In general there's a sort of arms race between Technical Direction Setters (TDS) and Arbitrarily Omniscient expert Consultants (AOC)

But this is _not_ the race that both of you (& I) seem to be concerned about

The tech exhaust is a KPI of, for, and by, like PP says, "these people": middle managers whose job is to shepherd AOC-- whom, btw, could well be made of silicon.

These middle managers most likely do not "inspire people", even if they have the capability or potential to. If they did they wouldnt _need_ these KPIs.

Are they TDS? They could be, but it's _not_ their job. The responsible ones, though, realise that they need to hit those KPIs in order to be good TDS (absent of native ability to not overly indulge in "inspiring people", which is rare in any org, and rarer in large ones)

Does this help? Did I manage to capture some essence of the logic?