[ravenstine]

It's very old school and discounts how many problems can actually be corrected faster and less expensively than by firing ASAP.

The reason "fire quickly" may be appealing advice to some is that solving problems takes effort without a clear guarantee of return, and leaders usually end up trying easy solutions that diffuse blame or create the illusion that something has changed. Then they wonder why productivity is not up or why employee sentiment is middleing.