January 2023

Margaret Heffernan is an American entrepreneur, author and playwright. That is, by any standards, a wonderful combination of skills and experience. If you have heard her in the numerous radio programmes and TED talks, you will know how impressive she is.

I have chosen this book for our latest recommended reading because it chimes so well with the whole concept of Project Bijou – that success is a collective and community endeavour.

A book about human behaviours at its heart, it explores competition, power, success and failure, the threads of which run through so many aspects of our lives.

Heffernan challenges the commonly held belief that not only do we have to compete aggressively to succeed, but the sense that doing so is natural to the human condition.

Whilst not a book about data, it is about how we behave, how we treat each other and how we might reframe what ‘winning’ looks like. Apply that to the brave new digital world we find ourselves in, there is much we can take from Heffernan’s wisdom.

As is so often the case, I cannot do her writing justice, other than by quoting directly from it -

“Innovative institutions and organisations thrive not because they pick and breed superstars but because they cherish, nurture and support the vast range of talents, personalities and skills that true creativity requires. Collaboration is a habit of mind, solidified by routine and predicated on openness, generosity, rigour and patience.
And failure is part of the deal[..]. The safest hospitals are those where its easiest to acknowledge error. These are bigger prizes that grow as they’re shared.
It’s hard to create a climate of safety in times that feel so dangerous. But the failure to inculcate the habit of collaboration may be the biggest organisational, social and political risk we face today.
Success is only meaningful when everyone owns it.”

I have always had a very clear vision of what success in the data protection context looks like for us as individuals, a community, and as a jurisdiction. It is not about ticking boxes or exploiting people, it’s about genuinely engaging with what we are doing and why we are doing it. There is a very real and very important prize for us all if we work together to do that well.