There are many more issues with deliberately misleading employees: - Some workers will see through the lies and adjust while others won't. The general version

There are many more issues with deliberately misleading employees: - Some workers will see through the lies and adjust while others won't. The general version of this problem is that there are many lies but only one truth, and lies don't have any self-correcting mechanism built in, resulting in more variance, and in extreme cases, chaos. - If you mislead people into always-on crisis mode, they will get desensitized and won't trust you, which is especially important when there is a real crisis. The general version of this is crying wolf. The fact that a cultural phenomenon is irrational and self destructive is perfectly compatible with success, because of noise. Cultural norms do not converge towards optimum quickly, there are too many other factors at play, and social evolution is veeeeery slow. Evolution is probably the most misapplied theory ever proposed.