Here’s an interesting quote, from an email:

Did you know that within the next five years it is expected that 63 million employed Americans will telecommute either regularly or occasionally?

I got this in a press release from AVG Technologies, the anti-virus software, about the dangers of people working offsite. It came with a link to AVG Technologies’ Community Powered Threat Report.

To AVG, with good reason, this is about threats and hackers. To me, however, this is a reminder that the thing we’ll be watching, worrying about, and working on, in the foreseeable future, is accountability.

And it’s not just the boss keeping track of us. It’s just as much us, workers, having away to stand proud with measurement of what we’re really accomplishing. It goes both ways.

We’re all going to need a new way to track progress, measure performance, motivate team members, and work together. My biased view is that accountability comes through business planning, which, when done right, sets goals and measurements for the team and individual team members.

Part of good planning is getting each member of the team to agree on the objective, measurable numbers to track for his or her area. That might be dollars, delivieries, units, trips, presentations, leads, page views, unique visitors, subscribers, Klout score, posts, comments, phone calls, or whatever; but it’s a number that’s objective and trackable. And then the planning process means tracking those numbers, sharing results, and talking about it. That becomes management by collaboration, and it generates accountability via teamwork and regular process. That’s the best way to do it, in my opinion.