Leadership is on everyone’s lips, the great majority of job listings ask candidates to have “strong leadership skills” and academic institutions continuously create new leadership courses and workshops. But what exactly is this famous leadership? And how is it different from management?

Drafting the Manhattan skyline of the future. Source: Manahattan West NYC

What was once known as Hell’s Kitchen and lately one of the grittiest parts of Manhattan is in the process of becoming an area packed with flashy skyscrapers. At the head of this mega project stands a construction project manager. 

Multitasking in project teams is not desirable, because it is not efficient. That was the core statement of the last post. Switching from task to task means that there are always switch costs which can amount up to 40 percent of the daily work time on an average work day. That means that almost half of the work time might be used to get back to the original task after being interrupted.

That’s why reducing multitasking to a minimum and creating spaces for uninterrupted, concentrated work should be in everyone’s interest.

There are starting points on all levels – in the organization itself, the management team and in the self-organization of each team member.

Every January, we dig our New Year’s resolutions out of the relic box – and exercising more and eating healthy are always top of the list.

However, what can project managers resolve to do in 2014? A healthier lifestyle will do no harm to any of us, but the beginning of a new year can also be a great opportunity to do things better than last year.

The eventful year of 2013 is coming to an end. We want to take the chance to look back at the year’s events at InLoox.

Don’t worry, the InLoox Blog won’t digress into the world of zoology. Black swans are what the business consultancy McKinsey and the University of Oxford call major IT projects that exceed their time and financial scope. The researchers joined forces for a long-term study on IT projects.

Even if your official title is not project manager, chances are you will be called upon to lead a group at some point. Whether it is initiating procedural changes in your department, optimizing your website or launching a product in a new market, projects come in all shapes and sizes. 

More than 60 percent of the IT projects in companies are not delivered on time and budget. This is the result of a survey conducted by the market research institute Forrester on behalf of EffectiveUI among 474 business decision makers.