Marina Gorbis's Blog, page 1580

How Ideal Is Your Company?

Is your company getting your best work? Do you come in every day energized, enthusiastic, creative, and engaged? If not, you're not alone, at least in the U.S, according to the latest Gallup poll of employee engagement, which you can see if you scroll down through the wealth of data my HBR colleague Gretchen Gavett recently collated.

If you're among the less than enchanted, what are you missing? What would you need to be your most productive?

Professors Rob Goffee, of the London Business School, and Gareth Jones, of Madrid's IE Business School, asked this question to hundreds of executives, as part of their on-going research into authentic leadership. Here's a sampling of the replies they received:

"It would be great to be in an organization where I felt I really knew what was going on — where there were no corporate secrets — no spin."

"I'd love it if I was in an organization where I felt I was adding value as widely as possible at the same time as I was growing myself."

"I've been given too many mission statements and cards with corporate values on them. What I really want is work that fulfills me in many ways."

"I don't want to sink in a quicksand of regulations and controls — I dream of a workplace where there are simple rules and we all know where we stand."

Some of these sentiments may resonate strongly, and some may not, certainly. But underlying the body of comments, spanning differences in circumstances, industries, and individual ambitions, Goffee and Jones found six common imperatives, which taken together, they suggest, describes the ideal organization — a place that enables people to operate at their fullest potential by letting them do their best work.

In a nutshell, this is a place where:

Differences are nurtured, so individuals can be themselves at work and contribute their unique talents.
Information is not suppressed or distorted, so people can find out what they need to know to do their work.
Individuals are given meaningful chances to grow, becoming more valuable to the organization in the process.
The company is a place where everyone feels proud to work, spurring them to go beyond their stated roles.
People's day to day work makes sense to them, and they understand how their own jobs fit in with everyone else's.
And they are not hindered by stupid rules.

Does any of this surprise you? Who wouldn't want to work in a company like that? And yet, Goffee and Jones found, few (if any) companies that live up to this ideal entirely.

I don't find that all that surprising either, considering how hard some of these aspirations are to pull off. Consider, for example, how difficult it is to design an organization in which everyone's duties fits seamlessly and perfectly with everyone else's. Or how challenging it is to create a strong company culture people feel proud of while also encouraging individuals to express their differences. Or simply how hard it is to keep everyone informed all the time.

How close is your company to the ideal? Goffee and Jones have developed a diagnostic that can give you a quick sense of how your organization stacks up and in what ways it might still fall short. You can click here, to take it.

One company that measures up well, they found, is Arup, the engineering and design firm that built the Sydney Opera House, the Centre Pompidou, and the Beijing Water Cube. As far back as 1970, founder Ove Arup, laid down a gauntlet to its directors as they considered what kind of company they wished to leave behind when they retired. It came to be known as the "Key Speech," which Goffee and Jones report, is still required reading today for Arup employees.

In it, he warned, that if someone becomes "frustrated by red tape or by having someone breathing down his neck, someone for whom he has scant respect, if he has little influence on decisions which affect his work, and which he may not agree with, then he will pack up and go. And so he should. It is up to us, therefore, to create an organisation which will allow gifted individuals to unfold."

When Your Start-Up Should Walk Away from a Deal

In the early years of a company's life cycle, an entrepreneur's ambition can be a double-edged sword. The drive to align quickly with marquee customers to establish credibility can sometimes cloud your judgment. At my company, TransPerfect, we have mostly been served well by our mantra of 20 years: "Listen to the clients and respond to their needs." But we have also learned that the desire to please a potential client at all costs can actually be a setback if you fail to fully evaluate all potential outcomes.

In our formative years, one of the vital lessons I had to learn was how to recognize when an opportunity was not a good fit for us. Signing the wrong deal can cost you time and money — two things entrepreneurs can't afford to lose. How can an entrepreneur eager to build their firm recognize when a deal is a bad idea? Here are some lessons I've learned to keep in mind.

1. When there's no escape clause in the contract. When we were a smaller company, a major retailer approached us with the promise of $15 million in business from a huge translation project. At first, our team viewed it as a way to put our company on the map, and we wanted to show how committed we were to winning the business. We formulated a plan to scale quickly, adding new personnel and even a new office location to cover all the work that would be coming in. Not long after incorporating all of these changes, the retailer pulled the plug on the entire project due to economic reasons. We realized that the contract we signed hadn't included any volume guarantee or kill fee, and as a result, we were not able to recover the lost revenue or the expenses involved with the staffing actions. That experience was a cold dose of reality, not only because of the revenue at stake, but also because it brought to light our own naiveté as an eager startup. But looking back, I can say that we learned a valuable lesson about preparation, caution and responsibility, and as a result, our company is stronger.

