Flawless Execution Read online

  This, then, is the language of Flawless Execution. New words; new meaning to old words. Put aside your assumptions and let these new meanings become a part of your higher-achieving lifestyle.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Flawless Execution Model

  Flawless Execution is like the perfect round of golf: always attempted, never attainable, although pieces of it may be perfect along the way. But for me, and for the countless fighter pilots out there, it defines our way of life. We are always in pursuit of flawless execution. Pursuit is our way of life.

  Let’s unpack that. A mission in an F-15 is a complex undertaking with countless variables. More often than not, several jets will be assigned to a flight, and each will have a designated role. Variables. We will be supported by tankers and intelligence aircraft and other aircraft with other supporting roles. More variables. The target is, of course, hostile, which presents dozens of even more complex variables, some good, but most of them bad. Add it up and the probability that a mission will unfold flawlessly is probably one in a billion. However well trained we are, however well planned the mission, a mission is always imperfect—the number of variables is astronomically high. Maybe one of our air refueling tankers was at the wrong rendezvous point or one of the planes in my four-ship had to abort, or maybe I had a maintenance problem with my jet. Perhaps the weather changed en route and the target was obscured or the enemy had more defenses than we expected. Or maybe it was something as simple as a radio transponder failing on one of the jets. The point is that something always goes wrong. When you break down a mission and examine it in minutia, there are a lot of mistakes in a so-called flawless mission.

  That’s fine. That’s the way it is. But remember, we’re always in pursuit of Flawless Execution. Things go wrong, but we still take out our target and we get everyone home safely because we expect things to go wrong, and expecting things to go wrong is part of the definition of Flawless Execution. In the air, at every step, we pilots correct, adapt, and come up with solutions because we’re prepared for the unexpected. We know a flawless mission will be riddled with adjustments, changes, and variables.

  In truth, that’s not much different from everyday life. Look at sports. I like the way one great basketball professional said it: “Murph, you give up a lot of points on the way to winning a game.” Of course you do! There is no perfect golf round, no perfect basketball game, no hitter in the major leagues who bats 1.000. Flawless Execution doesn’t mean you do things so well that you smoke the opposition; it doesn’t mean your opponent is going to roll over; it certainly doesn’t mean things won’t go wrong. Flawless Execution is all about expecting things to go wrong—and handling it. In aviation, I had a model, a method, a repeatable process that kept me alive. Instead of becoming a smoking hole in the ground, I had scripted responses to some really ugly scenarios and subtle but dangerous problems. That’s Flawless Execution. I lose a lot of points on the way to winning the game, but I win more than I lose.

  BUSINESS IS COMBAT, COMBAT IS BUSINESS

  Every Afterburner seminar begins with a comparison. I was a fighter pilot for the United States Air Force; you’re in business. What could we possibly have in common?

  First let me tell you a little about flying a fighter. Today’s military fighter aircraft is a sophisticated piece of machinery that is capable of speeds in excess of 1,200 miles per hour. This machine wraps around the pilot, the sole human component. It has wings, a tail, a fuselage, and engines that generate enough thrust to lift twenty or thirty thousand pounds of dead weight straight up in the air without missing a beat.

  But that’s not the purpose of this machine. The purpose of this machine is to deliver weapons against a hostile target. Bombs, missiles, bullets. We’re equipped to use any of these.

  There’s no graceful way to get into this jet, but these planes are tough. Pilots can walk on their wings (and I did) or grab the canopy rails with our full weight. When I at last slid down into my seat and settled in, I was in a snug cocoon of technology with not an inch of room to spare. This was my office—the cockpit. In front of me were 350 instruments and lights and displays and switches, and around me were the throttles and the control stick. Behind me were two big engines ready to kick out a twelve-foot blowtorch when I pushed the throttles into afterburner. On the ground, the F-15 is a thing of beauty. The jet is sleek and seems genetically tuned to work through the skies. The cockpit is a synapse, a ganglion, needing only a human to complete the node. How can you not admire the perfection of it all? The ergonomics. The sensible layout of the instrument panel. The interrelated functions of my hands, my feet, and all the instruments.

