Recently, the management team I belong to was introduced to a consultant company, specialising in “The Execution Gap”. Started by a former Australian Air Force pilot, Xgap focuses on what it actually takes to get from establishing strategic business goals, to obtaining real-world results. Not surprisingly, given the company’s heritage, the themes are discipline, responsibility and quality leadership.

Their concept is pretty simple when you think about it. Organisations spend months, and many thousands of dollars discussing and perfecting their strategy. Bookstores (Amazon/iTunes books for those of you who can’t remember bookstores) have business sections filled with strategy advice books (every single one it seems, with a section on Steve jobs). But what actually makes strategy happen? In between the dream and the reality is the hard work, but Xgap believes that companies don’t spend enough time on defining what the hard work is, or who’ll do it.

What the XGap teaches, is that in order to achieve their goals, business leaders must be focused. A leadership team must crystallise its goals, putting them on a realistic horizon, and identify the “high-return activities” required to achieve them. High-return activities are chunks of real action, clear enough to be comprehended and small enough to be achieved within a 90 day period.

High return activities are selected from actions, that the group feels will contribute the most progress towards the stated goals. Each team member takes responsibility for appropriate actions. In our case, the development leaders had such thing as “add 8 major features to the software by June 30”, while the sales guys had things like “sign six new customers by June 30″ (examples only).

Our high-value activities were recorded at the workshop, and an agreement was reached that we all believed the things we had talked about doing, would get us to our objective if they were completed.

Every two weeks since then, the leadership team reassembles to monitor things. We look at the goals themselves, and what progress has been made on the high-return activities. We can do this because importantly, high-return activities are measurable. They are true/false results or numeric targets. Six new customers means six new customers, and we can count them as they are added.

The whole process really rang bells with me. From the time I first found an enthusiasm for project and people management, I have from time to time found little nuggets of gold in its literature and practices, notably, Paul Allen’s “Getting Things Done” methodology and agile software development. I describe these things (including the Xgap) as “documented common sense”; somebody else sees the world the same way I do, and took the time to write it down.

It’s not surprising that when you find a process or point of view that validates your own perceptions, it’s easy to develop a brimming enthusiasm for the cause. For me, the “execution gap” is very much like this. When you boil it down, the Xgap process amounts to the following:

1. Work out what you want to achieve
2. Write down all of the things that you need to do to get there
3. Put that list on the wall, next to a photograph of the objective (figuratively at least)
4. Do what you said you would do!

Simplified project management 101.

Everybody will take something different away from an Xgap workshop. For me, the simplicity and familiarity of the idea was coupled with another strong theme: responsibility.

Organisational leaders must lead through their actions, taking responsibility and being accountable for really making things happen. By hashing out the plan together, and each taking responsibility for the actual achievement of an appropriate piece, the group can become galvanised in the pursuit of their own version of greatness!

Too often the old adage “if it is to be, it’s up to me” is forgotten, as strategists pass on a vision to subordinates, hoping for the best. That is the very essence of the “execution gap”. It’s about going one step further than envisaging the result, spending valuable time on building and owning the process of achieving it.

The Xgap guys have a website here. I don’t work for them, and it’s not my brother’s company, nothing like that! The idea just struck a real chord with me, and if anything in this post has intrigued you, you’d do worse than to give them a ring.