Flawless Execution

FLAWLESS EXECUTIONUsing Fighter Pilot techniques to manage our weekly activities

Platform

Process

Purpose

http://www.afterburner.com/insights/strategy-and-execution/

Flawless Execution by James D. Murphy shares the techniques of fighter pilots to achieve peak performance

¨ The essence of all successful execution is:¤ Plan. Evaluate multiple courses of action, evaluate

them, and take the best parts. ¤ Brief. Tell everybody how we're going to carry out the

plan and what we're going to do today. ¤ Execute. Act out the script you created in the brief. ¤ Debrief. Evaluate execution errors and successes.

Connecting execution with strategy provides alignment of outcomes with activities

¨ Where are we going to be? ¨ What are we going to apply resources for or

against? ¨ How are we going to do this? ¨ When are we going to stop doing this?

An approach to applying Murphy’s work to create an execution culture can move us to the next level of performance

¨ Monday Vision¤ what does DONE look like for this week?

¨ Daily Outcomes¤ do I know how to get to the end of the week?

¨ Status progress on Thursday¤ am I going to make it to Friday as planned

¨ Friday Reflection and corrections needed to start the next week anew¤ What didn’t make it?¤ How am I going to make up the lost cost, schedule, and

performance

The Monday Vision starts weekly stating our intentions

¨ Each Monday Identify the most important outcomes for the week.¤ Work backwards from the end in mind.¤ Focus on outcome not activities.¤ Ask questions such as, "if this were Friday, what would I

feel good about having accomplished?" ... "if this were Friday, what would fell bad about it wasn't done?"

Daily Outcomes provide the fine grained feedback needed to make fine grained corrections that keep us on course

¨ Each day make a short To Do list.¤ Start by listing MUST items¤ Next, list SHOULD or COULD¤ Use this list throughout the day¤ The streams include meetings, email, conversations, or

bursts of brilliance throughout the day¤ Have a good sense of priorities¤ Deal with potentially randomizing scenarios

Friday Reflection is the opportunity to assess our progress to plan, make high level corrections, and define the work for the next week

¨ Evaluate what got done or didn't get done and why it didn’t get done¤ Review a week's worth and look for patterns for

improvement¤ Trends stand out, look for the trends

¨ With this reflection, gather from the team, the work needed to improve the process

Why this works

¨ It's self–correcting through daily and weekly feedback¨ Course corrections can be made throughout the week. ¨ Unimportant items slough off¨ Manage using small and simple list¨ It's not technology bound. Pen and paper work fine. ¨ Keeping the working set small, ¨ It's a system with simple habits and practices¨ Next actions are immediate and obvious, in relation to

SHOULDs and COULDs