| Authors' preface | p. xiii |
| From Murph | p. xiii |
| From Boo | p. xv |
| Part A Introducing Flex |
| 1 The origins of Flex | p. 3 |
| Flex in the U.S. | p. 4 |
| Murph's story | p. 6 |
| Flex in Australia | p. 7 |
| Boo's story | p. 9 |
| 2 What is Flex? | p. 13 |
| Flex gets things done | p. 14 |
| Balancing thought and action, at speed | p. 16 |
| 3 The Flex framework for action | p. 19 |
| The engine | p. 20 |
| The cockpit | p. 21 |
| The wings | p. 22 |
| BREAKOUT: Night scramble | p. 25 |
| 4 The Flex way of thin Icing | p. 27 |
| BREAKOUT: A fighter pilot mindset only goes so far | p. 29 |
| Engaging people in their own mission | p. 30 |
| Beating complexity with a clear, collaborative process | p. 34 |
| Beating the speed of change with a bias to action | p. 39 |
| 5 The Flex team | p. 41 |
| Who is Flex for? | p. 42 |
| Creating a Flex team | p. 43 |
| The respectful truth of a Flex team | p. 47 |
| When to lead, when to follow, when to collaborate | p. 50 |
| Part B The Flex Engine: Getting Things Done |
| 6 Flex planning | p. 57 |
| Flex planning-fast, yet considered | p. 59 |
| BREAKOUT: Apollo 13: A two-minute planning session | p. 63 |
| Flex plans-simple, yet dynamic | p. 63 |
| Flex plans-direct, yet empowering | p. 67 |
| Not your typical plan | p. 70 |
| 7 The six-step mission planning process | p. 73 |
| The leader's intent | p. 74 |
| Step 1 Set the mission objective | p. 78 |
| Step 2 Identify mission threats | p. 82 |
| Step 3 Identify resources to draw on | p. 92 |
| Step 4 Evaluate lessons learned | p. 93 |
| Step 5 Assign a course of action | p. 96 |
| Step 6 Confirm contingency plans | p. 104 |
| 8 Brief (putting your plan into action) | p. 108 |
| The last rounds of planning | p. 109 |
| The brief is the mission | p. 110 |
| The leader's brief | p. 111 |
| The right briefing microclimate | p. 112 |
| B-R-I-E-F the plan | p. 114 |
| A brief's last word | p. 119 |
| 9 Execute (keeping people to the plan) | p. 121 |
| How people lose focus | p. 122 |
| Keeping people to the plan | p. 128 |
| BREAKOUT; Rules for checklists | p. 142 |
| 10 X-Gaps and execution rhythm (keeping the plan to reality) | p. 144 |
| Why have X-Gap meetings? | p. 145 |
| Set frequent X-Gaps | p. 149 |
| X-Gaps are brief and to the point | p. 150 |
| BREAKOUT: Flex is Agile | p. 153 |
| 11 The debrief | p. 157 |
| Learning and culture | p. 160 |
| When to debrief | p. 166 |
| Practicing STEALTH | p. 168 |
| Just debrief | p. 177 |
| Part C The Flex Cockpit and Wings |
| 12 Situational awareness | p. 182 |
| Line-of-sight alignment | p. 184 |
| Systems thinking | p. 185 |
| Building situational awareness | p. 188 |
| 13 Flex in organizations | p. 191 |
| BREAKOUT: The Maple Flag | p. 192 |
| Setting a High-definition (HD) Destination | p. 194 |
| Missions to reach the HD Destination | p. 200 |
| Strategic missions to create your system | p. 203 |
| Can you own and execute your strategy? | p. 208 |
| 14 The Flex wings | p. 213 |
| The layers of standards and learning | p. 214 |
| Standards | p. 215 |
| Training: your best at the ready | p. 219 |
| Building and tapping situational standards | p. 224 |
| 15 Kickstarting Flex | p. 225 |
| Recapping Flex | p. 226 |
| Recapping what you're aiming for | p. 233 |
| Our pilots (acknowledgements) | p. 236 |
| Notes | p. 238 |
| Index | p. 242 |
