The "rank and yank" or 20-70-10 rule was always Big News™ where I grew up (Capital District of NY): GE's global HQ, R&D, etc was all there - along with lots of other business divisions (turbines, chemicals, etc)
It's really a secularization/inversion of [true] "Puritan thinking" - whereas the Puritans were worried about whether they stood or fell before God in their faith, belief, and practice, the pervasive inversion/misapplication of that line of reasoning into the secular world brings you the general New York & New England (Welch was born in MA; GE is HQ'd in Schenectady NY) mentality of:
- know where you stand
- rank others
- excessive competitiveness
It even show[s|ed] up in loads of college classes where grading would often enough be done on strict bell curves - didn't matter if you earned an "A", if you were the lowest scorer, you could easily be given an "F" (or "D")
It's really a secularization/inversion of [true] "Puritan thinking" - whereas the Puritans were worried about whether they stood or fell before God in their faith, belief, and practice, the pervasive inversion/misapplication of that line of reasoning into the secular world brings you the general New York & New England (Welch was born in MA; GE is HQ'd in Schenectady NY) mentality of:
- know where you stand
- rank others
- excessive competitiveness
It even show[s|ed] up in loads of college classes where grading would often enough be done on strict bell curves - didn't matter if you earned an "A", if you were the lowest scorer, you could easily be given an "F" (or "D")