And you are trying to allude to inflation of role and expectations, I suspect? And that is a thing. But since you don't demote people that fall behind on the inflation, you are back to my first paragraph. That or you are pushing out the folks to make room, but you will regret pushing out some folks from the highest levels.

It's common that there are people who would be more qualified to a position than the person currently holding the position, as long as we view merits in isolation. But the real ability the organization cares about is the ability to advance the goals of the organization when working within the organization. If replacing a person with a "more qualified" one demoralizes other employees enough that the organization's ability to reach its goals is compromised, the replacement is actually less qualified than the original person.