By Scott Leonard
VP of Business Development, Afterburner, Inc.
Ask an Afterburner, Inc. Fighter Pilot, US Navy SEAL, or other elite military professional what he knows about playing football in the NFL, and most will probably laugh and reply “Not very much.” Ask those same elite warriors what they know about executing flawlessly in fast-paced, rapidly changing, challenging environments, and you’ll get a very different response.
In the extremely intense, demanding, and often hostile world of military training and combat, the difference between winning and losing, just like in football, is very small. But unlike on the gridiron, in our world sometimes the loser doesn’t come home. Because the stakes are so high, we’re very serious about the process we use to survive and dominate. We call that process Flawless Execution. And since early last season, we’ve been sharing that process with players in the NFL to accelerate their performance, both on and off the field.
As current high school, college, and pro football players go through their season reviewing film, game planning, practicing, doing walkthroughs, going through pregame, warming up, playing the games, and maybe even taking a day off – everything is scripted and scheduled, down to the minute. All this is done in hopes of achieving ultimate success – winning. But what about success on an even larger scale? How can players ensure they are as intentional about winning the game of life as they are about winning in football? It starts by having a plan, and players that win in life don’t wait until their season ends to start planning. And that’s where Afterburner, Inc. comes in.
Afterburner team members know you can’t get where you’re going without a destination, so we help players define that future goal – what we call the High Definition Destination. Once the destination is determined, we have to have a plan to get there. In both training and combat, we have learned – often the hard way – that tiny errors can cause massive losses, so we avoid them using a simple process: Plan. Brief. Execute. Debrief. We develop a plan that is aligned to our future goal, and we ensure that plan identifies threats and resources to the plan. We ask others who’ve done something similar to share their lessons learned with us, ensuring we learn from their experience and don’t repeat errors unnecessarily. We then create a course of action, which is a step-by-step plan detailing who will do what by when and how we’ll know it’s been completed. We then ask other team members or trusted advisors to “red team” that plan to help us identify any planning errors or oversights.
We’ve been sharing this process with teams all across the NFL this year, just as we did with last year’s Super Bowl champions, the New York Giants. Just as applicable on the field as off, Afterburner’s team members have been leveraging the Flawless Execution process to show football players how to start planning for their future now, and how to ensure that plan is a success. We look forward to sharing that same message with both current and former high school, college, and pro players as the program expands.
What makes SEALs and Fighter Pilots think the process we used in the military can be used to successfully plan and achieve a career while still in the NFL? Of the 50+ team members at Afterburner, 100% started a business or began a career before they completed their military service – that’s 50-0, an undefeated record. Just like Fighter Pilots and SEALs know there is life after the military, players throughout the League are using Flawless Execution to plan their next steps – now – to ensure they get everything they can out of their NFL experience. We’re honored and excited to share Flawless Execution with the players of the NFL and encourage the warriors of the NFL – and all past and present warriors of the gridiron – to be as serious as we are about ensuring victory – today, tomorrow, and for life.