2. When you don't have the resources to complete the job to your standards. A major news publication approached us with the project of Spanish language translation for its largest magazine title. The speed needed to turn around a completely translated project on the publication's timetable would have required us to commit a full-time team of linguists to the project. After some serious analysis, we realized that taking the business on those terms would have meant compromising our high-quality translation standards. We thanked the publication for considering us and wished its team the best.

3. When it involves a bidding war. Years ago, a law firm asked us to translate a large international project. We wanted to work with the company because it was a major firm, so we offered our best price for the scope of work. However, the firm informed us that it had received a much lower bid from a competitor. We had carefully examined the level of work required and found it hard to believe that another company could handle it for such a small budget. As much as it pained us, we expressed our concern about the quality of work produced for such a low fee and wished the firm luck. The firm ended up returning to us a week later with a horror story: the less-expensive competitor had botched the job. At that point, we began the project on our terms. Since then, the firm has become a regular client, and we've been conducting increasingly larger volumes of translation on a regular basis.

4. When taking the deal might compromise your reputation. Compromising for the sake of a potential client's happiness is one thing — but yielding your principles to the point that your quality of work is impacted is quite another. For example, if a potential client wanted us to provide translation and localization for an international ad campaign using only machine translation without a team of language experts, we would have no choice but to walk away from the opportunity. Our experience tells us that the technology of machine translation just hasn't progressed to the point where we can deliver a finished product that the end client would find acceptable. It might be tempting for a start-up to accept a large, lucrative project if they only consider the dollar amount and the boost that would give the business — but that is a short-sighted decision. If you expect your company to have staying power beyond this one deal, remember that your professional reputation is worth protecting.



For a young, hungry business, the idea of walking away from a deal is anathema, especially when the budget involved is significant. However, especially in a company's early days, its leaders need to build more than the bank account. The choices your organization makes about how and with whom to do business will set the foundation for the company's future — its reputation, its quality of work, and its ultimate success.

How to Have the IT Risk Conversation

I run a course at the MIT Sloan School called Essential IT for Non-IT Executives. Every time my colleagues and I come to the end of the course, we ask people what they considered the most important thing they learned. Surprisingly, many people say it was "how to have the IT risk conversation."

As one CFO told me, the phrase "IT Risk" contains two dirty words. The word risk makes him feel uncomfortable. And the word IT makes him feel incompetent. Not a good way to feel ready for a productive dialogue. But being able to talk about IT risk is essential if you are going to make the right decisions about how you use technology in your business.

Fortunately, there is a way to talk about IT risk — and understand risk — in terms that make sense to every manager. If you can remember four A's, you have the framing for a productive conversation with your IT counterparts. You can come to common understanding about what IT risks are most important, what causes them, and what you'll do about them.

From a business standpoint, IT risks affect four key objectives:



Availability: Keeping business processes running, and recovering from failures within acceptable timeframes

Access: Providing information to the right people while keeping it away from the wrong people

Accuracy: Ensuring information is correct, timely, and complete

Agility: Changing business processes with acceptable cost and speed

If you're like managers in most companies, you tend to have conversations about these four A's in silos, if at all. You never talk about all four together. That means experts in each risk silo tend to focus on optimizing their own risks, not optimizing across risks.

For example, ask yourself: do your security people think about agility risks? When security people veto your requests, they really mean that you're introducing unacceptable or unnecessary risks. But their veto can slow or stop the changes you need. If you don't talk about all four risks, then how do you know what risks are really acceptable?

In the best companies, security people think about all four A's. They consider agility as well as access risks. They will suggest ways that you can do what you want more safely. They'll even work with other silos — IT operations, application development, compliance, legal, HR, etc. — so they're ready for you when you want to do new things.

When your security people focus on all four A's, you can move quickly to adopt new mobile devices, launch digital businesses, or exploit social media. But unfortunately, too many security people focus only on the risks that matter to them. In protecting against access failures, they fail to help the company move forward.

