Culture Management
Cultivate a thriving environment: Discover how positive workplace culture fuels productivity and engagement.
Leaders: You Have More Influence Than You Think
As a leader, it’s not hard for you to recognize the impact you have on your team members when they are at work. But if you’re like the hundreds of leaders I work with every year, you are vastly underestimating the impact you’re having on the rest of your employees’ lives.
Recent Articles
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The Cost of Workplace Interruptions: What’s Missing from Our Distraction Calculator
An interruption costs more than the time it takes to handle. Each switch between tasks requires time and mental effort to disengage, reorient, and rebuild context. And when fragmentation becomes the norm, people pay the cost in stress, effort, and time pressure instead of missed deadlines. Changing this norm is a work design question asRead More
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Context Aware AI in the Workplace: Changing How Decisions Get Made
by Shana Burg, AI Trainer For years, Maura Thomas has argued that you cannot solve a distraction problem with a time management solution. The real issue is attention, and the solution is learning how to manage it. Now, artificial intelligence is changing something even more fundamental: how we make decisions at work. This shift isn’tRead More
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Do These 6 “Unconscious Calculations” Sabotage Your Business Productivity?
When leaders ask me how to increase productivity in the workplace, they’re usually looking for a tool, a system, or a process. Something to implement. Something to roll out. But in my experience, even the best operational systems underperform when they’re built on unexamined beliefs that quietly shape how your team works, communicates, and measuresRead More
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How to Build a Corporate Culture That Fosters Productivity
This post was updated February 12, 2026 Building a productive organization isn’t about pushing people to work harder—it’s about creating a corporate culture that allows employees to make steady, meaningful progress on their most important work. When culture supports productivity, progress follows. When it doesn’t, even the best tools, training, or time-management techniques fall short.Read More
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How to Motivate Employees: Use “The Progress Principle”
Researchers Teresa M. Amabile and Steve J. Kramer surveyed 669 managers from dozens of companies across the globe. They asked the respondents to rank in order of importance the following five tools that can affect employee motivation and emotions: As it turns out, support for making progress on meaningful work is the number one motivator.Read More
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Revolutionize Internal Communications with Microsoft Copilot Notebooks
Part 5 in a series on the 2025 Microsoft Work Trend Index Report For knowledge workers, thinking is the raw material of everything we produce. I am convinced that the measure of our success—and the true definition of productivity—is “achieving significant results.” Yet, instead of feeling energized and satisfied at the end of the dayRead More
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AI and the Future of Work: How Leaders Should Prepare
Part 4 in a series on the 2025 Microsoft Work Trend Index Report Businesses are navigating a profound shift, one that parallels the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the internet. This decades-long transition to the AI work world is characterized by intelligence being “on tap.” In other words, artificial intelligence can be turned onRead More
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Too Much Work? When Hustle Hurts Results
Part 3 in a series on the 2025 Microsoft Work Trend Index Report The notion of a clear dividing line between the workweek and the weekend is quickly becoming a relic of a past era, much like the private office or the water cooler chat. For generations, the 5-day work week provided a fundamental structureRead More
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How to Improve Work Culture by Fixing the Infinite Workday
Part 2 in a series on the 2025 Microsoft Work Trend Index Report The shift from manufacturing to knowledge work was supposed to grant us flexibility, empowering us to use our brains and expertise to achieve amazing results. Instead, for many busy professionals, it has delivered an environment defined by relentless pressure and pervasive exhaustion.Read More
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Frontier Firms: What Microsoft’s Report Reveals About AI and the Future of Work
Part 1 in a series on the 2025 Microsoft Work Trend Index Report by Shana Burg, content director for Regain Your Time and the author of “Poof! The Disappearance of a Writer in the Age of AI.” Are you a leader feeling a little overwhelmed by the challenge of integrating AI into your workflow? MicrosoftRead More
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Improving Workplace Culture: 7 Terms Every Leader Must Define
You arrive at work determined to spend 30 minutes tackling that important proposal you hoped to finish yesterday. But “being responsive” is something your company prides itself on, so your email and chat remain open. As you start the proposal, a Teams conversation catches your eye—better check that. After responding, you notice a client emailRead More
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10 Ways Leaders Can Stop Hustle Culture to Boost Productivity
At 6 PM, your team is still at their desks, frantically responding to emails that arrived minutes ago. They look busy, even heroic. But here’s what you’re not seeing: the important project that’s been pushed to tomorrow for the third time this week. The perpetual ping of notifications, the expectation of immediate responses, and theRead More
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15 Ways Leaders Can Help Employees Set Boundaries at Work
This post was updated on October 12, 2023 In order to support your team’s productivity, it’s essential to help them set boundaries at work. Employee burnout is a real threat to companies. Failure to empower your team to have boundaries and honor them can lead busy professionals to disengage and burn out, leaving you withRead More
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Open Office Floor Plan: 10 Ways To Improve Productivity
This post was updated on September 5, 2023 There’s no doubt that open office floor plans require a much lower investment in real estate than a traditional office space. And that’s an important consideration for companies. But there is ample research showing that open offices are devastating to employee productivity. Just a sample… A 2019Read More
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Use Corporate Training To Do More With Less
When companies face challenges related to staff, leaders may consider new corporate training programs. These challenges might include: Quality issues (costly mistakes), Capacity issues (serving more clients/customers without adding more staff) Burnout issues (negative attitudes, absenteeism, or turnover) Excess communication (the more time team members spend in inboxes, the less time they have to spendRead More
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Leaders: You Have More Influence Than You Think
As a leader, it’s not hard for you to recognize the impact you have on your team members when they are at work. But if you’re like the hundreds of leaders I work with every year, you are vastly underestimating the impact you’re having on the rest of your employees’ lives. One of my clientsRead More
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Improve Employee Productivity | 8 PROVEN Strategies
Wondering how to improve employee productivity? I recently published my new book called Everyone Wants to Work Here. In it, I reveal the best methods–proven methods–to improve company culture. I’ve gleaned these strategies over 20 years of working with leaders across the globe to increase their workers’ ability to deliver results. But here’s theRead More
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Celebrating 20 Years + My New Book!
