[raganwald]

They are mistaking the indicator for the thing indicated.

This is one of the most important (and neglected) insights in business. People often optimize for the indicator at the expense of the thing it is supposed to indicate.

Example: One metric is of customer dissatisfaction is unsubscribes. If you make your unsubscribe process difficult, unsubscribes go down. In reality, dissatisfaction might be climbing through the roof, and a difficult unsubscribe process may actually make it worse, not better.

That being said, there is a difference between: "If you don't care, go work somewhere else so that the only employees left here are the ones that care," and, "Do it even if you don't care or else I'll fire you."

The former might be about getting rid of unmotivated dead wood. Some people are good no matter what, leave them alone. Some are terrible for your company no matter what, fire them or entice them to quit. The remainder are the ones to manage.

But then again... You don't want to fire or push out the people who might be able to tell you that the dogs hate the dogfood because it tastes like shit. Which was the punchline of the joke that the entire "eat your own dog food" expression is based on.