignorance and have different comfort levels. By the author of The Naked Truth. 35,000 first printing.

Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril

Willful Blindness

“Excellent (and very timely).” —Financial Times * “Smartly assembled case studies and insights.” —Publishers Weekly * A Financial Times Best Book of the Year Former CEO and popular TED speaker Margaret Heffernan offers powerful and practical tools so you can face the future with confidence and courage. Most of us 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. Tomorrow remains uncharted territory, but Margaret Heffernan demonstrates how we can push aside uncertainty and forge ahead with agility. Drawing on a wide array of people and places, Uncharted traces long-term projects that shrewdly evolved over generations to meet the unpredictable challenges of every new age. Heffernan also looks at radical exercises and experiments that redefined standard practices by embracing different perspectives and testing fresh approaches. Preparing to confront a variable future provides the antidote to passivity and prediction. Ranging freely through history and from business to science, government to friendships, this refreshing book challenges us to mine our own creativity and humanity for the capacity to create the futures we want and can believe in.

How to Navigate the Future

Uncharted

Fully revised and updated since its first publication in 2011 to encompass further appalling instances of wilful blindness: Grenfell Tower, Carillion, Harvey Weinstein, Windrush and many more 'Entertaining and compellingly argued' Sunday Times 'A tour de force of brilliant insights' Philip Zimbardo 'A polemic against the dangers of docility and "groupthink" in every walk of life' Books of the Year, Financial Times 'Writing in clear, flowing prose, Heffernan draws on psychological and neurological studies and interviews with executives, whistleblowers and white-collar criminals' New York Times 'An engaging read, packed with cautionary tales ... 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, author of Drive and A Whole New Mind? Why, after every major accident and blunder, do we look back and ask, 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, whistle blowers and white collar criminals, distinguished businesswoman and writer Margaret Heffernan examines the phenomenon of wilful 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. It makes us feel good at first, with consequences we don't see. 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.

Why We Ignore the Obvious

Wilful Blindness

Foundational introduction to the concept that organizations create major impacts by making small changes.

The Big Impact of Small Changes

Beyond Measure

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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.

Why Competition Isn't Everything and How We Do Better

A Bigger Prize

Barry Schwartz

Hannah Fry

Marc Kushner

Pico Iyer

Chip Kidd

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Rob Knight

Zak Ebrahim

Stephen Petranek

Brendan Buhler

This wide-ranging boxed set of ten TED Books titles covers everything from architecture to business, space travel to love: The Terrorist’s Son, The Mathematics of Love, The Art of Stillness, The Future of Architecture in 100 Buildings, Beyond Measure, Judge This, How We’ll Live on Mars, Why We Work, The Laws of Medicine, and Follow Your Gut. Provocative, intelligent, and forward-thinking, the first ten TED Books is perfect for any curious reader interested in technology, design, and creative thinking. The Terrorist’s Son is the story of the man who planned the 1993 World Trade Center bombing—and the son who chose a different path. The Mathematics of Love is a must-have for anyone who wants to better understand the patterns of their love life. In The Art of Stillness, travel writer Pico Iyer reveals a counterintuitive truth: The more ways we have to connect, the more we seem desperate to unplug. The Future of Architecture in 100 Buildings captures the thoughtful intelligence and the sheer whimsy of the world’s most inspired and future-looking buildings. Beyond Measure reveals how organizations can make huge changes with surprisingly small steps and ultimately transform their company culture. Chip Kidd’s Judge This is a playful look at the importance of first impressions—in design and in life—exposing the often invisible beauty and betrayal in simple design choices ones most of us never even think to notice. In How We’ll Live on Mars award-winning journalist Stephen Petranek makes the case that living on Mars is an essential back-up plan for humanity and will happen far sooner than we imagine. In the groundbreaking Why We Work Barry Schwartz dispels a deeply ingrained myth: The reason we work is primarily to get a paycheck. Pulitzer Prize–winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee reveals an urgent philosophy in The Laws of Medicine on the little-known principles that govern medicine. In Follow Your Gut scientist Rob Knight and journalist Brendan Buhler explain why the microscopic life inside us matters to everyone.

