I managed a small team in a company that then used stack ranking. I hated the process and as others here mentioned pointed out many times applying a bell curve

I managed a small team in a company that then used stack ranking. I hated the process and as others here mentioned pointed out many times applying a bell curve to a small population is bad math. While we still used the process I saw everything from voting blocs, managers intentionally submitting all of their employees ranked up one notch from where they should be, managers collecting "dirt" on employees managed by others so they could shoot down those employees during the ranking process and more. The process itself was flawed because people had a tendency to stay in the rank where they were submitted because frankly managers didn't have the time, energy or interest in really talking through every employee. It was just easier to rubber-stamp the whole process and move on. Also it was nearly impossible to get rid of the process because of course people who had succeeded in it didn't want change. I couldn't in good conscience continue like that, so I took over rankings for my location. It went from one day to a week-long process and I made people vote anonymously and incorporated a ranked choice system and then aggregated the results. It was a far more time consuming process but IMHO fairer. I still hate forced ranking despite succeeding in it. It becomes part of your job - managing to the metric. Vestiges of it remain because people still don't know how to distribute compensation without ranking people, particularly for employees that have the same review rating.