A cover your ass org strategy for a leader: push for more hustle.

You'll get more work happening… not necessarily useful work, perhaps running in circles or make-work.

Everyone thinks, "well, that leader fixed it, look how hard they're all working!"

But likely they're not doing the useful work but the obviously strenuous work, and so the underlying situation deteriorates more and more, leading to pushes for more work.

This strategy emerges from a fundamental belief in Theory X: that everyone is fundamentally lazy and incompetent.

The people who are making it all worse with their craven "execute and don't think," think they are the heroes and everyone else is soft, or misguided.

The org and everyone else will keep patting them on the back saying, "good hustle!" even as they destroy value in the medium to long term.

If it's default cohering, more work tends to lead to more output.

E.g. There's a very clear, valuable hill to climb and it's obvious which outcomes lead to more progress up the hill.

If it's default decohering, then more work tends to destroy value.