Don't confuse movement with progress

Some people, and businesses generally, love having lots of people rushing around.

It makes them feel productive.

Regardless of what they are doing, all the frenetic activity suggests that much helpful work is being done.

People even say sometimes that they like the buzz.

But it’s a bit like a goalkeeper diving to save a penalty.

He might be just as effective staying exactly where he is.

So movement doesn’t necessarily mean progress.

Don’t confuse the two.

Busy is the office equivalent of revving at a red light. Plenty of noise. Lovely sense of purpose. Same bloody junction.

A sales team doubles calls by feeding everybody worse prospects. Product ships twelve features while the reason customers leave remains untouched. Managers introduce daily status meetings to improve delivery and consume the quiet hour in which delivery once happened.

The comedy survives because activity is easy to witness. Progress often appears later, belongs to several people and refuses to fit inside today’s update. So organisations count motion, attach incentives, then act surprised when staff produce industrial quantities of whatever was easiest to count.

Effort matters. Goalkeepers usually do need to move. Yet the theatrical dive after the ball has gone down the middle deserves no bonus for commitment. Ask what became better for the customer, team or economics. Put that outcome beside the activity and look for the causal bridge rather than drawing one with confidence. Which meeting changed a decision? Which campaign created useful demand? Which feature removed a real obstacle?

Then reward stopping. Deleting an obsolete report, cancelling a pointless ritual or declining a weak lead can create more progress than another heroic sprint. If the dashboard cannot celebrate subtraction, it is measuring obedience to work, not value from it.