If the company depends entirely on you - your creativity, ingenuity, inspiration, salesmanship or charisma - nobody will want to buy it. The risk and the dependency are too great.

A great deal of creativity is about pattern recognition, and what you need to discern patterns is tons of data. Your mind collects that data by taking note of random details and anomalies easily seen every day: quirks and changes that, eventually, add up to insights.

Making a company fit to sell may be the only way to ensure you never need a buyer.

Words are how people think. When you misuse words, you diminish your ability to think clearly and truthfully.

When you use words loosely, without care and consideration, you erode trust in yourself and in what you're saying. When you squander words, you diminish your power.

A great advantage of a large corporation is supposed to be the large pool of talent in which its leaders can find and groom high achievers and successors.