[angersock]

If the CTO doesn't respect the team ("they're mediocre"), that's a problem. CTO needs to accept the materials at hand, and build a framework for growing those employees and protecting them from their own ingenuity--if the "right way" of doing something is so much easier than the alternative, and its practice is explained and documented, then the rest should see to itself.

That conservative policy still leaves room for explaining why a given bad idea is bad, or for exploring that idea for like a workday or two so the employee can figure out why it's bad.

If after all this the CTO is still besieged by idiots, they should leave...either because they have failed their team, or because the team is deadset against succeeding.