Getting Started on the Risk Conversation

When you don't explicitly talk about the four A's, people make assumptions about what's most important. Those assumptions will vary from person to person. Conversely, when you talk openly about the four A's, you can fix false assumptions, and you can make better decisions. But you have to start the conversation.

Try the following exercise: Find your favorite IT person. Tell him how important each of the four risks is for your part of the business. Tell him how you think he's doing at managing those risks. Then listen. I guarantee that you'll both learn something.

If your experience is typical, you'll find that you and your IT people place different importance on the four A's. For example, in a global survey of 258 executives, IT and business executives agree on the relative importance of availability and access risks. But business execs put far more importance on agility and accuracy risks than IT execs do.

What's going on? Why don't IT people share your love of accuracy and agility? It's easy to think it's an incentive problem. IT people get the blame when systems go down or hackers succeed. But when projects move too slowly or you don't have a unified view of your customers, you may feel more pain than them. But this incentive answer is only partially correct, if at all.

The real cause of this misalignment lies much deeper; a legacy of risk-unaware decisions and poor communication across silos. Improving agility and accuracy typically requires cleaning up a spaghetti-like mess of systems and processes built up over decades. They can't be fixed just by buying a new device or devising a new procedure. When your IT people seem to value agility and accuracy less than you, they may have simply given up hope of fixing them. The solution may lie beyond their sphere of influence. Or they may be so busy keeping things running that greater agility feels like a pipe dream.

This is where communication matters. You can only fix the legacy problem by jointly understanding the risks that matter now, the risk tradeoffs in each decision, and the actions required to resolve your risks. Discussing IT risk does more than help you make better project decisions. It also helps you understand when it's time to rework some of the mess your organization has accumulated over the years.

So, make IT risk part of your conversations every day. Discuss the four A's whenever you make a big IT decision. If your security people talk only about security, they're missing important risks — and useful opportunities. But when you ask for unnecessary exceptions, or ask your IT people to move too fast, you're inappropriately favoring agility over the other three risks— and setting yourself up for trouble later.

One thing is sure. If you don't talk about IT risk, you only make your risks worse. How do you manage your IT risk conversations?

Data Under Siege
An HBR Insight Center





Rethinking Security for the Internet of Things
The Escalating Cost of Software Malice
Cyber Security Depends on Education
Cyber Security in the Internet of Things

Discover Your Personal Narrative

I recently had coffee with a senior partner at a large consulting firm. He'd just had a "milestone birthday" and now hoped to shift into roles that felt more meaningful to him — speaking, writing, teaching, and becoming a thought leader. He had great contacts; newspaper columns and teaching positions could be his for the asking. The only problem, he told me, was he didn't know what he wanted to say.

Should he focus on the industry practice areas where he'd made his name? Global leadership, since he had so much international experience? Education or healthcare, topics of great personal interest to him? He had no idea where to begin.

"Message development" is a process I'm certainly familiar with. As a former presidential campaign spokesperson and political consultant, I've worked with innumerable candidates to hash out their visions for America and their policy stance on the issues of the day. But I don't think a top-down process is generally the best way for executives — or candidates, for that matter — to determine what they really stand for.

Oftentimes, we're too close to our own experience to be able to distill the common strand — the narrative thread that's implicitly guiding us. That was the case for Chris Guillebeau, an eclectic entrepreneur who has written books including The Art of Non-Conformity and The $100 Startup. "Is there a larger narrative [to my life]? Yes, but it took me a while to find it," he told me in a recent interview. "The larger narrative stems from the central mission: 'You don't have to live your life the way others expect'...[but] it took some time to get specific on what this looked like. In the beginning I floundered a lot."

John Hagel, the co-author of The Power of Pull and co-chairman of Deloitte's Center for the Edge, agrees. Even among corporations, he told me in a recent interview, "Narratives can't be handed over to the PR department; they emerge from shared experiences. The first step for businesses is saying, 'What's our narrative?' Because even if you don't have a conscious one, you've been living one."

We've all, as individuals and as corporations, been living an implicit narrative. But articulating it, as my consultant friend found, can be devilishly hard. There is a pathway to discovery, however. One strategy I developed in the course of writing my book, Reinventing You, is for executives to block out time to write down their "war stories" — the anecdotes that best capture their experience, successes, failures, and views of the world. Whether it's insights about how to build a team or launch a new product, those recollections often contain the kernels of what matters most to them.