Last week I gathered with friends, family, and clients in my hometown of Austin, Texas. Together we celebrated the 20-year anniversary of my business, and the release of my sixth book, EVERYONE WANTS TO WORK HERE: Attract the Best Talent, Energize Your Team, and Be the Leader in Your Market. And I’m happy to shareRead More
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The Best Way to Measure Knowledge Worker Productivity
Gone are the days when employers assessed the productivity of their team members by who spent the most time at the office and who sent emails around the clock. At least I hope those days are gone, since all of the latest research shows that these employee behaviors lead to burnout. In fact, an always-onRead More
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How to Create a Team Communication Policy to Improve Productivity
This post was refreshed on October 11, 2022 Maybe you or your team members keep two monitors connected to your computer and on at all times—one monitor to keep an eye on incoming communication so you can be timely with responses, and the other monitor for doing “real work.” But you probably don’t know thatRead More
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This Is What Distractions Are Costing Your Company—and How to Manage Them
This post was refreshed on July 26, 2022 Leaders typically underestimate the cost of distraction, but when I walk my clients through the implications of constantly interrupted work, they are often surprised by how much money their company is wasting on lost productivity year after year. In fact, technology researcher Jonathan Spira estimates that interruptionsRead More
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Employee Training and Development | Do It Right to Boost Retention
According to Gallup, companies that invest in employee development programs are twice as likely to retain their employees. These companies also experience an 11% greater profitability than those that don’t invest in similar programs. When companies commit to helping employees develop their hard and soft skills, workers have the opportunity to make long-term, positive behaviorRead More
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Leaders: This Is Why Your Team Doesn’t Know How to Prioritize Its Work
[Excerpted from my book, EVERYONE WANTS TO WORK HERE: Attract the Best Talent, Energize Your Team, and Be the Leader in Your Market, Sourcebooks, 2023.] Leaders often tell me their team needs to learn how to prioritize. They believe that, in most cases, this is due to a gap in the team members’ skills. AndRead More
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How to Measure Productivity: 3 Levels
In my work with clients, I see three initial milestones for people who are on a journey to improve their productivity—defined as achieving significant results. And all three are related to attention management. Learning about these 3 levels of productivity can help you measure your productivity and become more aware of how you use yourRead More
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Tips for Leading Remote Teams, with Kevin Eikenberry
Transitioning to remote work is a gift to some and a nightmare to others. Some people might hope to continue with at least part-time telecommuting after the COVID-19 pandemic is over, and others can’t wait to get back to the office. Either way, remote work is where we find ourselves now, and while I’ve beenRead More
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Support Corporate Innovation With Attention Management
This post was refreshed on September 8, 2023 When people lack innovation and creativity at work, it’s not just a problem for the individual. It becomes a corporate problem. Company profits will suffer if employees are unable to generate new ideas and new solutions and make complex decisions when the job requires it. In thisRead More
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Shopping for Corporate Training? Don’t Make These 4 Mistakes
According to Training Magazine, average corporate training budgets depend on the size of the company, and range from $290,000 (fewer than 1,000 employees) to $13 million (more than 10,000 employees) annually. Throughout my 20-plus years in the corporate training industry, I consistently see mistakes—especially by smaller companies that lack learning and development expertise —that preventRead More
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Why You Don’t Need More Time Management Tips
My latest article for Harvard Business Review is based on something that happens to me a lot as a productivity trainer: Executives want me to teach their team time management tips and techniques to help them be more productive. But, in talking to them, it becomes clear that their staff doesn’t need time management tipsRead More
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What Your Brain Needs to Be Productive
If you’re a knowledge worker, your brain is the tool of your trade. To be productive, you have to take good care of it. If you manage knowledge workers, this means that part of your job is creating a workplace that keeps their brains happy. I teamed up with Dr. Edward Hallowell to explore thisRead More
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How Leaders Can Drive Productivity In the Workplace
(2 minute read, 30 minute podcast) Leaders are responsible for both their own productivity and for productivity in the workplace. Recently, I had the chance to talk about both aspects of productivity with Kevin Eikenberry of “The Remarkable Leadership Podcast.” Kevin is an author and leadership consultant, and his podcast features discussions about leadership, teamworkRead More
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4 Ideas to Make Open Workspaces More Productive
Open workspaces are the norm in today’s offices. But does this kind of floor plan help or hinder productivity? Claudia Grisales, a business columnist at my local newspaper, the Austin-American Statesman, took on that topic recently, and I shared some thoughts for her article: “There is a great deal of research, as well as anecdotalRead More
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Improve Your Culture – Control Corporate Email
Think a Ban on After-Hours Email is Crazy? Think Again. For years, I suggested to my clients that they consider having corporate policies for after hours email. Portable technology plus bad user habits contribute to an “always-on” environment that is bad for employees and bad for the businesses that employ them. My clients thought IRead More
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Read and follow Maura on Forbes | Read Maura’s articles in Harvard Business Review
