There's a general rule of thumb that I have about any business: if it "looks busy" and people are running around, yelling into phones, unavailable for questions

There's a general rule of thumb that I have about any business: if it "looks busy" and people are running around, yelling into phones, unavailable for questions, etc., it's probably either understaffed or ineffectively organized. A workplace where things aren't visibly moving is one that is ready to make plans and respond to events smoothly. The productivity rate is somewhat independent of the "busyness rate" since there are a huge number of ways to stop work from needing to be done in the first place. However, this seems to be unsatisfying to modern management styles. Apparently if you aren't running the employees into the ground like an Amazon warehouse, you're "leaving something on the table".