Woody Allen famously remarked that "Eighty percent of success is showing up."

Digital and other remote communications are efficient and helpful, but there’s much to be said for being there, face-to-face with others.

The power of voice is not mere noise; it comes from the ability to put into words what might be only embryonic, thus shaping the direction for action.

The point? Collaborate.

Management guru Peter Drucker maintains that the most important shift in business today is from "ownership to "partnership," and from "individual tasks" to "collaboration." The successful company is not the one with most brains, he suggests, but the most brains acting in concert.

Those who are honored as great leaders are not merely good at getting results efficiently, they are able to find grander goals that help people look up to see the big picture and set their sights higher.

If it’s still the middle, there’s always hope. Keep at it, make mid-course adjustments, and surprise the naysayers. Change agents in companies sometimes get approval after repeated turndowns just because they wear out their critics, who run out of arguments.

I hope Marissa Mayer gets to read this.