He's trying to explain that the reason you end up with so much technical debt in the first place (after explaining to a layperson what that is) is /because/ of organizational cultural failures.
There is a difference between accruing technical debt on a legacy system is one thing, that is something that almost never can avoid. The other is to panic hire someone when the proverbial shit hits the fan is another story. That is the biggest dysfunction here that someone realized they didn't have the competence to maintain their COBOL code in house and it was their responsibility, but only after it stopped working.