At 19 o’clock, October 21st, there was extraordinary excitement in Room 405 Starr Building of School of Management Fudan University. On behalf of BI-Fudan MBA programme student union - Join & Share Salon, Louisa Chen ,who is the student of Class 7, invited two well-known entrepreneurs— Mr.James D. Murphy and Daniel S. McAtee to bring a brilliant lecture about Application of Afterburner Flawless Execution Model for Business Success to all the Fudan MBA and EMBA students and alumni presents. At the same time, more than 20 guests from different companies also participated in this special event.

Murphy, the Founder & CEO of Afterburner, Inc., has a unique and powerful mix of leadership skills in both the military and business worlds. Dan currently is the president & CEO of Tree Island Industries. He held 15 years progressive management roles at various GE businesses. In spite of this, Dan also has had extensive global experience. He had established and managed operations in 34 countries around the world.

Half an hour before the lecture started, the two speakers had come to the Starr building in Fudan. Murphy was even fully prepared by putting on his own air force uniforms, army boots and specialized equipment. It was an excellent opportunity to see the elegant demeanor of U.S. military pilot.

The lecture began with Dan’s funny Chinese greeting ‘Da Jia Wan Shang Hao’. Murphy started his lecture by showing the audience a vivid video to introduce himself. He is not only a successful entrepreneur, but also was an excellent U.S. Air Force pilot. He has logged over 1,200 hours as an instructor pilot in the F-15, and has accumulated over 3,200 hours of flight time in other high-performance jet aircrafts. Years later, Murphy returned to his love of business and became Director of Sales for a small paint company, and has successful career in imaging equipment sales, Because of this special experience in U.S. Air Force, He realized that many companies could benefit from these same concepts, so Murphy started Afterburner in early 1996. Engaged in the proven Flawless Execution Model and increased his company’s sales from $5 million to $52 million.

Firstly Murphy explained what Afterburner is. He introduced that fighter Pilots get the job done using the Flawless Execution Model. This is a simple, continuous corporate team building and performance improvement process designed to help military aviators win in combat. Today, companies in all industries, from small to large, are using the Flawless Execution Model to dramatically improve the way their teams perform.

In pursuit of organization’s progress, Flawless Execution needs the team to work as one for the same goals. Murphy continued, we should use the right weapon to the right enemy. So everyone can be the best executive in your world but you have to aim the right thing.



So the first step of his Model is painting the future picture. And there are 12 key factors needs to be evaluated such as financial position, workforce, market position, innovation, characteristics, and outsider perception and so on. Then he moved on to the strategy part. It contains the “where”, “what” and” how” items. First of all, one should know where he wants to be, and then how to change system, and the last, what is the simple manner. Once you want to change the system, you must map the system with external and internal systems, and then try to find the center of gravity. At this moment, Murphy showed the audience a sample graph that contains red, yellow and white dots linked by complicated white fibers to explain the system change execution. He stressed those key dots are the center of gravity, which is the most important items the company should pay attention to in the strategy and change planning.

Then he told the audience the very useful Flawless Execution Cycle: Plan-> Brief->Execute->Debrief->Win. In mission planning six steps should be used to determine the mission objective to support the future picture, identify the threat, identify your available resources, evaluate lessons learned, develop courses of tactics, and plan for contingencies. Murphy used a real video story which happened in 1972 to tell the audience task saturation is the silent killer. He also highlighted the importance of debriefing in the process of task execution. Through Murphy’s speech, the listeners knew not only how to plan a mission for an effective team, but how to execute that mission flawlessly from start to finish.

After Murphy’s speech about Flawless Execution Model, Dan shared his own unique experience - the development of Tree Island Industries. It is a real case study on how Tree Island Industries exercise the Flawless Execution Model to not only develop the strategy, but also significantly improve their business performance by the implementation of the strategy.



After reviewing the needs for change, Dan made his strategy plan. Step one was to strengthen the core business, secondly, expanded core business, the concrete elements appeared as follows: established Asian and North American operations such as refined product offering and so on. The last step was fine tune the core business. Dan drove Flawless Execution Deeper into the original things, product portfolio via organic growth and fine tune product portfolio and profitability. Finally, the Flawless Execution Model made Tree Island industries had big progress, ensured lockage of strategy to business extension, operating in an imperfect information environment, and finally leads upon its own success.

The surging passion and humor of the two Speakers brought the audience laughing and brain-storming several times, two-hours time passed super quickly. However, the audience still was very active in the Q&A session; many students asked questions to the two guests for their own concerned issues and got the satisfactory feedback and encouragement in return. They must get great benefits from the lecture.



This is exactly want BI-Fudan MBA program Join & Share Salon would like to achieve by holding this kind of lecture. The Join & Share Salon wants to bring the elites together, to share them with great lectures, forums, and great business management ideas. As a famous student union of BI-Fudan MBA program, Join & Share Salon(ju xian hui 聚贤荟) has been established for more than 3 years, The name, ju, as in “gather, get together”, and xian which is phonetically similar to the meaning “share”, but also means “wise and sagacious”, gives a good description of the purpose of the association: A group of wise professional managers gathers in order to share experiences with their peers.

The student association has several network binding activities and creates not only better bonds between the classmates, but also between the students of the different classes. It contains four clubs: Branding, Charity, Industries and Entertainment clubs. Anyone in BI-Fudan MBA program will find their interested areas to take part in. As a link between the professional managers, Join &Share Salon provides an international exchange and dialogue platform for