The Man From Chicago: A Master Chief's Story

From the streets of Chicago to the highest enlisted ranks of the U.S. Navy, Command Master Chief Dennis Polli's journey is a masterclass in authentic leadership. In this captivating conversation, we explore how a 26-year-old construction worker transformed into one of the Navy's most respected leaders through an unconventional career path spanning three decades.

Polli reveals how his early life in 1960s Chicago shaped his perspective, and why he initially resisted military service during the Vietnam era. His turning point came when a coworker challenged him with a simple question: "You want to be doing this the rest of your life?" That question launched a remarkable Navy career that would see him rise from Hospital Corpsman to Command Master Chief.

What makes Polli's story extraordinary is his unwavering commitment to servant leadership. Throughout his career—from his time with Special Warfare Delivery Vehicle Team 2 to his role as Command Master Chief in Guam—he consistently flipped the traditional leadership pyramid upside down, focusing on supporting those he led rather than seeking personal advancement.

The conversation tackles hard truths about military leadership culture, including the disconnect that sometimes develops between senior leadership and deck-plate realities. Dennis offers candid insights about how some leaders become more concerned with institutional alignment than with addressing sailors' genuine concerns.

Beyond leadership philosophy, we explore the practical challenges of military life: balancing operational demands with personnel welfare, implementing innovative solutions to improve quality of life, and maintaining authenticity in high-pressure environments. Dennis's approach to these challenges demonstrates why he earned such deep respect throughout his career.

Whether you're a current military member, a veteran, or someone interested in leadership principles that transcend specific contexts, this conversation offers valuable wisdom about leading with integrity, championing your people, and creating a legacy that extends far beyond your own career.

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Transcript

Meeting Command Master Chief Dennis Poley

Gary Wise 0:00

And I know I was born for this. I know I was born for this. Don't care for the critics my words and my physics are for us, that they can't stop. They just don't get it. I think they forget I'm not done till I'm on top. I know I was born for this. I know I was born for this. I believe I believe we can write a story.

Gary Wise 0:28

All right, hey, hello, good afternoon, hop a day, good morning. Whatever time you might be watching this or listening to the sound of my voice, it's Gary. We're here with another Words from the Wise. This is another Behind the Anchor edition, and what this means typically is I'm bringing in somebody from the Chiefs mess or from my military career that I've worked with, that I served with, and we're just going to catch up. We're going to talk about all things leadership and today, man, today is a special event because if you've ever served where America's Day begins, right, the island of Guam, the beautiful island of Guam, right? Uh, you've met this, this man, before. He is a legend there. He is command master chief, retired Mr Dennis Oli. So, dennis, welcome to the stage.

Dennis Polli 1:16

Up a day, up a freaking day, bro.

Gary Wise 1:20

What's up man? How are you doing?

Dennis Polli 1:22

Everything's well. Man, I'm talking to you from the future. It's Friday morning here.

Gary Wise 1:26

It is Friday morning there and it is currently Thursday evening here, so yeah, you're talking to me from the future. How's tomorrow looking?

Dennis Polli 1:34

Good, good day, man, good day to be alive.

Gary Wise 1:37

Guam still hasn't flipped over.

Dennis Polli 1:39

Hasn't flipped over A little bit of rain, but that's about it.

Gary Wise 1:42

How's the Marine Corps build-up going? You guys hearing anything coming out of that?

Dennis Polli 1:47

Yeah, it's going well. Camp Blas is ticking along, you know, like a lot of military projects. A couple of glitches here and there, but moving forward we did have an incident here. About a week ago, though, domestic Marine shot another guy in a parking lot at GPO, and you know how that goes right, and Marines are going to be here. There's going to be problems, yeah.

Gary Wise 2:16

Yeah, it's definitely going to be some growing pains for sure. I'm sad to hear it. I saw coming out of Anderson that whole barracks hubbub that flew, that went far and wide where they had the HSC 25 sailors living and the Marines living and when I first saw those pictures I was like that's not a Naval Base, Quam barracks. I can tell you that from firsthand experience that's not one of ours.

Dennis Polli 2:43

Yeah, yeah, still, that's post Moar. They got hit pretty bad on that end and trying to work through it, the whole Mack Terminal is still closed down up there.

Gary Wise 2:54

Is it really? Yeah, you know, I just I remember being so complicated trying to keep those buildings full up round because if you lost air conditioning even for a day or two, the island would start to reclaim it. I remember up there at the top of the mountain, going up there what's that base on the top of the mountain that you live on? Where were that? Where all of the uh the water buffalo are at the caribou caribou navmag. I remember during uh covid trying to get those NavMag barracks back online and trying to turn those back into being some more.

