Who the heck is Margaret Heffernan?

In England, people think I’m American and in America, people see me as British. I’ve been asked if I’m a corporate shill and challenged as to whether I’m a communist. I love technology and am deeply hostile to it. I’m a Professor but I’m not an academic. I’ve worked in radio, television, film and technology, run 5 companies, written 6 books, 6 plays and made music videos and one deeply forgettable film about how the rabbit came to be introduced into Britain. So sometimes people get a little confused.

But to me it’s all very simple. I am an insider and an outsider. I know what it’s like running companies — I’m also chronically annoyed that companies don’t serve markets, society and their employees better. These two perspectives mean that I can talk to business leaders as peers, without flattery and with an acute ear for nonsense and spin. I don’t think there’s any point writing except to change the world for the better, for everyone.

That sounds cheesy and sentimental but actually it’s just hard. I don’t write what I think of as recipe books: follow these three — or five or six or seven — simple steps and eternal success will be yours. If it were that easy, the world wouldn’t be on fire, CEOs wouldn’t be in court and four million Americans wouldn’t have quit their jobs in April — followed by four million more in May. We make stupid mistakes all the time (Wilful Blindness.) By falling for the myth that competition forces the best to the top, we waste the opportunity to make more better for more people (A Bigger Prize.) We trivialize the human skills that really do transform work (Beyond Measure) and we need, more than ever, to understand that the future is not predictable, it is for us to make it (Uncharted: How to Map the Future.) My husband, an immunologist, said I was writing a trilogy and it turns out that he was right: Wilful Blindness, A Bigger Prize and Uncharted form a coherent take on where we are and where we could be if we use the best of human abilities.

The worst thing organizations do — sometimes intentionally but mostly not — is to deprive individuals of their sense of agency and creativity. My entire career has involved working with brilliant creative minds, creating the conditions in which they can do their most glorious work. It’s been a ton of fun and agony and challenge and laughter. And that has been a privilege: one that everyone should have.

And if we don’t tap into and liberate all that human genius, we are literally all going up in smoke.

Now, that’s not confusing, is it?