Sure, your personal brand and your message can be focus-grouped and wordsmithed by others. But the best place to look, at least initially, is at the stories you tell, to yourself and about yourself. You'll start to see patterns and themes — if most of your most meaningful experiences are centered on global leadership, or if the "moral" of most of your stories is about the need for better executive communication, then you're on your way to finding the essence of your brand.

After a recent lecture at Harvard Business School, a 20-something student came up to me. "I want to start blogging," she said, "but I'm not sure what I should write about. What should my topic be? What if I change my mind and decide I want a different brand later on?" My advice to her — just like to the senior consulting partner — was to get started, try it out, write things down, and iterate (an approach definitively articulated by Len Schlesinger, Charlie Kiefer, and Paul Brown in their book Just Start.) You'll only find your voice, and your authentic brand, by seeing what stories matter to you most.

Do You Work While You Eat?

People who were making and tasting lemonade while memorizing a seven-digit number ended up with a 50% higher sugar concentration in the drink than people who were memorizing just one number, say Reine C. van der Wal of Radboud University Nijmegen and Lotte F. van Dillen of Leiden University, both in the Netherlands. This and other experiments suggest that dealing with a cognitive load dulls the experience of taste (not just sweet but also salty and sour), leading people to drink or eat more in order to obtain a pleasurable experience. Abstaining from cognitive activities during meals may enhance taste perception and limit overconsumption, the researchers say.

Get Your Budget Ready for the Upturn

Most budgets for 2013 were made in 2012, when the prevailing economic outlook was grim. But here it is midyear and the signals are decidedly more positive. Don't let yesterday's mindset prevent you from seeing what is about to unfold. Those who fail to recognize that the economy is improving are likely to play defense for too long, leaving opportunities for top-line organic growth on the table.



There is ample evidence that things are better, trader-driven stock price gyrations notwithstanding. Housing prices have stabilized and are increasing in some regions. Personal debt has declined. Manufacturing is on the rise, exports are picking up, and the US continues to be the top target for FDI.



And there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the economic outlook for the next five years. The shifting energy equation, for example, sets the stage for growth. Shale gas will allow the US to be energy independent, create an export industry, and reduce energy costs. Lower costs are already making some industrial sectors more competitive.



Another compelling if intangible reason to believe that the economy has turned the corner is America's resilience. The societal factors that have made America strong in the past continue today: its diversity, thirst for innovation, entrepreneurship, and institutional support for risk taking. Banks are now adequately capitalized and are beginning to lend, and venture capitalists are as hungry as ever. Even gridlock in Washington has not stopped the economy from progressing.



Granted, it's not a perfect picture. Europe, excluding Germany, is still struggling, it's unclear whether Abenomics can pull Japan out of its slump, and the shrinking Yen could nick the US auto industry. The big drop in demand for major commodities like iron ore and copper has exposed excess capacity and caused painful plant closures, hitting Australia especially hard.



These and other countervailing forces will not, however, stop the US recovery and the synchronized recovery of economies around the globe. Even a small increase in US personal consumption is a huge absolute number — and that spending can spur exports from China, Brazil, Japan, Canada, Europe, South Korea, Mexico, and Singapore. The rating agencies reinforce this point of view. Just this month Fitch raised its rating on India's sovereign debt and Standard & Poor's raised its long-term outlook on the US. Ratings on other countries and companies are more likely to improve than deteriorate.



If your budget was created for economic headwinds, then now is the time to revisit your assumptions. Here are some steps you should take to build for 2014-2015:



1. Position yourself in market segments that will grow. The landscape has undergone major transformations since the global financial crisis. The recession eliminated some market segments and redefined others. This is the time to revisit the market spaces you occupy and position yourself to ride the uptick. You should be exploring new segments and experimenting with new ideas to expand your brand and occupy the space. For example, the wealth effect from rising equity and real estate prices might make premium product segments more attractive in the coming years. Get there ahead of the competition, and be sure your assignment of resources matches up with your growth prospects.

2. Increase your R&D spending. If you didn't cut the budget for innovation, technology, and product development over the past five years, good. If you did, then take action now. Be sure you are investing enough in innovation and focusing on the right R&D projects, so you have interesting products to meet the rising consumer demand.

3. Reset your goals and KPIs. You may have to make some upward revisions as the economic picture changes. Lack of ambition allows mediocre performance.

