Someone gamed a system created to be gamed? :pikachu_face:
The converse is that there are also always novel ways to differentiate yourself bottom-up from the mere shortcutters. This is basically how fads form. Something novel appears that is first a great signal for honest quality work, then it gets formalized and imitated and it becomes less predictive, so those who are in the business of creating true value must come up with new ways to demonstrate this.
But still sabotage seems to be frequent - as part of "empire building", as part of gaming the compensation metrics. And "boys will be boys" is not the a response that steers toward the desired behavior.
One also has to consider whether the people who define the KPIs are themselves properly incentivized. How are they evaluated? Could there be some perverse incentive to set gameable KPIs that get hit easier? Maybe the KPI setter is in some sense in on the game and complicit? Very complicated stuff. What if the business gets destroyed in the process? Who does that hurt in reality and how much?