I think a lot of CEOs don’t recognize when the war is over. What worked for a while may not work forever.
Stack ranking is a classical example. Firing the bottom 10% once or twice may actually be a good thing. But then you have to realize that this was a one off and you should stop or things get weird. Same with crunch time projects. My company recently has had a few high urgency projects with a lot of overtime and stress. Instead of calming down things it seems management has got addicted to permanent panic and not surprisingly people are burning out.
Stack ranking is a classical example. Firing the bottom 10% once or twice may actually be a good thing. But then you have to realize that this was a one off and you should stop or things get weird. Same with crunch time projects. My company recently has had a few high urgency projects with a lot of overtime and stress. Instead of calming down things it seems management has got addicted to permanent panic and not surprisingly people are burning out.