According to CIPD’s 2024 Resourcing and Talent Planning report, a staggering 56% of organisations are grappling with rising retention challenges – a clear signal that the employee experience is under strain. Rather than watching talent walk out the door, forward-thinking leaders must reimagine their workplaces to create environments where employees feel a true sense of connection, authenticity and development.
This urgent context forms the backdrop of Maneuvering Monday, the new book by Vice President of Business Digitalisation, Ivanna Mikhailovna Rosendal and Anne Katrine Carlsson Sejr, a leader of teams specialising in organisational development and transformation.
Unlike some traditional business books that promise neat, linear solutions to messy problems, Maneuvering Monday embraces the unpredictable reality of corporate life. Blending fiction with deep business insight, the book expertly illuminates how organisations and individuals can tackle complex workplace dynamics and transform company culture from the inside out.
Thoughtfully crafted to encourage the audience to draw their own conclusions and make meaningful changes to their own workplaces, Maneuvering Monday began as a podcast, with initial chapter drafts released as podcast episodes, and guest experts invited to comment on the story and advise the characters. The result is a story that mirrors the real-world experience of organisational change driven by people who are attempting, to the best of their abilities, to change things for the better. They try, then fail. They learn. They change tactics. Sometimes they succeed. Sometimes they trust the wrong people. Not everything is in their control, but the outcomes are the sum of their efforts, not one person’s master plan.
Maneuvering Monday tells the story of Zebra Apps, a company in crisis. Employees are leaving in droves, and Marie, the Head of Development HR, is under pressure to stem the tide. She launches a structured culture program, but quickly finds herself navigating unpredictable behaviour, hidden agendas, corporate rebellion, management shortcomings and financial despair. Challenges that many organisations are acutely facing today.
Through Marie’s journey and the richly developed characters around her, Maneuvering Monday is a revelatory story of leadership, structural transformation, and what it takes to succeed in the face of adversity. With a candid look at the real highs and lows of company life, and the mistakes people make even with the best intentions, Mikhailovna Rosendal and Carlsson Sejr offer fresh perspectives on tackling organisational dysfunction and creating a workplace that employees genuinely want to be part of.
Maneuvering Monday is more than a story about a company in crisis, it’s a powerful reflection of the shared responsibility we hold in shaping the workplace. Work occupies too much of our time to be a waste of time. Maneuvering work for the better has to be something we all do, regardless of our title or hierarchical position, because each of us has the power to make it a little better.
Maneuvering Monday, written by Ivanna Mikhailovna Rosendal and Anne Katrine Carlsson Sejr, is available to buy on Amazon and in bookshops from 16th September 2025.