4. Set funds aside for growth. Even as you loosen the purse strings, keep some money on hand to invest in marketing or advertising as the market turns. You don't have to spend it ahead of time but be ready to pounce and outspend competitors segment by segment as consumption rebounds.

5. Rethink outsourcing. Market growth has shifted to the US, and change happens faster than ever requiring smooth coordination. It may be wise now to source domestically or to bring some functions back in-house. Being close to the market, you'll be able to move faster and also protect your intellectual property.

6. Upgrade skills. Letting talent become obsolete is a terrible thing. Some farsighted companies never cut back on training in the downturn, but many did. This is the time to revamp it for the new game. What new skills and capabilities will you need to succeed in the emerging landscape?

7. Keep the pressure on productivity. People often take their foot off the productivity accelerator in good times. Don't become lax on cost as you begin to sense rising demand. Keep a laser sharp focus on gross margin.

8. Prepare for inflation. While commodity prices and inflation are subdued, be on the alert for inflation's expected return. If you anticipate it over the next two years, as many experts do, develop a methodology to ensure that your pricing policies and purchasing contracts keep in step.



I'm not suggesting businesses should over-expand without appropriate controls, but remember that the marketplace doesn't run on a calendar year. If the context changes, you should adjust now, not on December 31st. Your leadership is crucial. What are you waiting for?

IT in the Cloud Era

An interview with Aaron Levie, cofounder and CEO of Box. Follow him on Twitter at @levie.

Download this podcast

A written transcript will be available by July 8.

New Research: You're Doing Customer Experience Innovation Wrong

"Innovation" has become a buzzword in the customer experience field.

In a recent Forrester survey of 100 customer experience professionals, nearly half of respondents said that their executive team's strategy for customer experience is market differentiation. And an ambitious 13% said that they'll settle for nothing less than having the best customer experience across every industry — in other words, these companies want to be the next Apple, Disney, or Zappos.

They also believe that innovation will help them achieve these lofty goals — and they're investing accordingly. Sixty-nine percent of these respondents report that their companies have dedicated personnel for customer experience innovation. Sixty-four percent have allocated time to innovation activities. And 55% have dedicated innovation budgets.

Are their investments paying off? A whopping 73% of interviewees say they plan to launch innovative customer experiences in the upcoming year — and two-thirds believe that they already have.

These numbers sound promising — but they just don't add up.

If this much innovation work is really happening, then why don't we see customer experiences that are actually innovative gushing forth from nearly every organization? Why haven't we seen more and more companies earning excellent scores in Forrester's Customer Experience Index? In 2013, only 8% of the companies in this annual benchmarking survey received a top grade from their customers — and that's a pathetically low number in comparison to the amount of professed innovation in the industry.

Here's the problem: Everyone talks about customer experience innovation, but no one knows quite what it is or how to attain it. In fact, when we ask customer experience professionals how they're driving their innovation efforts, we find several misguided approaches that actually thwart differentiation and waste massive amounts of time and money in the process.

Many companies simply try to keep up with the Joneses. Fifty-eight percent of our respondents said that their firms drive customer experience innovations by watching what their direct competitors are doing. A full 72% look to copy companies in other industries. For example, Citibank wanted to copy the Apple store so badly that it actually hired the same architects responsible for the Apple store concept to design its bank of the future. Not surprisingly, it wound up with a bank that looks like an Apple store. Imitation may be the highest form of flattery — but it's not innovation. In fact, it's the very definition of parity.

Other companies pray that technology can save them. Sixty-two percent of our panelists report that technology advancements drive their firms' innovation activities. But technology for technology's sake can end in disaster. Consider the multinational auto insurance company that invested in a new mobile app and expensive back-end integration to connect customers in an emergency with a call center agent. While it looked good on paper, the plan failed to account for the fact that drivers didn't download the app in anticipation of getting into a car crash — and had more pressing things on their minds than browsing an app store once an accident occurred. Result? Another so-called innovation that failed to produce business results.

In order to change approaches like these, companies must first have a clear understanding of what it is they're aiming for. Forrester defines customer experience innovation as: The creation of new customer experiences that drive differentiation and long-term value.

Customer experience innovation requires a structured approach that goes beyond traditional find-and-fix methods and helps firms identify and create experiences that really matter. To put their innovation efforts on the right track, customer experience professionals must do three things.

