For me it started when Copy Exactly became a religion instead of a business tool. The original concept was fine, but over a few years it became a very expensive requirement to do many stupid things. Engineering judgement, innovation, and often just plain common sense was tossed aside in favor of unthinking adherence to the past - not to improvement and new efficiencies. "Better. Cheaper. Faster" became "Let's make another version of the Model T with the same methods"
The next fall out was that those that blindly followed CE! were rewarded, and those who pushed for improvement were punished. This drove the innovators out, and those that rose into management were NOT trained to improve things. It was quite the opposite. They were trained to stifle it, and all too often they were the people who did not have the in depth process knowledge to see how to improve things. Therefore those who did have this knowledge were a threat and further restricted.
Soon after all this started we went away from the founding engineers as CEO. The new management didn't know any better, and worse did not trust their people to make good decisions. The copiers and the yes men had wormed into power, and it's been a downward spiral for over a decade.