Examine Your Team’s Culture of Busyness

Too many teams overvalue busyness, fostering cultures of long work hours, meeting overload, and chronic multitasking. But our obsession with staying busy is misguided—and it can actually come at the expense of productivity. Here’s how to reverse the destructive trend.

• Reward output, not just activity. Recognize and promote employees who work efficiently and produce the highest-quality work—not just those who log the most hours.
• Eliminate low-value work and foster deep work. Conduct an audit on your team to determine how much time per week they spend on shallow tasks versus the time they spend deeply focused on high-value tasks. If the results are skewed toward low-value work, help them reprioritise, delegate, and eliminate the busy work that’s getting in the way of real productivity.
• Nudge people off the clock. If you want your employees to truly thrive, you need to allow time for their minds to wander. Encourage them to sign off earlier, work less on weekends, and (crucially) actually use their allotted vacation time.
• Model the right behavior. The boldest leaders aren’t those who burn the midnight oil; they’re the ones who set the norm by taking a pause. When you show that your own busyness isn’t a prerequisite for success, others are more likely to follow suit.