I agree with everything except for one point (which was a painful process for me to learn): some people want and need to be told what to do and there's nothing

I agree with everything except for one point (which was a painful process for me to learn): some people want and need to be told what to do and there's nothing wrong with that assuming that, once told what to do, the people can execute. I just assumed that everyone on my team was like me -- didn't want to be told what to do at a micro-level. I had a couple of team members who were really good engineers and they were failing miserably. Once I realized that they needed to be give explicit instructions on what they should be doing, they coded like a house on fire. One attribute of great CEOs (IMHO) is the ability to get a careful read of everyone on your team and understand exactly how much or little to manage them. In an ideal world, one could hire an entire company of people who do not need to be micro-managed, but real life doesn't always allow for that luxury.