  But then again, I wasn’t paid to sit in the cockpit and admire the engineering any more than you are paid to sit at your desk and admire the computer and file cabinets that surround you. I was paid to fly this thing. I was paid to let my fingers move over those toggles and switches, to listen to calls through my helmet, to watch for enemy missiles and fighters, while my afterburners put a bone-crushing force on me that compressed my lungs and pushed blood from my head, sometimes blurring my vision so much that in a high-speed turn the edge of the instrument panel turned gray. I was paid to ignore the shuddering vibration of the airframe as I yanked and banked the jet during a dogfight; flew a high-speed, low-level pass through a mountain valley; or tucked into a close formation at night in bad weather with an air refueling tanker.

  With all that going on, the loudest noise in my helmet was usually the sound of me struggling to breathe. It’s risky. It isn’t for the faint of heart. Seven out of ten trainees wash out of training before they even touch the skin of an F-15. One otherwise fit reporter had to be extracted from a jet after a demonstration flight with the Thunderbirds. He stayed in the hospital for two days.

  So what’s the message here? Am I a tough guy? Not at all. When I first flew the F-15 I was twenty-three years old. I was a college kid with okay grades. Fifteen months before I flew the F-15, I had never touched an airplane. I’m no math genius and I’m probably no better coordinated than you. I stay in shape but, on the average, I’m probably in no better shape than you. But I went through a process. I followed a process perfected over more than five decades that made me a fighter pilot.

  The United States Air Force is a direct descendent of the Army air forces of World War II, and it became an independent branch of the armed forces under the Department of Defense in 1947. What ensued was a period of constant change. Jets quickly replaced piston engines. From a slow, subsonic air force we became a fast, supersonic air force. We received better radar and new weapons; we were flying higher than anyone thought possible and our airframes changed every four or five years.

  But it wasn’t going that well. Accidents were on a steady climb until in 1952, we had our worst year ever—1,214 airmen were killed in accidents. Planes were crashing, wings were coming off, pilots were losing control, and entire flight crews were being wiped out before lunch. It was a disaster.

  In fact, training was our Achilles’ heel. We weren’t doing it right. We were slow to keep up with the slew of new aircraft arriving on our flight lines and we weren’t giving pilots a way to think through their problems before they evolved into accidents. Thankfully, the Air Force reacted. They began to focus on the capabilities of the human mind and the capabilities of the human body to manipulate an aircraft in flight. How many G-forces could a pilot withstand before he blacked out? How many instruments could we scan? How long did that scan take? Did we understand the information our instruments were feeding us, or should we change the way instruments displayed data? All of these were called “human factors.” Human factors became a major body of study. It touched how aircraft were designed, how cockpits were laid out, and how we were trained. It became a dynamic process. It evolved into a process called Crew Resource Management (CRM). How does a pilot or a flight crew assimilate and process the information in the cockpit and manage the data between pilot and copilot?

  Whatever the name,
human factors or CRM training, the product is training. Training procedures are updated and then updated again. Training is a science. Training has intensified. It is part of our everyday lives, and instead of just flying, we became a force of pilots that train. The results were dramatic. By 2002, the most recent year for such statistics, we were flying more missions than ever before, but even so, the accident rate was a mere fraction of that horrible year, 1952. In 2002, we lost just nine airmen. Enough said.

  As a former fighter pilot, I can say without boasting that I know what it’s like to execute flawlessly—but I’ll go even farther. In today’s military, 98 percent of our aviators know that feeling. And that’s what we teach at Afterburner. We transfer our experiences and techniques from military aviation to business to show you how to achieve Flawless Execution. We know what it is like to experience disaster, and we know the great feeling of a job well done. We believe in Flawless Execution and we allow our lives to depend on it. We make Flawless Execution a process that governs us. When we get up before an audience at an Afterburner event and talk about our world, we do so because, as fighter pilots, we are the very proof that Flawless Execution is achievable. That’s our point: Our way works.

