Episode Overview

Podcast: No Bullsh!t Leadership
Host: Martin G Moore
Episode: Moment 171 – “Busywork Will Kill Your Performance”
Date: May 3, 2026

This episode of Moments with Marty delivers a concise and powerful reflection on the dangers of busywork in leadership and organizations. Martin G Moore unpacks why staying ‘busy’ is a tempting trap, how it erodes genuine performance, and why exceptional leaders must actively confront and eliminate non-value-added tasks. The message is a direct challenge to evaluate your team’s output with honesty, prioritize high-value activities, and make the difficult choices that lead to real, measurable results.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Trap of Perpetual Busyness

• Historical Perspective:
  Martin opens with Blaise Pascal’s observation: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” (00:27)

  • Insight: Despite four centuries passing, humans still avoid self-examination by keeping busy.

• The Modern Leader’s Dilemma:

  • Leaders are “too busy to stop and think,” using constant activity as a “convenient smokescreen to help you avoid self examination.” (00:40)
  • When opportunities to slow down arise, the tendency is to “just fill your plate with more.” (00:50)

2. The Scarcity of Resources and the Need for Choice

• Universal Truth:

  • “The only thing I know for sure about every organization on the planet is…you will never have enough time, money or people to do all of the things you'd ideally like to do. So you have to make choices.” (01:00)

• Avoidance of Hard Decisions:

  • “Somehow it feels easier to be constantly redlining than it is to make those choices, because those choices can be hard.” (01:13)

3. Facing the Real Value of Your Team’s Work

• Self-Examination Prompts:

  • Urges leaders to stop and ask:
    • “What is my team really producing?”
    • “Are they working on the highest value things?”
    • “Can I trace every investment of resources to a tangible outcome?” (01:25)

• Risk and Opportunity:

  • Acknowledges the fear: “What if you found out that a large percentage of the work they do creates no value whatsoever?” (01:45)
  • The real hurdle is, “You might feel compelled to stop that work…and face some cold, hard facts, like the fact that some of your people may not be capable of producing the value they should.” (01:55)
  • Many look away: “It’s way easier not to ask the question in the first place. Just keep going in blissful ignorance and hope that no one else notices.” (02:10)

4. The Rewards of Courage and Focusing on Value

• Promise of Transformation:

  • “What I can promise you is that if you’re strong enough to face those facts, you’ll never look back. It’ll open the door to levels of performance that were previously unimaginable.” (02:20)

• End to ‘Busy’ Culture:

  • “If you could stop rewarding people for just being busy and instead focused only on the value being produced, your team would be completely different—night and day different.” (02:32)

• High-Impact Outcomes:

  • Envisions a team where “everything your team did produce[d] demonstrably better outcomes—outcomes that clearly connected to the organization’s biggest value drivers.” (02:38)

5. Practical Guidance for Leaders

• The Key to Improved Performance:

  • “Slowing down, clearing the busy work off the team’s agenda, and putting a laser-like focus on producing high-value deliverables is the key to improved performance.” (02:45)

• Warning About Complacency:

  • “As long as you give your team a free pass for being busy, performance is going to elude you.” (02:54)
  • Most leaders “don’t even know where to start with this problem, so if you can work out how to do it, I promise you you will stand out.” (03:00)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the avoidance of self-examination:

  “It provides a convenient smokescreen to help you avoid self examination. You’re too busy to stop and think, so you keep going.”
  — Martin G Moore, 00:40

• On making difficult but necessary choices:

  “Somehow it feels easier to be constantly redlining than it is to make those choices, because those choices can be hard.”
  — Martin G Moore, 01:13

• On rewarding meaningful work rather than activity:

  “If you could stop rewarding people for just being busy and instead focused only on the value being produced, your team would be completely different—night and day different.”
  — Martin G Moore, 02:32

• On the enemy of true productivity:

  “Busy is the enemy of productive. As long as you give your team a free pass for being busy, performance is going to elude you.”
  — Martin G Moore, 02:54

Key Segment Timestamps

• 00:27 — Pascal quote and the relevance for today’s leaders
• 00:40–01:13 — The lure of busy work and avoidance of self-examination
• 01:25–01:55 — The daunting reality of evaluating real value in your team’s output
• 02:20–02:45 — The personal and organizational transformation that follows tough choices
• 02:54–03:00 — Warning about complacency and challenge to rise above it

Final Takeaway

Martin G Moore offers a clear, practical, and challenging message: high-performance leadership requires the courage to ruthlessly eliminate busywork and focus relentlessly on high-value outcomes. Leaders who avoid the hard questions will keep their teams spinning their wheels; those who face them will unlock levels of performance that set them apart.

For actionable steps on this subject, Martin recommends episode 366, “Replacing Busy Work with Real Results.”