But what about the vast majority of companies that wake up partway through life and realize that they’re good, but not great? - Jim Collins

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

The flywheel, when properly conceived and executed, creates both continuity and change. On the one hand, you need to stay with a flywheel long enough to get its full compounding effect. On the other hand, to keep the flywheel spinning, you need to continually renew, and improve each and every component.

..the purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline — a problem that largely goes away if you have the right people in the first place.