The hardest transition is letting go of control without letting standards collapse. Leadership succession tests whether the culture is real or just personality.
The challenge wasn’t only operational. It was emotional: accepting that you can be essential to building something and still become nonessential to running it. If you can’t make that shift, you will hold the organization back.
I focused on reinforcing processes—clear decision rights, open disagreement, and objective measures of performance—so the system could outlast individual preferences.
A lasting organization needs continuity of principles, not continuity of one person. Protect the machine, then step far enough back to prove it can run without you. That distance is the real test.