A CEO was once asked how many people worked in his company and he responded by saying "about half of them."

Many companies today employ a variety of efforts at "engaging" their employees and much like attempts at Lean, Six Sigma, ISO or any other active effort directed at improving performance they are met with varying degrees of success. When it comes to "engagement activities" I'm going to suggest to you that too often the focus is on the wrong things. I'll also suggest some of the right things.

On the argument for engaging your employees: the good folks at Gallup have researched engagement thoroughly, as you might expect, and their conclusions paint a very clear picture of the benefits. I won't bore you with reams of data but suffice to say "of 199 companies surveyed, those scoring in the top half on employee engagement doubled their odds of high performance in: customer loyalty, profitability, productivity, turnover, safety, absenteeism, shrinkage and quality". (The Relationship Between Engagement at Work and Organizational Outcomes, 2009)

Furthermore, Gallup estimates disengaged worker's cost US business upwards of $300 billion annually. If you think your organization is immune - think again. Typical estimates, from a variety of sources, peg the engaged workforce at only about a third of the total workforce. Worse yet, the actively disengaged represent about a fifth of the typical workforce. Adrienne Fox, in a 2010 HR Magazine article titled Raising Engagement, had this to say "actively disengaged employees aren't just unhappy at work; they're busy acting out on their unhappiness. Every day, these workers undermine what engaged co-workers accomplish.

" So, what creates engaged employees? Progress and its recognition, employee development opportunities, good relationships with co-workers and a boss who pays attention, to mention just a few.

Seems pretty straight-forward doesn't it? Let's pick a few engagement activities to pursue and we'll have our engaged workforce. But, engaged in what exactly? Engagement is only really of true value if employees are actively engaged in purposeful pursuits. If however, you were to choose engagement activities that aligned with and supported your organization's strategic goals then you would be leveraging employee engagement to a meaningful end. For example, if operational flexibility (i.e. in a low volume/ highly specialized manufacturing environment) were to be a key strategic advantage your company needed to pursue then focusing on employee development and self-directed work teams would be "aligned" engagement levers to employ.

The point here is simply this: engagement is not the goal (activity is not progress); it is the cultural lever that drives strategic accomplishment. So right about now you must be thinking this is easy stuff. We pick a few engagement levers that sit nicely beside our strategic goals and we're good to go. You would be roundly applauded for making this link but I'm going to suggest you move from link to leap with this critical equation:

Accountability creates ownership - Ownership drives engagement - Engagement equals performance

Don't focus your efforts on engagement activities. Focus your efforts on how to develop accountability. Didn't see that coming did you? It all starts with accountability! You can't have engagement without ownership and you can't get to ownership unless you have accountability (preferably, at every level of your organization). I don't mean the lazy management kind of accountability either. You know the kind, "Hey Simpson, you're accountable for these results - just saying." I'm talking about the kind of accountability where expectations are clearly defined, commitments are agreed to, obstacles removed, results are measured, feedback is consistent, effective listening is required and performance evaluated. This is typically the missing piece of the puzzle. We don't know how to hold people accountable and quite often we don't have the desire to do so - it's hard work. Unfortunately, most leaps forward involve hard work. Most importantly, a lack of consequence in this process generally leads to complacency. Want to be a great leader? Master the art and skill of how to effectively hold people accountable. The rest is easy. Ok, "easyish".