When you turn over rocks and look at all the squiggly things underneath, you can either put the rock down, or you can say, 'My job is to turn over ro… - Jim Collins

What makes for a key seat? Any seat meeting any one of the following three conditions qualifies as key: The person in that seat has the power to make significant people decisions. Failure in the seat could expose the entire enterprise to significant risk or potential catastrophe. Success in the seat would have a significantly outsized impact on the company’s success.

What matters most is how well you understand your flywheel and how well you execute on each component over a long series of iterations.

Having a great idea or being a charismatic visionary leader is “time telling”; building a company that can prosper far beyond the presence of any single leader and through multiple product life cycles is “clock building.