>> You can probably figure this out on your own, but I’ll walk you through it a little bit. In simplest terms, The Spreadsheet Mentality comes from the age-old executive wisdom of “Only what’s measured is what matters.” As a result of that wisdom, the underlying assumption becomes: “If it can be tracked, it’s important. If it can’t be tracked, it’s less important.”

That part of the article is just wrong. It is not wisdom that is described here, but a mentality. And yes, that mentality does exists, and that is the "Spreadsheet Mentality". There is a German saying, "wer viel mißt, mißt Mist" (rough translation: whom measures a lot measures shit. Well, same mentality, but it only means that:

- you don't know how data can be used - you don't know how metrics work - you don't know what to measure

But that is only my opinion of course.