This is a good lesson. I was straight-forward to get a point across, but it is easy to see how "excellence first" could turn into a poor work environment withou

This is a good lesson. I was straight-forward to get a point across, but it is easy to see how "excellence first" could turn into a poor work environment without moderation. It also seems that an "excellence first" culture seems to provoke fears that people can't learn, or aren't allowed to make mistakes. Tone and delivery are important here - especially from leadership. My take on excellence first is you don't have to compromise environment for it. Create an environment that fosters excellence, where people aren't afraid to make mistakes but are committed to learning from them. Everything doesn't need to be treated like an emergency, but theres a level of bullshit on a technical level that shouldn't be tolerated. Again, each situation needs to be felt out individually and moderation is always key. Personally I don't advocate the internal competition aspect of excellence either. The pitfalls of that are well documented as you have pointed out. I'd promote based on team success, and THEN individual contributions. If you can't work as a team then the whole team loses, only once the team succeeds would you start singling people out to see where the best influences were coming from. TLDR - I think there is a middle ground between not running it like a daycare and running it like a wall street trading firm or gulag.