From the very outset, IBM was fashioned after the template of my vision. And each and every day we attempted to model the company after that template… - Michael Gerber

Simply put, your job is to prepare yourself and your business for growth. “To educate yourself sufficiently so that, as your business grows, the business’s foundation and structure can carry the additional weight.

And so that chapter of our hero’s life was closed and a new chapter opened. He moved into his early forties and the end of his second marriage, which also, by this time, had produced a child — his third daughter — another love of his life who could not, as no child can ever do, repair a broken marriage. During the years that followed, he became about the best anyone could be in his now chosen profession. He learned the secrets he thought were hidden. He married a woman far bigger than the others, had two more children, fought battles with his ignorance at times titanic in scope, moved through one obstacle after another, wrote books, spoke throughout the world, built a great business, only to watch it almost fail, persisted in building it up again, lanced, jabbed, wrestled, grappled, laughed, sang, loved, and roared, and through it all, remembered one simple thing that meant more to him than anything else he had ever thought: the curtain, the curtain. Keep the curtain up at all cost.

Tolerance for failure is a very specific part of the excellent company culture — and that lesson comes directly from the top. Champions have to make lots of tries and consequently suffer some failures or the organization won’t learn. Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr. In Search of Excellence