Reframe innovation opportunities. Companies need to start their innovation initiatives with an outside-in approach that frames their business challenges within the context of customers' unmet needs. To identify new opportunities, for example, Philips Healthcare mapped out a typical day in the life of a radiologist, a key purchase influencer, regardless of whether those activities involved Philips. This approach enabled the team to identify a key pain point in radiologists' daily work — an inability to compare one patient's scan with those of others — that Philips already had the data for and capability to solve but hadn't considered productizing.
Ground innovations in the business model. To sustain new types of interactions and ward off copycats, companies need to connect innovations to the mechanics of their underlying business model. Mobile operator giffgaff's customers discover, evaluate, buy, and get support online and in social forums — the direct result of a cost structure that includes only a handful of employees. And Zipcar's car-sharing business model drove a need for keycard (and then mobile phone) vehicle entry — new types of interactions that traditional rental companies never envisioned. Customer experience professionals should explicitly map out the mechanics of possible new business models — like resources, activities, and revenue structure — using a tool like the business model canvas. This visualization can help teams see how core business activities can fuel new types of customer interactions — and support them in the long run.
Infuse innovations with the brand. Ikea Systems' cartoon furniture assembly instructions, Mini Cooper's retro-inspired dashboard, and the cheerful chirp of a Zappos customer service rep — the qualities of these customer experiences create strong associations with their brands. And the more a new customer interaction looks, feels, smells, sounds, and tastes like a specific brand, the harder it will be for competitors to copy. That's why design and innovation consultancy Continuum created mood boards when developing a new restaurant concept for Bertucci's called 2ovens. A collage of carefully chosen photos depicted the desired 2ovens vibe; helped align internal Bertucci's stakeholders; guided the design of touchpoints as diverse as the dining space, menu, and website; and even shaped the company's hiring policies.

Customer experience innovation happens at the intersection of consumer needs, business model, and brand. Companies that neglect one or more pieces of this innovation puzzle will be forever relegated to customer experience mediocrity, on par with throngs of other companies desperate to fix their experience issues and retain customers. But by following the steps above, firms can increase the likelihood that their customer experience innovation initiatives will drive differentiation and long-term value.

Entrepreneurs Get Better with Age

When my mother turned forty, we threw her a tongue-in-cheek funeral-themed surprise party, festooning the living room with paper tombstones engraved with Rest in Peace. That party theme is now a laughable conceit — forty then was older than forty now. Almost. In today's world, there is still a bias against older people — employers in particular often think (in their mind) what Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary is fond of saying to entrepreneurs he doesn't like, "You are dead to me." If we're being honest, we probably agree with O'Leary. Who of us hasn't said, "I'm looking for someone young and hungry." The implication is clear: If you aren't young, you have nothing to contribute.

According to famed developmental psychologist Erik Erikson, as we grow older, hunger for meaning animates us, making us more alive. His theory explains that each healthy human passes through eight stages of development from infancy to adulthood. The seventh stage of development typically takes places between the ages 40-64 and centers around generativity, a period not of stagnation, but of productivity and creativity, including a strong commitment to mentoring and shoring up the next generation. Individuals in this developmental stage are supremely motivated to generate value, not just for themselves, but for others, asking the question: What can I do to make my life really count?

There are loads of both anecdotal and empirical data to support this idea of accelerating creativity in our middle years. Take Cheryl Kellond, for example, one of forty women we recently profiled in 40 Women Over 40 to Watch. Kellond, 43, founded Bia Sport, a GPS sports watch that records time, current heart rate, sending the data straight to an online profile. It also comes with a panic button that gives women who work out alone peace of mind. With traditional sources of financing unavailable, Kellond raised her first round of capital ($408,000) on Kickstarter — the ultimate in creative financing. Then there's Linda Avey, who at age 46 started breakout company 23 and Me, a direct-to-consumer company that gives people access to their genetic data. At age 53, Avey is on her second start-up, Curious, a tool that gives people tools to ask questions about their health through data aggregation and sharing.



Research suggests Kellond and Avey aren't one-offs. "The average age of a successful entrepreneur in high-growth industries such as computers, health care, and aerospace is 40. Twice as many successful entrepreneurs are over 50 as under 25. The vast majority — 75 percent — have more than six years of industry experience and half have more than 10 years when they create their startup," says Duke University scholar Vivek Wadhwa, who studied 549 successful technology ventures. Meanwhile, data from the Kauffman Foundation indicates the highest rate of entrepreneurship in America has shifted to the 55-64 age group, with people over 55 almost twice as likely to found successful companies than those between 20 and 34.

