Busy Doesn't Mean Effective: Are You Measuring Work or Results?
There's a hero mentality around being busy at work.
Busy is equated with success. Busy means high-performing. The busy little bee makes the honey.
But if you're busy doing the wrong thing, you achieve nothing.
It’s something I see all the time. Teams working hard, ticking tasks, reporting lots of stuff done but at the end of the year, the outcomes they were meant to deliver didn't quite get achieved.
This isn't a capability problem. It's a design problem—we've built work around tasks, not outcomes.
The output trap
When I walk into organisations, most teams are measuring what they're doing, not what they're achieving.
A sales team measures how many calls they made—but not how many customers signed up or how valuable those deals are.
A customer service team tracks how quickly they get off calls—but not why customers are calling in the first place, or whether the underlying problems are being fixed.
A finance team I worked with had mountains of outstanding payments because their processes were broken. Instead of fixing the system, they just added more effort chasing their tails.
These are all output measures. They tell you people are working. They don't tell you if the work is creating value.
Why outputs feel safer
Teams default to outputs because they're easier to measure. They're tangible. You can track them instantly.
Outputs also feed something human—our brains like ticking tasks. There's a small dopamine hit every time we complete something and move it to "done." It makes us feel productive. It makes managers happy.
But here's what neuroscience tells us: the real reward—the deeper satisfaction—comes from solving problems and creating results, not just completing tasks.
That's a different part of the brain. Strategic thinking, problem-solving, seeing the impact of your work.
The problem is, most organisations aren't designed to activate that part of the brain. They're designed for task completion. And when teams are stuck in task mode, they miss the bigger picture entirely.
The cost of getting this wrong
You can achieve a whole year of outputs and still fail to deliver the outcome.
I've seen projects delivered on time, on budget, in scope—they looked great when they reported green all year—but they failed to deliver customer value. Uptake was slow. Revenue dropped. Leaders thought everything was great until the final numbers came in.
This is the watermelon problem: green on the outside, red on the inside.
And it happens because teams are measuring the wrong things.
What actually matters: outcomes and drivers
Most organisations look at the bottom line—dollars, volume, headlines. These are important measures and they should be tracked. But not just these numbers.
When you start interrogating the drivers behind those numbers, you'll see a very different pattern.
Intel learned this in 1980. Facing Motorola's superior microprocessor, they could have focused on output measures—how many chips produced, how many features built, how many marketing campaigns launched.
Instead, they focused on one outcome: 2,000 "design wins" by Q3 1980—agreements for clients to put Intel's chip in their devices.
That single measure forced them to rethink everything. They realized they were losing at the chip level, so they shifted the conversation to complete systems. They stopped selling to programmers (who preferred Motorola's easier chip) and started selling to CEOs (who cared about long-term value).
Not one product was modified. But by focusing on the right outcome and understanding what drove it, Intel captured 85% of the market by 1986.
The lesson: looking at the end number usually means you add effort in the wrong places.
Take the time to understand the drivers. Work on increasing or fixing those. The end result improves.
This takes courage and time.
Often leaders are in a rush to get through this phase and start delivering. If systems aren't set up to allow these conversations, it takes courage to do things differently.
It often also means you see a drop in the outputs you measure before you start to see the rise in real value outcomes. That sets off panic. Executives want intervention. Teams feel the pressure.
But if you're tracking the right drivers and seeing the right signals there, hold your nerve. More often than not, you'll win.
The key is knowing what tells you you're on the right track—and critically, what tells you you're on the wrong track. Most companies only look for the first. They miss the latter entirely.
The thinking shift: interrogate the data
When creating OKRs or metrics, most teams start with what they're already doing and ask, "How can we measure this?"
That's the easy way. It means they can just report on activity.
But the better question is: Why are we doing this? What will have changed once we've done it? How can we measure that?
This requires critical thinking and strategic thinking—not just task-tracking.
Are we using confirmation bias? What signs might tell us we're on the wrong track? What anti-patterns should we be watching for?
This is where Design for Thinking comes in. We need to deliberately activate different thinking modes:
Strategic thinking to understand what outcome we're actually trying to create
Critical thinking to interrogate data and challenge our assumptions
Systems thinking to see the whole picture, not just one team's tasks
Problem-solving to fix root causes, not just symptoms
When work is designed around outputs, teams stay stuck in execution mode. When it's designed around outcomes, they shift into problem-solving mode. That's where the real value gets created.
Practical shifts: change the conversation
We not only need to change the way we measure, but how we work. Changing this system alos helps us steer the conversation to outcomes. A couple of examples of how to shift your ways of working to be more outcome focused:
Rethink stand-ups:
The typical stand-up has three questions: "What did I do yesterday? What am I doing today? What blockers do I have?"
I don't love this. It tends to turn into an around-the-ground status update—a roll call of meetings attended and reports delivered, creating silos and independent working in the team (I’ve worked in a team where I had no idea what one of my colleagues was doing or how I could add value to their project because the way we worked was siloed and we only discussed task completion).
Instead, try shifting the conversation to:
As a team - what outcome are we trying to achieve?
How is it progressing?
What have we learned?
What's stopping us?
What are we doing differently today to get closer to achieving it?
This switches the focus from "what did I do" (which is often just meetings and most people don’t care about the tasks their colleagues did the day prior) to "how are we working together to achieve the outcome?"
Rethink visual management:
Most teams use "To Do / Doing / Done" boards. This doesn't tell you much, and it's very task-based.
I prefer outcome-based tracking: Stalled / Slow / Nailing It / Complete
(Teams can adapt this language to suit them—the point is it's a shift up from task completion, and it doesn't need to be restricted by whatever Jira or other tools default to.)
This changes the conversation entirely:
Why is this outcome stalled?
Tell me why it's moving slow.
What does "nailing it" look like—what proof do we have?
Is "complete" actually delivering value, or just delivered?
It shifts people's thinking away from status updates and toward real progress.
Rethink how you talk about work:
Instead of: "We've completed the board report and are waiting for approval"
Try: "We need to ensure the board report gives the board what they need to make a decision around X confidently."
See the difference? One is task completion. The other is outcome-focused.
What's at stake right now
We're in planning season. Teams are setting goals, locking in budgets, committing to roadmaps for the year.
If you default to measuring outputs again—what you'll deliver, what tasks you'll complete, how busy you'll be—you'll spend another year working hard and possibly in the wrong direction.
But if you take the time now to define what outcomes actually matter, what drivers you need to shift, and what signals will tell you if you're winning or off track, you'll set your team up for real success and usually find the most efficient ways to deliver these results.
Yes, it takes more effort up front. Yes, it requires brave conversations. Yes, the numbers might dip before they improve.
But the organisations that do this—the ones that shift from output to outcome focus—are the ones you read about doing great things.
The rest stay busy. And exhausted. And wondering why nothing ever really changes.