  Like the exhilaration a marathon runner feels when he crosses the finish line, we feel the exhilaration of executing flawlessly. In Desert Storm. In Afghanistan. In every training mission we fly. We have a Leaning-Forward, got-to-win, don’t-accept-mistakes attitude, and it’s all focused on one outcome: a flawless mission. If we can do it in the 1,000 mile-per-hour, fast changing, and extremely hostile world of air-to-air combat, you can do it anywhere. Simple message. It’s what over 1,500,000 men and women have learned from us. Flawless Execution built the most successful military aviation organization in the world; Flawless Execution can make you and your company as successful as you want to be.

  Our specialized training aside, we both have jobs to do. I was part of an organization whose business it is to protect this nation. The USAF has a headquarters in Washington and two major commands under it. It has branch offices called air wings and within those air wings are air force bases. On those bases are squadrons. Within each squadron is a commanding officer. Squadrons have budgets and goals and are accountable back up the chain to the wing commanders, who in turn are accountable to the commander-in-chief and to the American people. The USAF’s work is closely tracked by the media, by Congress, and by the intelligence agencies of other countries. Their mistakes are scrutinized under the glare of the press; their triumphs largely go unnoticed.

  That’s the business side of combat. Like you, I was measured by outcomes when I was a fighter pilot. I had my missions; you have your missions. I had a target and a plan of action to hit that target. You have a plan of action to hit your target. If I failed, likely I’d die. If you fail, you’re looking at a short career. We’re not so different. We both need to execute.

  Execute. In this day and age, execute is a word that takes on a special meaning. During the dot-com bubble, time was everything. Shoot-aim-fire was the order of the day. Execution was replaced with immediacy. We need to get in the game. We need to launch this company immediately. No one wanted to miss out. No one wanted to be left behind, and venture capitalists threw money at plans for companies and products they didn’t really understand.

  And no one remembered that someone had to execute. Someone had to deliver the goods. Little wonder that the dotcom bubble burst and the remains of tattered, ill-conceived business plans were scattered everywhere. As fast as you can punch out with an ejection seat, the venture capitalists tucked in their tails and fled.

  Then came the corporate scandals. Again, one of the root causes was the absence of any real execution. Instead, someone was cooking the books or layering in false front corporations for bogus transactions to make it look like they were delivering the goods. Enron collapsed on inflated sales. WorldCom collapsed on inflated sales. Qwest restated billions in revenues. Adelphia. Im-Clone. And the list goes on and on. Instead of hard-working, dedicated, determined people doing their jobs, poor execution was covered up by illegal practices that made the companies appear to be executing flawlessly.

  Now times are tough and we’re back to basics. The economy is short-winded but showing promise. Companies have fewer people than they did a year ago. There is an urgent, pressing need to run businesses smartly, to get the job done, to deliver the goods, to execute with good business practices. Speaking before countless corporations across the nation, I see this daily. Frustrated CEOs come up to me and ask: “Murph, how do I get my people to do what they’re supposed to do? How do I improve execution?”

  That’s why we stand before you in our flight suits. That’s why we talk to you about our jets and our missions. It is designed to underscore the differences—and the similarities. Fighter pilots have jobs to do; you have jobs to do. Supersonic jet fighters engaged in combat must execute flawlessly or we stand a good chance of dying. So we’ve found a process for doing just that and we’ve seen it work in combat and now in business. So, trust me, we’re not asking you to do anything we haven’t already done. We’re proof that against seemingly astronomical odds, people can execute their missions flawlessly. We do, or we die. Every day.

  It’s true: Being an American fighter pilot is hard—but being our enemy is a lot harder. The Flawless Execution Model gives us an unfair advantage.