The over-40 crowd is also more likely to do work that matters not just for themselves, but also future generations. For example, Jacki Zehner, 47, the youngest woman to become a partner at Goldman Sachs, is pouring her post-forty life into philanthropy on behalf of women and girls as CEO of Women Moving Millions. Carol Fox, 69, has devoted her golden years to the China-U.S. Philanthropy project, teaching Chinese billionaires how to extend their circle of caring beyond family. While photojournalist Paola Gianturco, 73, igniting an activist grandmother movement, inspiring grandmothers across the world to become involved in education, health and human rights. In learning about these inspiring individuals, it's easy to see why research indicates that a 55-year-old and even a 65-year-old have more innovation potential than a 25-year-old: innovators really do get better with age.

Just as larger businesses provide economic stability to society in the form of higher pay, better medical care, and retirement, experienced workers provide intellectual and emotional ballast in the workplace including innovation expertise. Think about it — disruptive innovation is about playing where no one wants to play (low-end), or has thought of playing (new market). As individuals move into Erikson's seventh developmental stage, creating something new isn't just a "nice thing to do" — it is a psychological imperative. The urge to create, to generate a life that counts impels people to innovate, even when it's lonely and scary. Data notwithstanding, some of the companies among us will continue allow these individuals to fall into the arms of independent work, if we don't give them the boot first. The smart companies — and my money is on you — will harness this hunger of the underserved, ready-to-serve corp of talent, and upend the competition.

Making Virtual Teams Work: Ten Basic Principles

Consider this now familiar view from the field:

"I've run a virtual team for the past 18 months in the development and launch of [a website.] I am located in Toronto, Canada. The website was designed in Zagreb, Croatia. The software was developed in St. John's, Newfoundland; Zagreb, Croatia; Delhi, India; and Los Angeles, USA. Most of the communication was via email with periodic discussions via Skype. I had one face-to-face meeting with the team lead for the technology development this past December."

Could this be you? Virtual teams have become a fact of business life, so what does it take to make them work effectively? On June 10, 2013, I launched a discussion around this question on LinkedIn. The result was an outpouring of experience and advice for making virtual teams work. (I define "virtual teams" as work groups which (1) have some core members who interact primarily through electronic means, and (2) are engaged in interdependent tasks — i.e. are truly teams and not just groups of independent workers). I distilled the results and combined them with my own work, which focuses on how new leaders should assess and align their teams in their first 90 days. Because that's really when it's most important to lay the foundation for superior performance in teams — virtual or otherwise. Here are ten basic principles for making this happen:

1. Get the team together physically early-on. It may seem paradoxical to say in a post on virtual teams, but face-to-face communication is still better than virtual when it comes to building relationships and fostering trust, an essential foundation for effective team work. If you can't do it, it's not the end of the world (focus on doing some virtual team building). But if you can get the team together, use the time to help team members get to know each other better, personally and professionally, as well to create a shared vision and a set of guiding principles for how the team will work. Schedule the in-person meeting early on, and reconnect regularly (semi-annually or annually) if possible.

2. Clarify tasks and processes, not just goals and roles. All new leaders need to align their team on goals, roles and responsibilities in the first 90 days. With virtual teams, however, coordination is inherently more of a challenge because people are not co-located. So it's important to focus more attention on the details of task design and the processes that will be used to complete them. Simplify the work to the greatest extent possible, ideally so tasks are assigned to sub-groups of two or three team members. And make sure that there is clarity about work process, with specifics about who does what and when. Then periodically do "after-action reviews" to evaluate how things are going and identify process adjustments and training needs.

3. Commit to a communication charter. Communication on virtual teams is often less frequent, and always is less rich than face-to-face interaction, which provides more contextual cues and information about emotional states — such as engagement or lack thereof. The only way to avoid the pitfalls is to be extremely clear and disciplined about how the team will communicate. Create a charter that establishes norms of behavior when participating in virtual meetings, such as limiting background noise and side conversations, talking clearly and at a reasonable pace, listening attentively and not dominating the conversation, and so on. The charter also should include guidelines on which communication modes to use in which circumstances, for example when to reply via email versus picking up the phone versus taking the time to create and share a document.

