Without disagreement, you might not fully understand the problem. Without unified commitment, you’ll almost certainly fail to execute. True greatness requires a series of good decisions, supremely well executed, that accumulate one upon another over a long period of time.

I’d like to close this chapter with an essential caveat about persistence from Built to Last. Of all the paragraphs I’ve authored or co-authored in thirty years, this is one of the most essential for entrepreneurs and leaders of early-stage ventures, reproduced here as a reminder to keep firmly in mind as you build your company:

The builders of visionary companies were highly persistent, living to the motto: Never, never, never give up. But what to persist with? The company. Be prepared to kill, revise, or evolve an idea . . . but never give up on the company. If you equate the success of your company with the success of a specific idea—as many businesspeople do—then you’re more likely to give up on the company if that idea fails; and if that idea happens to succeed, you’re more likely to have an emotional love affair with that idea and stick with it too long, when the company should be moving vigorously on to other things. But if you see the ultimate creation as the company, not the execution of a specific idea . . . then you can persist beyond any specific idea—good or bad— and move toward becoming an enduring great institution.

In Stage 3, you translate disciplined thought into disciplined action, building momentum to achieve a breakthrough and extend performance. There are three key principles in Stage 3:

• Build momentum by turning the Flywheel.

• Achieve breakthrough with 20 Mile March discipline.

• Renew and extend via fire bullets, then cannonballs.

But there’s also a hopeful story to tell. Companies can sustain greatness for decades, even if only a few do so. What this means is that you never get to the “end” of The Map. You’re never done with the journey. You’re never done with the need for disciplined people who engage in disciplined thought and take disciplined action. You’re never done renewing the company so that it might be built to last. You’re never done preparing for bad luck and capitalizing on good luck, getting a higher return on luck than others. Greatness is an inherently dynamic process, not an end point.

The Map doesn’t guarantee a great outcome. But those who adhere to its principles—and who do so with joyful intensity—have much better odds of building a great company that can endure than those who don’t. Along the way, perhaps as more of a by-product than a goal, they just might find the daily happiness that comes from doing meaningful work with people they truly like and deeply respect. And it’s hard to have a better life than that.

But however you do it, the key is to ensure that people have no ambiguity about their deadlines, that they are committed to meeting them, and that you have a culture where missing deadlines is simply not an option. And that, in turn, means you need people who have the discipline to refuse to commit to deadlines that they cannot hit. If deadline slippage becomes routine, then deadlines do more harm than good.