I think the point is sound but the author is selling the fictional executives ("decision makers") short.

Design research will inevitably always lead to a place thats reductive, nostalgic, and average (i.e. https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-margi...). Designers themselves are loaded with biases and often enough want to perform design work that doesn't serve the business (in software we would call this Resume Driven Development - building with shiny new things so you can put it on your resume).

On the flip side, design is constantly victim to Dunning-Kruger or "bike shedding" - people with limited knowledge or competence in a domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence.

If the author was trying to write about the latter, they are failing to first acknowledge the former... for all we know the "decision makers" have decades of competent experience in brand, design, and user experience.