And as you say, managerial involvement is the problem. Managers and execs mostly get paid to appear to be in control, so having the appearance of control is vital to them, even if that makes the results wildly worse.
A better saying would be, you should only use your target as a measure.
If your target is working software, measure how well the software works.
In your imaginary case, what would your specific numerical measure be?
I've legit sat through 1.5 hour long calls with 6 other devs so we could watch our manager type notes into a presentation that he'll give to a collection of other managers who will only be half-listening until it's their turn to be visible, and all because some other, more powerful manager, decided this was important for the org to do.
It was layers of bureaucracy so deep I wasn't sure where I was anymore.