Leadership Versus Management Do you know the difference between leadership and management? In Western economies, the lines between the two have become blurred. In her book, The Seven Keys of Charisma (1997), Joanna Kozubska says: “There are times when a leader needs good, systematic management skills and times when a manager must inspire people. We have to be able to do both.” This has significant implications for the way that leaders and managers should be developed. Originally, the difference between management and leadership arose based on the perception that management was about imple... view article details

Job descriptionProject management is the process of planning, organizing, staffing, and guiding the process of creating a solution or system. Project managers are responsible for providing a plan and the means on which to base management decisions throughout the life of a project. There are many scheduling software tools available to help project managers perform their job, including PERT, Microsoft Project, Scitor Project Scheduler, and many others. While such applications are usually designed for certain industries or projects, they all use Critical Path Methodology, or CPM. CPM plays a larg... view article details

How Do You Spend Your Time? You know how some people are always late but tend up spending way more time in a meeting than you think is necessary? And how some people are always prompt? An easy way to recognize someone’s personality style is looking at how they spend their time. Review these descriptions and see if you recognize yourself and your coworkers.Direct Style Time Management People with a Direct style don’t waste time. They are almost always in a hurry, and they get impatient with you if you aren’t. They are action-oriented, making quick decisions and implementing th... view article details

Q. I've been employed with the same company for 10 years. My official job title is financial analyst, and I report to the financial operations manager. For the last year and a half, the manager and I have been working at both locations, rotating throughout the week. The company decided it is inefficient to have us rotating plants, so I was informed that I would take over all of my manager's duties at one plant and she will handle everything at the other plant. Since these are two small plants, we handle all HR-related issues, all financial issues, benefits, general office management, etc. I no... view article details

Tips for a Smooth Transition When Implementing Organizational Change Within Your Company Winning the support of workers when introducing and executing organizational change is essential. If the employees are not holistically involved in the organizational change process, they are likely to show resistance in acceptance and implementation. Intuitive change communication is the cornerstone of initiating a flourishing change program. In order for businesses to avoid conflicts and poor responses as a result of mismanaging change, it should be communicated in advance, and throughout all phases of t... view article details

In the mid 1990s I took a job at a growing startup. The delineation of talent at the office was pretty clear: Four partners (President, VP/Technology, VP/Sales, VP/Marketing) and four employees (Video producer, Graphic Designer, and two Application Developers).Then there was Martin.Martin didn’t work at the home office in Boston, he worked somewhere near the mountains of Utah. For the first few months I only heard rumors of who he was and what he did. I heard he lived in an impossibly small apartment, slept on a small mattress on the floor, and owned only a handful of personal items. I heard h... view article details

Social Media: Answering All of Life's Questions Never has one incident singularly highlighted the good, the bad, and the incredibly ugly components of living in the age of social media than a situation earlier this month regarding a young engineer, his two job offers, and his decision to ask the Internet to help him determine which one he should accept.The young man, who has not been identified, posted a question to Quora -- the Q&A social media platform -- to help him decide between a job offer from the ride-sharing powerhouse Uber and Zenefits, an HR software startup. The man came u... view article details

Fall from Grace At exactly 9:53 AM Central Time, on June 19, Jonah Lehrer ceased to be science writing’s Wunderkind and found himself in the virtual company of journalistic miscreants who've straddled and overstepped the lines of what’s ethical in journalism. Exposed by media critic Jim Romenesko, Lehrer, the prolific writer and author of books such as 'Imagine: How Creativity works' and 'How we Decide' and blogger of counterintuitive studies and ideas, was found to have repeatedly reused chunks of his previously published work, sometimes slightly modified, in subsequent articles and ... view article details

Dads are officially in flux. And the ongoing changes and shifts in what's considered masculine is a great conversation to be having. In the 1950s, a "good dad" was one who brought home the bacon and had his Stepford wife fry it up. Sure maybe he doled out some discipline every now and again when mom uttered the "Just wait til your father gets home!" line, but for the most part work and being a breadwinner was the benchmark of a good dad. But now? Well, things are much different. Women are the breadwinners in 4 out of 10 families. The number of stay-at-home dads has doubled in the last 25 yea... view article details

Valentine's Day at Work: Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue -- Keep Both of Them to Yourself on Feb. 14 Valentine's Day is a Double-Edged Sword Valentine's Day. Perhaps no other holiday evokes stronger feelings from both the lovesick and those entirely sick of love. Sure the celebration of holidays at the office can be fun. After all, you're still sporting that certificate for "Best Costume" at Halloween. But if management wanted you to make a big deal about Valentine's Day at work, they'd have handed out a list of names and asked you to decorate a card box for your desk just like in the fourth... view article details