It's backward because it's advice given to employees, when it needs to be given to be given to management.
Employees will and should do self-interest. It's the EXECUTIVES's duty/problem to ensure that they make workers' self-interests clearly aligned with Customers/ Company/Team/Self.
It's an interesting exercise to consider how to make it in an employee's self-interest to perform actions that prioritize the company's interest over the team. Of course managers have a perverse incentive here to prioritize a narrative that the team is always excelling in all ways, and thus may have an incentive to penalize/fire employees who put the company ahead of the team (e.g. by admitting the team's project is useless/redundant/poorly-defined).
I'm shocked by how few executive understand that their managers are a great threat to their company, because they have a huge vested interest in promoting dishonest narratives about the needs/successes of the company. The larger the management chain, the more likely a BS-er is in that chain.