Steve Jobs on corporate culture:

“If you want to hire great people and have them stay working for you, you have to let them make a lot of decisions, and you have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy. The best ideas have to win, otherwise good people don’t stay.”

How many institutions, organizations, and causes lose good people due to frustration about bad ideas and pet projects being favored ahead of good ideas?

The kind of people who are driven to excel in their fields, those who sacrifice deeply in order to contribute significantly to their world through their work are rarely motivated by money. No price is worthy of their life’s calling. To make an impact, to succeed in a meaningful way is their pursuit and their reward.

Such passionate innovators have little patience for an environment that values playing it safe over playing to win. They feel little loyalty toward those who are not loyal to the task at hand.

Why?

Because winners don’t like playing for losers.