Because expecting managers to do their damn jobs would just be too hard?
It wasn't the #1 reason but "dead wood" probably ranked 2 or 3 for why I left my last job and it was 100% the manager's fault. Had that company decided to "turn up the heat" I would have left even faster and I can promise you the "dead wood" would have stayed till the bitter end.
I doubt the claim that no one has come up with a better strategy and I question the leadership abilities of anyone who thinks it's a good strategy.
I am not sure demonizing managers here is the fair thing (popular perhaps). Managers (I've had incompatible managers and have been one myself) don't operate in a vacuum. Managers jobs are very much guided/dictated by hr policies (atleast at big cos) down to the point of precise wording to avoid/use, strict "formulas" for comp and refreshers, tight flowcharts to set on tracking execution, planning processes etc. Not to mention just general organisational chaos with project cancellations and fielding requests from N different (indirect) bosses. There is a lot more risk than to justify the reward of going against the tide. Heck even tooling and templates for conducting 1/1s are getting more and more standardized and doing slightly different gets you in trouble.
There are definitely incompetent managers just like there are incompetent engineers or lawyers or directors or leaders etc. A broad/general stroke - I am not sure is justified.
Managers have personal priorities and interests that may not align with the interests of the company. e.g. company doesn't want dead weight, but the manager does for any number of reasons. Maybe the manager really likes those people on a personal level, or maybe the dead weight have dirt on the manager, or maybe the dead weight are kept around as sacrificial material should the manager ever be forced to make cuts, or maybe the incentive structure in the company rewards managers for having more reports, etc.
So yes, expecting managers to put company interests before their own may actually be too hard.
Or, in my specific situation, my manager (and the manger above them) were terrible at handling intrapersonal conflicts. They would just ignore it until it went away and hating confronting anyone about anything. At least one of them also "liked" the "dead wood" in question or had at least worked with them for a long time. I understand all of that. But at the end of the day, it was bad managers. Even if you somehow manage to clear the "dead wood" (good luck, they hold on longer that performing members in my experience) you are still stuck with bad managers and you'll be right back in the same place in little time.
From the CEO's point of view, line managers and employees are basically an undifferentiated mass of potential dead wood. Getting managers to "do their jobs" is exactly the intention of a policy like this.
It wasn't the #1 reason but "dead wood" probably ranked 2 or 3 for why I left my last job and it was 100% the manager's fault. Had that company decided to "turn up the heat" I would have left even faster and I can promise you the "dead wood" would have stayed till the bitter end.
I doubt the claim that no one has come up with a better strategy and I question the leadership abilities of anyone who thinks it's a good strategy.