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The Romans called this style of management "decimation." It's unfortunate that it's still fashionable in the 21st century. Also, this sounds straight out of th

• jaclaz 9y ago
  >The Romans called this style of management "decimation." To be fair to the Romans, decimation was a (correct, if the adjective can be used in this case) random process and was limited to the army. The idea was that when a large group (a cohort or 480 people) severely underperformed (it happened in case of rebellion/mutiny or blatant cowardy), AFTER having executed on the spot those that led the rebellion or that were manifestly coward or leading the mutiny, the remaining were divided in groups of ten, then in each group one was selected by drawing lots, and was executed by the remaining 9 comrades. This had two advantages (in the eye of the Roman leaders), the army would not have been exterminated (unlike in more "traditional" repression of rebellions) and the 9/10 remaining would have been motivated to contribute to the group. So, there was not an evaluation of the performance (or non-performance) of the single, the responsability was attributed to the group as a whole, and then out of the 10 people subset the 1 to be killed was chosen by Fate.