Executives tend to turn toward fellow executives for advice. Historically, best practices on hiring, manufacturing, and sales all emerge when talking to someone else who has sat in the trenches. But the ways we do business have changed dramatically over the course of the last decade, and it’s become more necessary to reach outside of your expertise – or industry — to gain perspective on your business and leadership style.

In this era of continuous digital transformation, every manager can benefit from learning a few best practices from the boutique industry of venture capital. Motivating people to take moonshots, predicting changes, and making transformational bets are what the venture industry is predicated on. Great investors understand these things drive return and have structured their work lives to optimize these outcomes. As industrial era companies, from Mattel to GE, start to transform into software-enabled businesses, executives stand to benefit from understanding three principles that drive venture investors.

Returns are defined by home runs, reputations are defined by singles

Venture capitalists never expect their work to be repaid evenly. It’s a well-known characteristic of the industry that “home runs” define investor performance. Being an early investor in Uber or Facebook, for example, makes up for many other investments in unsuccessful businesses. But the best VCs also know that in order to hit home runs you need to have a good swing. That’s why they continue to support their entire portfolio of companies and entrepreneurs.

With the growing significance of software-enabled businesses, managers within companies of all sizes will see some projects scale enormously and drive performance — while others won’t be as impressive. When I was at SAP, we would outline around 10 key initiatives for the company on an annual basis. Not all of them would turn into meaningful businesses. However, if one or two of those did, it was transformative.

The challenge this creates is the potential for two very different types of employee experiences. A few employees will be seen as world conquerors, driving massive return for the business. The majority, on the other hand, will feel deflated after seeing their initiatives fail or their efforts unappreciated.

Execs need to take a page out of the VC playbook and ensure that they’re spending the right amount of time supporting, enabling, and advocating on behalf of all the company’s initiatives — not just the home runs. In order to keep making bets on what could be big businesses, execs need to create a culture that rewards all purveyors of strategic long-shots. Sometimes getting your hands dirty and trying to save a stalled project can inspire the sort of sentiment that leads employees to take more shots at creating value for you.

The best teammates don’t mind the hard questions

A lot of ideas sound great at first. I’d love a software-based assistant that anticipates my needs and schedules meetings accordingly. I’d love a CRM system that coordinates outreach among all my team members. I’d love an application that allows me to take a photo of my food and tells me how many calories I’m ingesting. But even the best sounding ideas often have little substance beneath them.

It’s far easier to figure that out when you’re surrounded by people who ask the tough questions. The best performing VC teams ask hard-hitting, but respectful, questions of one another. They help each other uncover the most challenging issues with any investment, so they can analyze them accurately and make a decision. Partners ask whether individual bias or affinity for a given founder is driving a decision. They dig deep into the assumptions of a potential investment, asking bluntly whether things like the unique behavior of Manhattan residents translate to other cities. And with every hard hitting question, the team finds itself in a better position to make the right decision faster.

Many corporations have cultures where asking pointed questions is viewed negatively. Politics dominates the psyches of employees, who have to carefully calculate whether to call out a problem, discuss it in private, or ignore it entirely. Your company can’t take advantage of every new opportunity, so to find the ones worth your time, you have to encourage senior management to ask questions and disprove assumptions. The folks who are willing to ask and answer the tough questions are the ones who keep you sharp, keep you moving forward, and keep you honest.

The future is far out, until it isn’t

Ernest Hemingway once wrote that there are two ways you go bankrupt: “Gradually. Then suddenly.” Binary events are like this. You’re profitable, then you’re not. You’re growing, then you’re not. You’re employed, then you’re not.

Every VC understands this from the other side of the equation. They look at tiny businesses and see a future world where they are significant. In the eyes of most onlookers the shift from irrelevant to meaningful happens in the blink of an eye. A fast-growing company might have just $5 million in revenue – a drop in the bucket for a global corporation. But two years later, it could have $50 to $100 million, and suddenly everyone is paying attention. That growth can even happen as companies scale. Just look to Tesla as an example. In 2012, Tesla had just over $400 million in revenue. In 2014, it was catapulted into the limelight and had surpassed $3 billion.

The future comes quicker than we think. When executives forecast on 3-5 year time horizons, they focus on the things that they can seemingly control. Unfortunately, focusing too heavily on near-term issues often leaves you unprepared for the future. By the time you start planning for a change on a three-year cycle, other companies will have been addressing those issues for years. Instead, it’s a much better strategy to acknowledge the future state of the world and focus your planning cycles on the inevitable changes you believe are going to impact your market. Mark Johnson, of Innosight, calls this planning based on your “Future State.” It a necessary piece of venture investing. But it’s becoming ever more critical for executives trying to adapt to an increasingly digital world.

During my time as an operator within SAP, I wish I’d truly appreciated these three things. Each amplifies your ability to execute, transform, and lead in an era defined by change and opportunity. To build teams that are willing to take home-run swings again and again, quickly identify what’s working and what’s not, and ensure long term opportunities aren’t missed, managers would do well to learn these lessons from VCs.

This blog first appeared on Harvard Business Review on 06/25/2015.

View our complete listing of Strategic HR or Leadership Development blogs.