I think what he is trying to say is that the metrics were meant be a check, a measure of knowing, for whether we are going to meet our vision/target.

Just yesterday, at our dev team at a trading firm, we went through our OKR review for the quarter. The metrics were the target yesterday. It was all about clicking those check boxes and not about delivering the bigger picture.

Goodhart's law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

No, they are supposed to measure progress in one dimension towards a target. They are often misused, but it’s not necessary to conflate the improper use case with the original intent.