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Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes QUOTES

Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes QUOTES

1 " others "

― Margaret Heffernan , Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes

2 " 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 , Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes

3 " thinking: a rather prosaic, low-tech concept, easily forgotten and routinely underrated. But "

― Margaret Heffernan , Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes

4 " Questions are the heart and soul of constructive conflict. They open up the exploration, bring in new information, and reframe debate. When "

― Margaret Heffernan , Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes

5 " Seventy percent of US companies now use open-plan offices and hot desking in the hope that these free-form physical structures will provoke free-form thinking. This architectural determinism isn’t entirely convincing—there’s plenty of evidence that people find open workspaces noisy, distracting, and impersonal. Walking through several such workspaces recently, I couldn’t help but notice how hard everyone was working to simulate privacy. Plugged into headphones, surrounded by stacks of books and temporary dividers, defensiveness was more evident than openness. Architecture alone won’t change mindsets and tearing down physical walls won’t demolish the mental silos that trap thinking. "

― Margaret Heffernan , Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes

6 " the road to success is littered with mistakes, it matters more to build trust and encourage ambition than to reward obedience. At "

― Margaret Heffernan , Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes

7 " 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 , Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes

8 " made some teams much better than others. What they found was that individual intelligence (as measured by IQ) didn’t make the big difference. Having a high aggregate intelligence or just one or two superstars wasn’t critical. The groups that surfaced more and better solutions shared three key qualities. First, they gave one another roughly equal time to talk. This wasn’t monitored or regulated, but no one in these high-achieving groups dominated or was a passenger. Everyone contributed and nothing any one person said was wasted. The second quality of the successful groups was social sensitivity: these individuals were more tuned in to one another, to subtle shifts in mood and demeanor. They scored more highly on a test called Reading the Mind in the Eyes, which is broadly considered a test for empathy. These groups were socially alert to one another’s needs. And the third distinguishing feature was that the best groups included more women, perhaps because that made them more diverse, or because women tend to score more highly on tests for empathy. What this (and much more) research highlights is just how critical the role of social connectedness can be. Reading the research, I "

― Margaret Heffernan , Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes

9 " 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 , Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes

10 " contributes "

― Margaret Heffernan , Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes