James “Murph” Murphy is a former F-15 fighter pilot who left the Air Force after 12 years to enter the business world. In his book, “Flawless Execution,” he talks about the rigors of being a fighter pilot, about the exhaustive work pilots do as they prepare to fly a “mission,” and about the concentration and determination required to complete the mission successfully. He points out that as a pilot, when you’re flying at 1200 miles per hour, a mistake can cost you your life and maybe the lives of your teammates. So as they prepare to fly a mission, fighter pilots engage in a process designed to minimize mistakes, complete the mission, and return home safely. In his book, he outlines how that same process he learned as a pilot to fly a mission flawlessly can be applied to business. To learn something about this process and how it might be applied to your business, please read below.
It’s all in the execution.
First, let’s define a few terms. When Murphy talks about a “mission,” he’s talking about flying with his team from Point A to Point B, using missiles or bombs to blow something up, then getting back to Point A with planes and pilots in tact. Generally speaking, as businesspeople, we’re not supposed to blow stuff up . . . we’re expected to use a little more finesse than dropping 2000 pound bombs on our competitors. So when we’re talking about a mission in Murphy’s business context, we’re talking about any activity that has a beginning, an end, and an expected outcome or result. Therefore, a “mission” might be installing new accounting software in the Accounting Department, launching a new product or service by the Marketing Department, or a salesman going on a trip to call on a prospective new customer.
Second, in Murphy’s scheme of things, “flawless” is an elusive goal that is rarely, if ever, achieved. When a professional athlete steps onto a playing field, he or she expects to win. Obviously, that doesn’t always happen, but winning is the expectation. So “flawless” is a mindset and an aspiration, and a commitment to continuous improvement, not perfection. Let’s face it, as human beings, we don’t do perfection very well. But we can aim for it, and in some cases, come pretty darn close to it.
Murphy’s process begins with meticulous preparation . . . considering every detail that will be required for our mission to be successful. What resources will we need? How will we get them? What might our competitors do to derail us? Who will be responsible for doing what? On and on until we have a complete game plan for our mission. Critically important to our preparation is contingency planning. Since we know nothing goes exactly to plan, let’s figure out in advance what we’ll do if this, that, or the other thing goes wrong.
Once our preparation is complete, we need to communicate our plans to everyone who has even the tiniest role in them. Our people need to see the “big picture,” not just their narrow role in it. Sure, they need to thoroughly understand their responsibilities in this mission, but they also need to know what everybody else is doing and how all the various activities intersect and are dependent upon one another.
So we’ve prepared carefully, we’ve communicated our plans to everyone involved, everyone understands what they need to do, so now we go. We execute. During our preparation, we would have set up key metrics to track our mission’s progress and to let us know when contingency plans or other corrective measures may be needed.
The next step is key. Some people call it a postmortem, Murphy calls it a “debrief.” Either way, the idea is to gather everyone involved in the mission to discuss what went right, what went wrong, what worked, what didn’t, and what we can change so that the next time we undertake this or a similar mission, we’ll execute even better. Lessons learned from this mission will be integrated in to our preparation for the next mission.
Final step, we celebrate a win. We might have won ugly, we may not have achieved 100% of what we hoped for, but still, enough to declare a victory so we can move on.
So that’s it. Prepare meticulously, communicate widely and thoroughly, execute as flawlessly as possible, critique the mission to improve future missions, celebrate the win, move on to the next mission. Repeat.