Gary Wise 3:30

Because we lost those for quite a while. I don't know if they're still using those or not, but that was quite the. That was a big deal. So well, hey, man, I want to talk about you, mr Pauly, and I want to start off with you coming from, because you came from Chicago, correct? Man? I want to talk about you, mr Pauly, and I want to start off with you coming from Chicago, because you came from Chicago, correct? Yes?

Dennis Polli 3:49

I did.

Gary Wise 3:50

Were you born in Chicago.

Dennis Polli 3:52

Yes, I was.

Gary Wise 3:53

Okay, and then Pauly Is Pauly Italian.

Dennis Polli 3:56

Yes.

Gary Wise 3:57

Okay, so let's talk about it. Man, what was it like growing up in Chicago? What was that? The 60s, 70s?

Dennis Polli 4:05

60s yeah, Boomer Born in 58.

Gary Wise 4:08

What was it like growing up in the 60s in Chicago, bro for Dennis Poley.

Dennis Polli 4:13

You know, compared to today it was a great time. I mean, it was the proverbial go out until the streetlights came on come home for dinner. You weren't worried about all the crazy stuff that's going on in the streets. Today, people looked out for me. If I was at my friend's house doing something stupid, his mom would slap me in the head and send me home and call my mom and I'd get slapped in the head when I got home.

Gary Wise 4:41

So there was a good, strong community there of people in the area that you lived in? When was the last time you went to Chicago?

Dennis Polli 4:48

Funny, you should ask. I was just there a week ago. Don and I went out to see mom she's going to be 88. She still lives there and flew my daughter and her grandkids in. So we all had a little family event. Awesome. Food's still awesome Good pizza, hot dogs, italian. Little family event Awesome.

Gary Wise 5:06

Food still awesome Good pizza, hot dogs, italian pizza. Yeah yeah, how did it look as far as like the neighborhood? Does your mom still live in the same house that you grew up?

Dennis Polli 5:13

in no, no, no, she moved out of there a long time ago and she on a lark. She just happened to buy a condominium down on Michigan Avenue Okay, small studio and she Avenue it's a small studio and she's had it for like 30 years. Like every city, you know, the gentrification is happening and it's interesting because years ago there was a class I had taken and in the class we studied the wave rejuvenation of cities and it starts usually in downtown and then, as downtown uh builds up, people move a little further out, right?

Dennis Polli 5:52

yeah until they're moving out in centric rings and they're out in the burbs and it takes so long to get back downtown. In the meantime, downtown is decaying. So while everything comes down, people start moving back downtown.

Gary Wise 6:05

The cycle starts over, and you can see it yeah, you know I've got a lot of hope for chicago. I, you know, I think a lot of americans love that city for a lot of various reasons. I think that just the heritage, the history, the bulls, the bear right, just amerana. For me, graduating boot camp, chicago was one of the biggest American cities I ever went to. At a young age right, I mean growing up in Utah, I didn't just go to places like Chicago out of nowhere, right. So getting a limousine after basic training to go down to freaking Chicago and check it out was like a big deal. Yeah, right, um. So I hope to hear nothing but good things coming out of that city and growing up. Dennis, did you know, like in when you were going through school, that did? Did you have any idea you were going to eventually join the service?

Dennis Polli 7:01

no. So actually, if you think about the years when I was like really formative, like eighth grade, high school, that time frame, okay, that was the end of the vietnam war. I was a counterculture hippie bell bottoms, all that um yeah abby hoffman.

Dennis Polli 7:23

You know one of my hey, this guy's cool and uh what. What brought me into the navy really was some things in my life. I came in later. I was working for a friend of mine's dad doing construction. Well, let me backtrack. I was a lifeguard for a lot of years down at the beach in chicago and a lot of seasonal stuff and then I was a lifeguard I mean, I was working construction for a friend of mine's dad and there was an old guy there, big Jake, and he was a big dude and one day he said to me uh, you want to be doing this the rest of your life. You're too smart for this right, and even my friend's dad that owned a company would tell me dude, what are you doing?

Dennis Polli 8:04

And so I had gone to a recruiter one day and I wanted to join the Air Force. Originally I wanted it and I said I want to join the Air Force. So you know how they do the whole thing. They have to take an ASVAP, right? So I took the ASVAP, I scored a 99, and I think the reason was because I was older I was almost 26, right? So as you get older, your aperture of the world widens and I think that's direct relation to that test. So now everybody's like dude, you know they all want you.