The Terrorist's Son, The Mathematics of Love, The Art of Stillness, The Future of Architecture, Beyond Measure, Judge This, How We'll Live on Mars, Why We Work, The Laws of Medicine, and Follow Your Gut

TED Books Box Set: The Completist

In this book, distinguished business woman and writer, Margaret Heffernan, examines the phenomenon of wilful blindness. Drawing on a wide array of sources from psychological studies and social statistics to interviews with the relevant protagonists she examines what it is about human nature which makes us so prone to wilful blindness. Taught from infancy to obey authority, and absorbing the importance of selective vision as a key social skill, humans exacerbate their tendency to become institutionalised by joining organisations which are run by like-minded people. Wilful Blindness looks at how hard-work and the information overload of the modern workplace add to the problem. And examines why whistleblowers and Cassandras are so very rare.

why we ignore the obvious at our peril

Wilful blindness

Voorbij het meetbare staat stil bij al die kleine ideetjes en gewoontes die een bedrijfscultuur uitmaken: de manier waarop er gesproken wordt met elkaar, geluisterd wordt naar elkaar, gedacht, gekeken... Je hebt geen businessplannen die miljoenen kosten nodig of vele jaren voor grote veranderingen. Met kleine stappen, die iedereen kan nemen, kan elk bedrijf werken aan een nieuwe bedrijfscultuur.

De grote impact van kleine veranderingen

Voorbij het meetbare

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. Originally published as How She Does It. Reprint.

How Women Entrepreneurs Are Rewriting the Rules of Business Success

Women on Top

A Working Woman's Manifesto on Business and What Really Matters

The Naked Truth

Women born in the Middle East use the phrase 'the cunning sickness' (mudhabith Arabic) or 'the bad illness' to talk about cancer, while both women born in the Middle East and Anglo-Australians use 'the Big C Anglo-Australian women also use rhyming slang to refer to cancer such as 'Jack the Dancer's got me.' Research has also found that women from Italy use 'that terrible illness,' 'the illness that has not localised,' and 'that illness that we've talked about' to talk about cancer. Biomedical terminology also assists these women in speaking of the unspeakable. Words such as the 'mass,' the 'tumour,' the 'cyst,' and the 'sarcoma' allow women to refer to cancer without using its name.

Sex, Sanity and Survival: Easyread Large Bold Edition

The Gynaecological Cancer Guide

A powerful manifesto for CEOs and employees alike, this book reveals how organizations can make huge changes with surprisingly small steps. In an age of 'radical' shifts and 'disruption', business leader Margaret Heffernan lays the groundwork for a new kind of thinking, arguing that organizations can create seismic shifts by making deceptively small changes such as using every mind on the team, celebrating mistakes and encouraging time off from work. A popular TED speaker, Heffernan is a wise and witty storyteller who fully engages her reader at every turn. Filled with incredible anecdotes and startling statistics, she takes us on a fascinating tour across the globe, highlighting disparate business 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? Heffernan investigates all these scenarios and comes to the same conclusion: big improvements can come from simply making small changes.

Presents an analysis of the human tendency towards selective ignorance, discussing why people practice denial and assessing the impact of the phenomenon on private and working lives as well as within governments and organizations.

Sex, Sanity and Survival: Easyread Super Large 18pt Edition

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.

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.

The Olympics. Britain's Got Talent. The Rich List. The Nobel Prize. Everywhere you look: competition - for fame, money, attention, status. We depend on competition and expect it to identify the best, make complicated decisions easy and, most of all, to motivate the lazy and inspire the dreamers. How has that worked out so far? Rising levels of fraud, cheating, stress, inequality and political stalemates abound. Siblings won't speak to each other they're so rivalrous. Kids can't make friends because they don't want to cede their top class ranking to their fellow students. (Their parents don't want them to either.) The richest men in the world sulk when they fall a notch or two in the rich list. Doping proliferates among athletes. Auditors and fund managers go to jail for insider trading. Our dog-eat-dog culture has decimated companies, incapacitated collaborators and sown distrust. Winners take all while the desire to win consumes all, inciting panic and despair. Just as we have learned that individuals aren't rational and markets aren't efficient but went ahead operating as though they were, we now know that competition quite regularly doesn't work, the best do not always rise to the top and the so-called efficiency of competition throws off a very great deal of waste. It might be comforting to designate these 'perverse outcomes' but as aberrations mount, they start to look more like a norm. It doesn't have to be that way. Around the world, individuals and organizations are finding creative, collaborative 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.

When No One Wins Unless Everyone Wins

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.

Margaret Heffernan

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