James D. Murphy

James D. "Murph" Murphy (born August 26, 1965) is a former U.S. Air Force F-15 fighter pilot, an entrepreneur, and author residing in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. He founded the company Afterburner Incorporated in 1996 and serves as its Chief Executive Officer. Afterburner is known worldwide for its consulting work around its proprietary organizational development and continuous process improvement model called Flawless Execution.
Early career
After graduating from the University of Kentucky, Murphy joined the United States Air Force, where he learned to fly the F-15 Eagle fighter aircraft. For Murphy, Flawless Execution struck him as an epiphany as he walked to the flight line at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona to climb into his $30 million F-15 Eagle for the first time. Only 18 months before that day in 1989, Murphy was selling copiers door to door to small companies in central Kentucky. Before joining the U. S. Air Force, he was living on his family’s small farm. Eighteen months after his graduation he became a qualified fighter pilot. How did this happen, he queried? What was the process that he went through that the Air Force created which produced a ready to fly Fighter Pilot in just 18 months? And, furthermore, what were the principles behind the flawlessly executed mission plans he and pilots like him flew every day? Murphy realized that these principles could be used in corporations as well as in the military. From that point on, Flawless Execution became his life’s work.
Afterburner Incorporated
After leaving active duty, Murphy drove the sales of a small paint company from $5 to $52 million in less than three years by utilizing Flawless Execution principles. Having proven its value, Murphy formed his own company, Afterburner Inc., and made the front page of the Marketplace section of the Wall Street Journal in 1997. Murphy and an elite, tight-knit team of fighter pilots continued to create cutting edge keynote speeches and day-long team-building seminars in which the Afterburner team dressed in olive-drab flight suits and delivered the Plan-Brief-Execute-Debrief cycle of Flawless Execution to major corporations all over the world.
By 2003, Afterburner Inc. had been listed on , Inc. 500’s List of America’s Fastest Growing Private Companies twice and Murphy had authored his first book, Business is Combat (Harper Collins 2000). Also in 2003 Afterburner began its global expansion by opening up offices in Canada, Australia and soon to follow, Europe.
By 2005, retired U.S. Air Force Colonel John A. Warden III trained Murphy and key Afterburner personnel in his Prometheus Process. Detailed in Winning in Fast Time (Venturist Publishing 2002) Warden and his co-author Leland A. Russell describe in detail how Warden's Prometheus Process utilized open planning to rapidly develop the phenomenally successful air campaign against Saddam Hussein in 1990, Instant Thunder. Murphy, realizing the perfect synergy between the Flawless Execution Engine and the Prometheus Process, adapted it, with Warden’s assistance, into the complete strategic and tactical model that it has become. In 2005, Murphy launched his second book, Flawless Execution (Harper Collins 2005), that described its principles in detail.
Books by James D. Murphy
*Murphy, James D. (2000). Business is Combat. New York.: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-06-039325-4.
*Murphy, James D. (2005). Flawless Execution. New York.: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-06-076049-4.

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