Leadership Expert, Founder & CEO of Afterburner, and
Former F-15 Instructor Pilot, USAF
James D. “Murph” Murphy, the Founder & CEO of Afterburner, Inc. and business speaker, has a unique and powerful mix of leadership skills in both the military and business worlds. Murph joined the U.S. Air Force where he learned to fly the F-15. He logged over 1,200 hours as an instructor pilot in the F-15 and accumulated over 3,200 hours of flight time in other high-performance aircraft. As the 116th Fighter Wing’s Chief of Training for the Georgia Air National Guard, Murph’s job was to keep 42 combat-trained fighter pilots ready to deploy worldwide within 72 hours. As a flight leader, he flew missions to Central America, Asia, Central Europe and the Middle East.
Flawless Execution
Prior to his service in the U.S. Air Force, Murph had a successful career in imaging equipment sales, where he helped increase his company’s sales by 500%. Years later, he became Director of Sales for a small paint company. The concepts he developed and utilized in business and the U.S. Air Force would become known as Flawless Execution. Applying Flawless Execution’s continuous cycle of planning, briefing, executing, and debriefing, he increased his new employer’s sales from $5 million to $52 million per year. Realizing that all companies and organizations could benefit from these same concepts, Murph started Afterburner Incorporated in early 1996.
Afterburner
Through his leadership, Afterburner landed on Inc. Magazine’s Inc. 500/5000 List four times. Murph has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Inc. Magazine, Newsweek, Meetings & Conventions Magazine and has appeared on CNN, Fox News, CNBC and Bloomberg News. He was also named as one of Atlanta’s top 50 entrepreneurs by Catalyst Magazine. To date, the Afterburner team of elite military professionals has led more than 1.5 million corporate leaders and business professionals from every industry through Afterburner’s unprecedented Flawless Execution? training and development programs.
Books
Murph and Afterburner have shared the podium with notable speakers like Bill Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, J.W. Marriott Sr. and Marcus Buckingham. Murph has served as a panel member of the League of Extraordinary Minds with business and self-improvement thought leaders like Tony Robbins and Stephen Covey. He is the author of the seven books; On Time and On Target (2016), Courage to Execute (2014), Down Range (2013), Flawless Execution (2006), The Debrief Imperative (2011), The Flawless Execution Field Manual (2009) and Business Is Combat (2000). Murph has also been invited to speak at many of the world’s most notable business schools, including Harvard, Wharton, Cornell, Emory, Duke, MIT and Fudan University in Shanghai, China.
7 Ways Teams are Winning RIGHT NOW in the COVID-19 Disruption (Available Live or Virtual)
You don’t have to downsize your workforce to successfully navigate the impacts of COVID-19. Short-term success and long-term sustainability is possible for your organization, but only if you act quickly and with focus. Join us as we step away from the frontlines of working with companies who are winning amidst the COVID crisis to host this informative webinar so that your company can experience the same success. We will share the real-time lessons learned of these organizations, and the immediate steps you can take to lead your teams through the chaos. The competitive landscape of all industries will look very different in a post-COVID-19 environment, and time is not on your side. Market upheavals and power transfers occur daily as opposed to quarterly. Our focus is to enable organizations to shift their strategy and iterate on quick wins that will compound over time. Afterburner will share the universal principles that companies are employing as they rapidly transform to capture emerging market opportunities. We will share examples of bold strategic shifts and how organizations of all sizes can operationalize the new approach.
Leading Flawless Execution from the Top with Keynote Speaker Jim Murphy
Afterburner's leadership keynote speaker Jim Murphy has helped top business leaders transform strategy into action. Historically fewer than 20% of all initiatives actually get accomplished. This keynote will help align your team around your strategy and understand exactly what to do and how to do it. This 60-90 minute keynote is based on Jim Murphy's ground breaking book 'Flawless Execution'.
Courage to Execute
Addressing Complexity. Becoming Agile. Leading through Change. Innovation. Operational Excellence. Developing Leaders. Retaining Top Talent. Do these sound like a myriad of challenges, many of which you and your organization today face? Do your strategies to address and excel in these areas seem disconnected and paralyze your people? Would you believe a firm has spent the last two decades evangelizing and demonstrating that in fact they are all connected? And better still, there is a simple, holistic set of tools and techniques you can apply to address them all – simultaneously? Aligned with the 2014 release of his 5th book, Courage to Execute, Jim’s new keynote address not only shares how leaders can address these challenges and seize these opportunities, he details the simple, scalable process that elite military teams and Afterburner’s key clients leverage to survive, thrive and dominate where competitors fall short. Leveraging video, corporate and military analogies and Lessons Learned from his work advising Executives at 85% of the Fortune 50 and dozens more, this keynote will inform and empower leaders to scope the environment, drown out the noise, align strategy to execution and empower leaders to demonstrate a Bias to Action – the secret to winning in the today’s business environment.
All Jim Murphy Books
Courage to Execute: What Elite U.S. Military Units Can Teach Business About Leadership and Team Performance
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The Debrief Imperative
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Business Is Combat: A Fighter Pilot’s Guide to Winning in Modern Business Warfare
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Flawless Execution : Use the Techniques and Systems of Ameria’s Fighter Pilots to Perform at Your Peak and Win the Battles of the Business World
Purchase Book"Last week at our annual kick-off sales meeting, Jim Murphy was one of our keynote speakers. He was fantastic...I questioned the relevance of a fighter pilot to business. Believe me, he brings it all together in terms we could relate to and with a program that keeps you on the edge of your seat with periodic goose bumps on your arms. He spoke for 1-1/2 hours; I wish it would have been 3."
- | Vice President International, Honeywell
"Our attendees were definitely equipped with new strategies and tactics to improve team work, thwart channelizing and minimize task saturation in the work place. Your video presentations were wonderful and the way you engaged the audience and had fun with each other was very well received. You are definitely a hit with the American Red Cross and we truly appreciated your interest in learning as much as you could about the particular challenges faced by Red Cross fund raisers."
- | Senior Director, Office of Events Management, American Red Cross
"Everyone was thrilled you were there and that they had the opportunity to spend time with all of you. My dream come true event! Afterburner in the afternoon made it a perfect tie in for the conference theme event ..."
- | Manager, Corporate & Sales Events, Northwest/KLM Airlines
"The feedback I have received from the participants has been phenomenal and everyone thought the program was ′Sierra Hotel!′...I am looking forward to working with my management team to implement your techniques of Plan, Brief, Execute, and Debrief to improve communication and achieve Flawless Execution in accomplishing our objectives."
- | Mattel, Inc.
