Teams feel busy not because they're productive, but because they keep solving the same problems over and over. When the same questions, customer issues, and decisions repeat endlessly, they become normalized. The real question isn't why you're busy, but what recurring work you've stopped noticing.
We're so busy, but what is everyone so busy doing? Is someone answering the same question they've already answered 3 times this week? Is the same customer issue finding its way back to the same person? Is a manager walking into the same office looking for the same decision to be made again? Because that's not busyness, that's something repeating. And when it happens enough, everyone gets used to working around it. It becomes part of the day. No one even questions it anymore. Until people are exhausted and the business feels like it's stuck in the same place. So maybe the better question isn't, why are we so busy? Maybe it's, what keeps happening around here that we've started treating this as normal?
