Busy is not a productivity trend
Workplace apps make it easy to count activity. Chat threads climb, calendars fill, document edits stack up—and someone declares productivity is “up.” Activity is not the same as progress toward the work the organisation hired people to finish.
Before celebrating a lift, write down the outcome signal: closed tickets, shipped releases, completed client briefs, or another result your teams already recognise. Then ask whether the busy chart moved with that outcome or against it.
In Productivity Trend Audit work we spend the first day agreeing those outcome anchors. Without them, every later chart argues about motion instead of movement.