  CHAPTER 3

  An Introduction to Flawless Execution

  I was standing in the hall outside one of our seminars when a senior executive of a major manufacturing company flagged me down. His products were selling well in the general retail trade accounts, but they were terribly underperforming in the large chain accounts. He thought he knew why: The chain buyers had their own way of doing business, and his regional managers just didn’t seem to be sophisticated enough to handle them—but he wasn’t entirely sure.

  His solution was to hire a national account manager. Unfortunately, the new national account manager met with stiff resistance internally. Most troubling of all, the resistance was coming from his very best people, the men and women he trusted the most. “Why send in someone from the home office who doesn’t even know my client when I see my client every day and know what he needs and when he needs it?” said one manager. Another said, “National chains are the one chance I have to earn big commissions. Now you’re going to take that away from me?”

  To say the least, it was upsetting to my client and it had created a dangerous rift in the company. The sales force was dangerously distracted and my friend was perplexed. On the one hand, a national account manager could give his products the singular focus he thought they needed to better perform in the chain accounts, but it was equally true that the territory rep knew the customer better; after all, it was their territory.

  “What should I do, Murph?” he asked.

  I didn’t have a clue. And even if I had, if I gave him an answer, what would he have gained? I’m not in the business of welfare; I don’t give out food stamps. In flight school we aren’t given answers; we’re given ways to find answers. We’re given processes, patterns, and ways to think things through so we can come up with our answers on our own. So I had a little fun. I sat him down and we talked. “What’s your overall Future Picture for the company?” I asked.

  He told me. “Good.” I said.

  “What are the key strategies to attain your Future Picture?” I asked. Again he answered. Also good.

  “Do each of your departments have a plan and a process for executing?”

  Silence.

  I tried another tactic: “Help me understand why you need a national accounts manager.”

  Because, he said, his sales weren’t nearly as strong in the national accounts as they were in small stores.

  “Okay,” I said, “and why is that?”

  Because the salespeople felt uncomfortable with the chain buyers, he said.

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  It was obvious from
their poor market share, he said.

  I pressed on. “What does the national account buyer want that keeps tripping up the sales force?”

  He thought a minute. “Deeper discounts,” he said.

  “Why can’t you give them deeper discounts?” I asked.

  “We sell in one-, four-, and eight-packs. We can’t give deeper discounts unless they order more quantities—and they don’t want to order more.”

  “What do they want?” I asked.

  “They want a unit with more products in it,” he answered

  “And how did you come to that conclusion?” I asked.

  “I heard about it in the annual sales meeting from several of the managers,” he answered.

  “So, is this a staffing problem or a product problem?” I asked.

  And that’s when his light turned on. Here we were, dealing with a major, unplanned obstacle that was blocking his salespeople from doing their job, dealing with it in the middle of their sales planning conference, in the hall, coming to terms with an issue that had been dividing the company for almost three months. He didn’t need a national account manager; he needed a line extension. He needed a twenty-four pack or a forty-eight pack or something big for the big box store. But more importantly, he needed a process to feed data back to him faster, directly, raw and untouched. He needed a process that let him see the complete picture and solve his problems on the fly, which is exactly what exists in the fighter pilot world.

  In 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and President George H.W. Bush, along with most of a very angry free world, was outraged. As we all know, Bush took action. Inside the Pentagon, he gave his military commanders a simple order: “Get Iraq out of Kuwait.” Clear enough, said his commanders, so off they went to the planning staff and told them that the president wanted Kuwait liberated. Click. A process went into action, a process that would stay in action until the very last soldier returned to his or her home after the battles were all over. Iraq would be forced out of Kuwait, allied casualties would be held to a minimum, and the job would be done in the quickest time possible with as little collateral damage as practicable. Inside that big, tumbling, chaotic mess called war, a process would stay in place, one that would answer the hundreds if not hundreds of thousands of tactical questions like the one my CEO friend was asking me in the hall.