This doesn't really touch on the core of the issue, which is business expectations that don't match up with reality.
Business leaders like to project success and promise growth that there is no evidence they will or can achieve, and then put it on workers to deliver that, and when there's no way to achieve the outcome other than to cheat the numbers, the workers will (and will have to).
At some point businesses stopped treating outperforming the previous year's quarter as over-delivering, and made it an expectation, regardless of what is actually doable.
The article actually addresses this directly through Wheeler's distinction between "Voice of the Customer" (arbitrary targets/expectations) and "Voice of the Process" (what's actually achievable). The key insight is that focusing solely on hitting targets without understanding the underlying process capabilities leads to gaming metrics. Amazon's WBR process shows how to do this right - they focus primarily on controllable input metrics rather than output targets, and are willing to revise both metrics and targets based on what the process data reveals is actually possible. The problem isn't having targets - it's failing to reconcile those targets with process reality.
I think the problem is dimensionality. Business leaders naturally work in low dimensional space - essentially 1D increase NPV. However, understanding how this translates to high dimensional concrete action is what separates bad business leaders from good ones.
Business leaders like to project success and promise growth that there is no evidence they will or can achieve, and then put it on workers to deliver that, and when there's no way to achieve the outcome other than to cheat the numbers, the workers will (and will have to).
At some point businesses stopped treating outperforming the previous year's quarter as over-delivering, and made it an expectation, regardless of what is actually doable.