Imagine that, in the next week, I show up randomly to take a photo of you working. You don’t know when it’s gonna happen. But you can be sure that I will base your salary and next promotion on the insights from that photo.

Is it an insane idea?

I’m sure you said YES, but you even don’t expect what I’m gonna tell you now.

I’m here to tell you that although at first glance the idea of one random photo sounds outrageous a very similar thing happens within organizations.

Every CEO care about efficiency. There is a constant and worried eye toward the productivity of employees. But the way many organizations measure the productivity of employees often has more in common with how they would measure the productivity of a product than a person.

Many times the appearance of busyness is much more important for managers than the actual work.

People caught up on the high peak of their performance another time can be found lazy. Will you punish them for that? No one can act on high peak all the time, right? Moreover, some of high performing employees can strategically lower their performance because they feel used and they don’t want to show that they can run all the time.

So how to control to not mess up. Talk to your people often, tell what you expect and listen to their expectations. It’s not that easy as it sounds. And if you want to tell me that this is exactly what you doing now – no, you don’t. I don’t know a single person who is truly doing it.