Lars Dalgaard is CEO and cofounder of SuccessFactors, one of the world’s fastest-growing software companies—and the fastest with revenues over $30 million. Dalgaard recently listed some milestones that his California-based company passed in its first seven years:

• the use of its software by more than two million employees at over 1,200 companies around the world
• the use of its software by employees speaking 18 languages in 156 countries
• growth three times that of the company’s nearest competitor
• enthusiastic recommendations of the product by nearly all customers
• dramatically low employee turnover
• employing no jerks

That’s right—no jerks—although the word SuccessFactors really uses (except on its Web site) is a mild obscenity that starts with the letter A and sort of rhymes with “castle.” All the employees SuccessFactors hires agree in writing to 14 “rules of engagement.” Rule 14 starts out, “I will be a good person to work with—not territorial, not be a jerk.” One of Dalgaard’s founding principles is that “our organization will consist only of people who absolutely love what we do, with a white-hot passion. We will have utmost respect for the individual in a collaborative, egalitarian, and meritocratic environment—no blind copying, no politics, no parochialism, no silos,...