John Manning's Blog, page 4

Taking Stock of Productivity? What to Know Now to Get Better Results in 2024.

For most leaders, reflecting on a solid year’s worth of work usually raises questions around productivity. Questions such as, “Was I productive?” “Could I have been more productive?” and “How could I have managed productivity with more discipline and results in mind?”

That’s because at this time of year, many business plans are being formalized, budgets are being finalized, and numbers are giving insights into targets we’ve hit and those we’ve missed. We’re seeing what’s working and wha...

Mastering Change: Strategies for Leaders to Embrace Adaptability

As leaders, we all know that adaptability is essential to managing change successfully. But it can feel a bit pie-in-the-sky if, in spite of acknowledging the need to embrace and practice change gracefully, your mindset and actions don’t align with adaptability. And the truth is, as leaders, if we don’t approach our responsibilities with an openness to change, we’re going to find ourselves stuck, making the same mistakes over and over, going nowhere.

But let’s face it: Most of us can’t ...

Is Course Correction in Your Company’s Future? Three Tips for Transformation Success.

Looking ahead to 2024, is your mind spinning around lessons you’ve learned over the past few years, or perhaps what needs to change with either your leadership, your team or your organization at large?

Change can be tough but, as the saying goes, “The only constant in life is change.” And you know well that there’s not a single organization or leader immune from this inevitable fact. Look at the pandemic—even businesses on seemingly solid ground felt impacts, some negative and some posi...

Ditch Year-End Business Dread: Planning Steps + a Solution That Works!

Here it comes…the end of the year, it’s right around the corner. Which means it’s already time for next year’s business planning… that critical process that will help you and your organization set the stage for 2024 and beyond.

Do you dread business planning? If so, you’re not alone. Lots of leaders don’t love it either. But in coaching leaders and companies for 60+ years, we’ve seen time and again that, done right, year-end business planning can transform into an inspiring, exciting ex...

Has Year-End Strategic Planning Got You Spooked?

Halloween is right around the corner, and while your organization may be prepping for some spooky fun at work, how’s your strategic, year-end business planning going? Are you on track to pull together a solid plan before Q4 is over? Or, are you a bit spooked by all that’s got to go into developing goals and strategies for next year and beyond?

Deep breath. You got this! And we’re here to help. At MAP, we’ve coached 15,000 organizations and 170,000 business leaders since 1960, and one of...

Unmasking Manager Burnout—and What You Can Do About It Today!

If you think your managers aren’t looking for another job, you may want to think again. Employee engagement research uncovers some brutal facts around their growing habits around, you guessed it, job searching.

The reasons behind it? They’re burned out, and feel like the organization doesn’t care about them. They are experiencing a confluence of stressors, most notably, being tasked with more and more responsibilities, with fewer dollars and people to do them. It’s a burden they don’t w...

How to Keep the Employees You Spent the Time and Money to Hire

Are your employees searching for other jobs in their free time? If they’re not happy, as in feeling empowered and engaged in the workplace, there is a good chance that they are.

And yet we all know that searching for and changing jobs is stressful. It’s not easy to find the perfect position amid the seemingly endless black hole of online postings.

Still, lots of people aren’t loving their work, a fact that drives performance and productivity downward. Left unaddressed, it can be costly ...

Leadership Development for Employees—Right Now? YES! And Here’s Why…

It’s always fun to check out the human resource trends and statistics, particularly when it comes to leadership development for employees. While they are just trends and numbers that can change, they’re worth paying attention to because the data gives us the pulse on lots of aspects related to the HR world.

Here, we’ve cherry-picked a few interesting stats, admittedly borrowed from a much larger compilation, thanks to this recent Forbes article. Check out these findings, think about how...

Prevent Quiet Quitting by Focusing on Your Team’s Professional Development

Recent research and news from Gallup polls indicate that “although employee engagement is rising, the majority of the world’s workers are still quiet quitting. An improving job market may encourage those workers to quit for real.”

The question is, if your employees fit into this category of workers, what are you doing to boost employee engagement and prevent them from quiet quitting?

One of the best known, proven ways to boost employee engagement is to create strategies that don’t just ...

Time to Get Unstuck: Three Tips to Push Beyond Your Leadership Comfort Zone.

At MAP, one of our favorite ways to build understanding around leadership challenges and growth is simply by watching and analyzing great films about leaders. One of our workshops (the MAP Film Series), in fact, provides participants this very opportunity. Through the cinematic storytelling, people can quickly see the themes, patterns, pitfalls and successes within the leadership journey. Provoking discussion gives them the opportunity to reflect, dig deeper, and grasp the impact of lea...