For the past 10 years, the electric utility industry has focused on competition and restructuring.

John Kotter knows your organization needs to change. His latest book, "A Sense of Urgency," delves into the how-to required of managers needing to embark on that first step, avoiding pitfalls along the way.

It is a process that few managers look forward to, and one that most employees dread: the annual performance review. The workplace ritual is a task to cross off the list, something that needs to be done but rarely is taken seriously enough to get done right.

Alan Goldman is a management and entrepreneurship professor of practice at the W. P. Carey School of Business. He’s teaching the negotiations classes in the 2012 Small Business Leadership Academy presented by W. P. Carey’s Center for Executive and Professional Development.

Gary Naumann is an entrepreneur and director of the Spirit of Enterprise Center at the W. P. Carey School of Business.

In addition to the people we hire to provide the skills that we either don't possess or don't do as well as someone else, it is the wise entrepreneur who assembles a cadre of advisers.