Business Lessons from a Fighter Pilot

By Jim Murphy

Businesspeople and pilots alike know that all successful missions begin with a carefully thought out plan. I can't take off until I know where I'm going, what the weather will be, what my target is, how many are on my team, what each of us will be doing, etc. The same notion applies to business--good planning allows you to determine how you might influence events before they occur rather than reacting to events as they occur.

Following is an explanation of the process that we fighter pilots use to make certain our plans are viable. At my company, Afterburner, we call it the “Six Steps to Mission Planning.” I think you’ll see how the plan can be applied successfully to any business situation as well.

Step #1: Determine the Mission Objective
A mission objective must meet four criteria:

• Clarity. State the objective in simple, direct language. Your words should not be open to interpretation. If your people don't understand precisely what you mean, you and the mission are in big trouble.
• Measurement. You must have a means to quantify goals so that you can ultimately determine whether the mission was successful.
• Achievability. This doesn’t mean it has to be easy, but it does have to be within the realm of possibility. If you're going to put people into motion, nothing erodes their abilities, motivation, energy, or enthusiasm faster the prospect of an impossible task.
• Rationale. A mission objective must support the overall mission of the organization so that your team can rally behind it.

Step #2: Identify the Threats
You need to know everything that can stand between you and the accomplishment of your objective. I always know that a very tough fighter pilot stands between me and my mission objective. Somewhere out there is a very fast Mig with a very capable pilot at the controls and trust me, he doesn't want me to blow up his SAM site. So I want to know everything I can about this guy--what he eats, what car he drives, which hand he uses to comb his hair and how he brushes his teeth.

What could undermine your next sales call? Do you know who your counterpart is? What is his motivation? What deal has he offered your customer? How does the company stack up against yours? What new product feature can he offer that is better than yours? What terms can he offer? Shipping policies? Think about anything that could help him beat you out of the sale.

We call these factors external threats to your mission's success. How can you overcome these threats? Go to association meetings. Go to Rotary club functions and meet-and-greets. Dig through your counterpart's website and product catalogs. Talk to your vendors. If your competition is a public company, listen in on their conference calls with analysts. Get the low down; find out what tricks they may have up their sleeves.

Next we look for internal threats. How's the communication inside your company? How knowledgeable is that engineer coming with you on the sales call? Can you count on your travel department (or agent) to get you there on time? Does finance stay competitive with terms? An untrained teammate or a communication breakdown can threaten success just as much as any external factor.

Finally, prioritize the threats you've identified to determine which ones could do you the most damage.

Step #3: Identify Your Available Resources
These resources might include people, money, systems, technologies, products, clients, terms, services or the unique skills of someone on your team. Think it through. How do your assets stack up against your threats? Do you need to take an AV guy with you because you're rusty on PowerPoint?

Don't forget assets outside your immediate circle of influence. Do you know someone who knows the buyer? Have you met the owner of the restaurant who might give you a better table when you're entertaining a client? Look at everything and everyone as a potential asset and think about how they might help.

Step #4: Lessons Learned
Chances are you know someone who has experience in what you’re trying to accomplish. Has another salesperson done business with this buyer? Does he or she know the buyer's trigger points? Tap into those experiences and apply the lessons that best fit your mission. A colleague tipped me off that one of my toughest customers liked silence. Had I not known I would have nervously filled the silence with chatter. Fortunately, I was forewarned and I waited out his long, silent moments. I got the contract.

Step #5: Develop Courses of Action/Tactics
Now you must develop a menu of potential courses of action. How are you going to attack the target? At this stage, you want creativity and ideas, and the more the better. Breaking up into small groups gives you just that (and it prevents one person from dominating the brainstorming session). You'll choose your final course of action from the ideas generated by these groups. Each team lays out its tactics; everyone walks through them and picks them apart. The strongest tactics will become apparent through survival of the fittest. Next, determine who does what, when.

Step #6: Plan for Contingencies
You will spend up to fifty percent of your planning time on this step. Now is when you plan for all of the “what-ifs?” What if the flight is delayed? What if your PowerPoint presentation locks up? What if the facilitator for your meeting resigns over the weekend? It’s easier to brainstorm around these contingencies during the planning phase, than later, amidst the chaos of the mission.

Planning for contingencies must be detailed. Start by breaking down your mission into its smallest components, and then rank those components on the basis of their importance. What's going to stop you dead in the water? What one component is the must-have for the show to go on? Then work out what your solutions will be.

Keep pealing back the layers until you haven't anywhere else to go. Once you have a back-up for every item on the must-have list, you're ready to execute your mission.

Use these six steps in your planning process and every mission in your business can be a successful one. Happy flying!

Author Bio: Jim "Murph" Murphy is founder and chairman of Afterburner Inc., an international leadership development and management training company that teaches top executives how to use fighter pilot strategies in business. He is the author of Flawless Execution and Business Is Combat. For more information, visit www.AfterburnerSeminars.com.

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