4. Leverage the best communication technologies. Developments in collaborative technologies — ranging from shared workspaces to multi-point video conferencing — unquestionably are making virtual teaming easier. However, selecting the "best" technologies does not necessarily mean going with the newest or most feature-laden. It's essential not to sacrifice reliability in a quest to be on the cutting edge. If the team has to struggle to get connected or wastes time making elements of the collaboration suite work, it undermines the whole endeavor. So err on the side of robustness. Also be willing to sacrifice some features in the name of having everyone on the same systems. Otherwise, you risk creating second-class team members and undermining effectiveness.

5. Build a team with rhythm. When some or all the members of a team are working separately, it's all-too-easy to get disconnected from the normal rhythms of work life. One antidote is to be disciplined in creating and enforcing rhythms in virtual team work. This means, for example, having regular meetings, ideally same day and time each week. It also means establishing and sharing meeting agenda in advance, having clear agreements on communication protocols, and starting and finishing on time. If you have team members working in different time zones, don't place all the time-zone burden on some team members; rather, establish a regular rotation of meeting times to spread the load equitably.

6. Agree on a shared language. Virtual teams often also are cross-cultural teams, and this magnifies the communication challenges — especially when members think they are speaking the same language, but actually are not. The playwright George Bernard Shaw famously described Americans and the British as "two nations divided by a common language." His quip captures the challenge of sustaining shared understanding across cultures. When the domain of team work is technical, then the languages of science and engineering often provide a solid foundation for effective communication. However, when teams work on tasks involving more ambiguity, for example generating ideas or solving problems, the potential for divergent interpretations is a real danger (see for example this Anglo-Dutch translation guide). Take the time to explicitly negotiate agreement on shared interpretations of important words and phrases, for example, when we say "yes," we mean... and when we say "no" we mean...and post this in the shared workspace.

7. Create a "virtual water cooler." The image of co-workers gathering around a water cooler is a metaphor for informal interactions that share information and reinforce social bonds. Absent explicit efforts to create a "virtual water cooler," team meetings tend to become very task-focused; this means important information may not be shared and team cohesion may weaken. One simple way to avoid this: start each meeting with a check-in, having each member take a couple of minutes to discuss what they are doing, what's going well and what's challenging. Regular virtual team-building exercises are another way to inject a bit more fun into the proceedings. Also enterprise collaboration platforms increasingly are combining shared workspaces with social networking features that can help team members to feel more connected.

8. Clarify and track commitments. In a classic HBR article "Management Time, Who's got the Monkey?" William Oncken and Donald L. Wass use the who-has-the-monkey-on-their-back metaphor to exhort leaders to push accountability down to their teams. When teams work remotely, however, it's inherently more difficult to do this, because there is no easy way to observe engagement and productivity. As above, this can be partly addressed by carefully designing tasks and having regular status meetings. Beyond that, it helps to be explicit in getting team members to commit to define intermediate milestones and track their progress. One useful tool: a "deliverables dashboard" that is visible to all team members on whatever collaborative hub they are using. If you create this, though, take care not to end up practicing virtual micro-management. There is a fine line between appropriate tracking of commitments and overbearing (and demotivating) oversight.

9. Foster shared leadership. Defining deliverables and tracking commitments provides "push" to keep team members focused and productive; shared leadership provides crucial "pull." Find ways to involve others in leading the team. Examples include: assigning responsibility for special projects, such as identifying and sharing best practices; or getting members to coach others in their areas of expertise; or assigning them as mentors to help on-board new team members; or asking them to run a virtual team-building exercise. By sharing leadership, you will not only increase engagement, but will also take some of the burden off your shoulders.

10. Don't forget the 1:1s. Leaders' one-to-one performance management and coaching interactions with their team members are a fundamental part of making any team work. Make these interactions a regular part of the virtual team rhythm, using them not only to check status and provide feedback, but to keep members connected to the vision and to highlight their part of "the story" of what you are doing together.

Finally, if you are inheriting a team, take the time to understand how your predecessor led it. It's essential that newly appointed leaders do this, whether their teams are virtual or not. Because, as Confucius put it, you must "study the past if you would define the future." It's even more important to do this homework when you inherit a virtual team, because the structures and processes used to manage communication and coordinate work have such an inordinate impact on team performance. You can use these ten principles as a checklist for diagnosing how the previous leader ran the team, and help identify and prioritize what you need to do in the first 90 days.