The Time = Efficiency Lie
Last weekend, I caught up with a good friend I hadn’t seen in a while.
Over plates of chimichangas, chips, salsa, and iced tea, we talked about work—specifically, how his organization still measures productivity.
What surprised me wasn’t the workload.
It was the obsession with time tracking.
Not outcomes.
Not quality.
Not impact.
Minutes.
Detailed, line-by-line accounting of every hour between 8 and 5. Digital punch cards. Activity logs. Proof of presence.
It was clear immediately: this wasn’t leadership—it was surveillance.
When Time Becomes the Proxy for Trust
I haven’t worked for someone else since my mid-20s, so I’m extremely aware of how valuable time is. But not in the way most organizations treat it.
Too many businesses confuse time spent with value created.
They assume:
More hours = more commitment
Visibility = productivity
Control = efficiency
None of that is true.
If someone delivers exceptional work in three focused hours—work that takes most people eight—why would you punish them by demanding five more hours of “activity”?
That’s not efficiency.
That’s insecurity disguised as management.
The Hidden Cost of Time Policing
When organizations obsess over time, a few things always happen:
People optimize for looking busy, not doing meaningful work
Creativity shrinks
Trust erodes
Motivation turns transactional
Keystroke monitoring. Webcam checks. Micromanaged schedules.
These tools don’t create accountability.
They create paranoia.
And once trust is broken, no tracking system in the world will fix performance.
What Real Efficiency Actually Looks Like
Efficiency isn’t about how long someone sits at a desk.
It’s about:
Clarity of expectations
Quality of output
Ownership of results
Great leaders don’t measure effort—they measure outcomes.
They invest in:
Better tools
Clear priorities
Strong culture
Self-accountability
They want their teams to win faster, not suffer longer.
The Leadership Tradeoff Most People Miss
Here’s the part that makes some leaders uncomfortable:
If you lead well, you don’t need to track time obsessively.
Self-accountability reveals itself quickly.
Poor performers expose themselves without surveillance.
Strong performers thrive when trusted.
Time tracking doesn’t protect you from bad hires.
It just punishes good ones.
What This Really Comes Down To
The time = efficiency construct exists because it’s easy.
Outcomes are harder to define.
Culture takes effort to build.
Trust requires courage.
So organizations fall back on the one thing they can control—hours.
But hours don’t build great companies.
People do.
The Question Leaders Should Be Asking
Instead of:
“Are my people working enough?”
The better question is:
“Are we producing work that actually matters—and do people own it?”
Because when results are clear and accountability is real, time becomes irrelevant.
And the moment leaders stop managing minutes and start leading people, efficiency takes care of itself.
Not through control—but through trust.