The data had a lot of other benefits: * When I took over, I was a lot more permissive about letting people work from home. Upper management pushed back and was

The data had a lot of other benefits: * When I took over, I was a lot more permissive about letting people work from home. Upper management pushed back and was worried about productivity. I was able to show that people were getting much more done than before (though admittedly there were other factors, I changed a lot of things.) * After a few months of monitoring, it became clear that one coworker had a predictable but volatile pattern: he'd be very productive for a few weeks, then very unproductive for a few weeks. So I asked him to take on urgent projects during the "up" periods and avoid them during the "down" periods. * One particular person improved so fast it was almost unbelievable. They were already strong to start, but after 12 months they were literally getting about 4 times as much done as they had at the 3 month mark. I would never have believed it if I hadn't been keeping close track...and this helped me fight for promoting them twice in a year.