The problem with ANY “zero tolerance” policy can be easily displayed with the results of many school districts: a kid gets punched in the nose, AND gets suspended from school, even though they never threw a punch - why? Because there is a “zero tolerance” policy against fighting. And since “technically” they were involved in a fight, they must be expelled.
Management and leadership do not work well under “zero tolerance” policies for the same reason as shown above...because the TRUTH is often lost in the details, which are never revealed because “zero tolerance” is a nice, easy, quick solution that doesn’t require any effort to solve the REAL problems.
When “zero tolerance” is the rule, nothing outside of upper management’s expected methods and results are acceptable (because exceptions would make upper management look bad and it would require upper management to actually have to deal with the real problems down at the lower levels). So when things happen, upper management just pulls the trigger and use the “zero tolerance” excuse to avoid dealing with the reality!!
Zero tolerance usually means you have a lazy command structure that either can’t or won’t lead and make reasonable decisions based on the events rather than the policy.