Vitality Curve

Developed by Jack Welch during his tenure as CEO of General Electric in the 1980s, the system ranks employees into a "20-70-10" distribution: the top 20% are rewarded, the middle 70% are developed, and the bottom 10% are let go. Welch championed the practice in his 2001 memoir Jack: Straight from the Gut, though critics dubbed it "rank and yank." GE itself abandoned the system in 2015.