Institutes of higher learning are bringing in leaders from certain industries as visiting professors or guest lecturers. This helps provide unique, on-the-job perspectives to the curriculum. One recent example is Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, who will be a valuable addition to Stanford's MBA program.

If the project you're managing goes better than planned—you finish ahead of schedule, under budget, or with greater results than expected—you might be inclined to chalk it up to luck and not want to draw attention. But here's an argument for why you should make sure people notice and you get credit.

Project teams have to learn to manage the difficult personalities they encounter on a project. The key is to identify which type of personality you are dealing with, then quickly apply approaches to smooth over the situation. Here are some tips for handling passive aggressive stakeholders' concerns.