Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.

The remark encapsulates Jobs’s management ethos: set an uncompromising standard and let that standard shape culture. “Be a yardstick of quality” frames quality not as a slogan but as a measurable benchmark embodied by leaders and teams in daily decisions—design, engineering, and even small details. The second sentence acknowledges the social friction that comes with raising expectations: people acclimated to mediocre norms may resist, feel threatened, or underperform when excellence becomes the baseline. Implicitly, Jobs argues that insisting on high standards is not elitism but a necessary condition for exceptional products and organizations, even if it requires difficult personnel and process choices.