The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 13 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Heffernan: Forced ranking and hierarchies create status contests that block collaboration
“And when you add onto that systems like forced ranking and hierarchies,
You foment necessarily status contests.
And what all of that does is it implies that if I help you might do better, which by inference means I do worse.”
Heffernan: Power is disruptive and leaders should avoid using it
“Power is incredibly disruptive, and you have to be very wary of it and try super hard not ever to have to use it.”
Heffernan: Whistleblowers Are Deeply Dedicated to Protecting Their Organizations
“I think in general, and of course there are always exceptions to this, but in general, such people are deeply dedicated to the organization that they serve. So they want to protect it.”
Heffernan: Women view power as orchestration rather than domination
“It isn't that women don't like power at all, but that we think of it differently. So many of the very, very successful women I interviewed for that book, and for my second book, which is about the rise of female entrepreneurship, women on top, Thought of power…”
Heffernan: Weekly personal storytelling sessions transform workplace social capital
“What it did is it stopped people looking at each other in terms of function and made them start to look at each other as human beings. And it was absolutely transformative in the way that people started to relate to each other and talk to people and, you know,…”
Heffernan: Organizations Trap Talent and Make Good People Go Bad
“I think my experience is there's always more intelligence and talent in organizations than manages to get out and to surface and to be deployed, and I've always wondered why, and where does it go, and why does that happen, and where does it get stuck and trapp…”
Heffernan: Believing great work happens regardless of context is naive
“Because I think this notion that you can do wonderful work regardless of context is romantic and naive.”
Heffernan: Mental and economic models inherently repel disconfirming data
“And the problem with mental models, also business models, also economic models, is they attract confirming data, and they repel marginalized or trivialized disconfirming data.”
Heffernan: Whistleblowers Are Detail-Oriented and Better-Than-Average Pattern Recognizers
“The only thing I could find, and I've interviewed hundreds of such people they tend to be a little nerdy, and I emphasize a little, because you know, not spectacularly, but they are definitely people who like detail. And as a consequence of liking detail, they…”
Heffernan: People bend their experience of life to maintain moral self-image
“It's about the degree to which we have to think about ourselves, think of ourselves as good people. And we will bend our experience of life to keep that sense of good self intact.”
Heffernan: Entering organizations shifts moral focus from goodness to obedience
“He talked about how when we go into an organization and Our moral focus shifts, essentially from wanting to be a good person to wanting to do a good job, and we implicitly assume that doing a good job is doing what we're told, and there's much in our organizat…”
Heffernan: Lasting workplace reform requires redefining power, not just firings
“For it to have lasting impact requires more than heads rolling. It requires a, you know, as well as the kind of negative, let's get rid of this, It requires a positive, which is, what is the concept of power that replaces it?”