Early last year I wrote a piece on the culture change stats that prove two thirds of managers are getting it wrong based on an infographic from Booz & Co (now part of PWC). The folks at Good.co recently put out an infographic on employee engagement with some updated research.

There’s a bunch of good new stuff in it quantifying the effects of engagement, like companies with engaged employees outperform their competition by over 200%, have 28% higher gross margins and 18% higher productivity.

The standout gem for me is that 90% of leaders say an engagement strategy will have an impact on business success but only 25% of them actually have one.

Take that with the earlier findings that only 35% of managers believe their culture is effectively managed and 85% believe it is crucial to success and that’s strike two for the nodding dogs saying the right things but not actually delivering.

It means that if you want to outperform your competition without it costing you anything material, you need to be one of the 2 or 3 out of 10 that are actively delivering on a culture of engagement. The good news is if that proportion holds true and most of the other dogs are just nodding or making noise, it’s not that hard to stand out from the crowd. You don’t have to do much to be exceptional. A little trust, a little agility, a little humility.

Just stop nodding. Stop barking. Keep quiet, start biting on engagement and your competition won’t know what’s hit them.