Most companies do not lack effort. They lack clarity on what is actually driving their results, and what is constraining them.
The cost is not on the P&L. It is in the owner's week, and it compounds.
The inability to be away for two consecutive weeks is the cleanest available measure of how much of the business runs through you.
Buyers price founder dependency directly. What feels like indispensability to the owner reads as risk to the acquirer.
What looks like a people problem is often a system problem.
Most owner-led companies hire a COO to fix a system problem, and the system defeats the hire.
When capable senior people underperform repeatedly, the pattern is usually the system, not the recruiting.
Many companies have senior people who meet regularly and no leadership team. The difference is whether decisions get made in the room.
Execution is visible, so it becomes the diagnosis. That does not make it the real constraint.
If the strategy cannot be applied by someone else to a situation you did not anticipate, it is not strategy. It is your judgment.