Breakthrough ideas have traditionally been difficult to manage for two reasons: 1) innovative ideas fail far more than they succeed, and 2) innovativ… - Ben Horowitz

Even if you know what you are doing, things go wrong. Things go wrong because building a multifaceted human organization to compete and win in a dynamic, highly competitive market turns out to be really hard.

Phil Jackson, the coach who has won the most NBA championships, was once asked about his famously flaky superstar Dennis Rodman, “Since Dennis Rodman is allowed to miss practice, does this mean other star players like Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen can miss practice, too?” Jackson replied, “Of course not. There is only room for one Dennis Rodman on this team. In fact, you really can only have a very few Dennis Rodmans in society as a whole; otherwise, we would degenerate into anarchy.

Truly great leaders create an environment where the employees feel that the CEO cares more about the employees than she cares about herself. In this kind of environment, an amazing thing happens: A huge number of employees believe it’s their company and behave accordingly. As the company grows large, these employees become quality control for the entire organization. They set the work standard that all future employees must live up to. As in, “Hey, you need to do a better job on that data sheet — you are screwing up my company.