Gary Wise 8:48

Oh, all the services.

Dennis Polli 8:50

And I did. Well, I did shop. I shopped the army air force and I knew I wanted to be in the medical field. My goal was to really get into physical therapy, right, that's where I wanted to be, okay, and so the air force recruiter the day that I went there had another guy in there and they were just like shucking and jiving and not well, maybe this, well, maybe that I'm like bro, I'm out. I walked down the hall of the navy recruiter and it was interesting because my grandfather was the ex-soul of a ship in the italian navy during world war ii, tom. I didn didn't know that at the time. He wasn't in agreement with Mussolini's policy when they were in America. He just stayed there. I guess I sort of had the Navy in my blood. I signed up all my Navy stuff and off I went to boot camp at 26 years old 26 years old.

Gary Wise 9:42

What were you doing before you joined the Navy? Did you go to college?

Dennis Polli 9:46

did a little college of working instruction. I was a bust out. I was doing some uh other enlisted activities at the time and okay, let me kiss.

Gary Wise 9:56

You know that's a lot of living theoretically before you join the service, right?

Dennis Polli 10:01

what I've seen in my career is that typically guys that come in a little bit older typically show up and they do a lot better quicker, faster, stronger because they've got a like you said earlier, a little bit more seasoning when it comes to handling certain things right absolutely yes, I mean I grew up pretty much running the streets and I was getting to the point where all the people I grew up with, most of them, were dead or in jail drugs you know, and I didn't want that and it was really weird because you know, if you think about back in the 60s and early 70s, everybody you know, you smoke and pot and so you had your little groups in high school. So I was a good athlete, but because I hung out with the stoners, right, so then it was like I didn't fit in.

Dennis Polli 10:52

I wasn't a jock, I wasn't a stoner, I was in between Right and so coming into Navy, I sort of said, hey, I want to get into the medical field. Physical therapy Signed up, became a corpsman, finished corps school and right out of corps school, two days before we graduated they came into class and said me and two others, you and you, you're going to want to be pharmacy techs. Okay, went to pharmacy school. Well, because I got my dreams crushed on physical therapy, I went and talked to the chief who, who was the career counselor at the time, excuse me. I said, hey, chief, I was told I could, of course, go and go to physical therapy school. She said, well, if you're an E5 with six to ten years service, I go. Well, that's not what my recruiter told me, she's just the way your recruiter lied.

Gary Wise 11:42

I was like, oh, it wasn't that she crushed your dream. She just told you not yet Right. She kept her dream alive, but you had to get. You had to get.

Dennis Polli 11:51

I thought I was fast tracking into the program Right.

Gary Wise 11:54

Ah, but you did you come in as an E3, e2, or did you come straight up in as an E1?

Dennis Polli 12:00

Because of college, I came in as an E3. Good.

Gary Wise 12:02

Okay, yeah, you came in as an E3. You got hospital corpsman right out the gate, which I mean it's the biggest rate in the Navy, so it's not that complicated to get it, Even though, I will tell you, during my years as a recruiter I did not put in that many hospital corpsmen For as many as there are in the Navy. I didn't see that many join. And then you got into the pharmacist realm and didn't that used to be its own rate once upon a time?

Dennis Polli 12:29

Pharmacists made yeah, yeah, and even that was a precursor to being an IDC.

Gary Wise 12:36

No kidding. So to become an IDC, you've got to graduate the pharmacy school.

Dennis Polli 12:45

No, they were like the IDCs back in the day. In a way they weren't doing what we did today, but they were. And if you look up a lot of the metal honor runners in the hospital corps, they're pharmacist mates. They were literally. You know who went from lolly boys to pharmacist mates, to corpsmen.

Gary Wise 13:00

I will tell you so, hospital corpsmen, and you're probably like the fourth corpsman I've had on my podcast already. My dad, I will tell you so hospital corpsman, and you're probably like the fourth corpsman I've had on my podcast already. I just my dad, was a corpsman. Evidently I get along well with hospital corpsman and so I just a lot of, a lot of my career.

Gary Wise 13:12

I can look at the corpsman as being people I gravitated to for whatever the reasons were, and of course, you eventually changed that. But I think it's just it's not. As I thought about this earlier today as I was coming home from work, I was like, you know, I'm going to have another Dennis is going to be on tonight and he's going to be another corpsman and I'm like, oh there's, and I got a couple more corpsmen in the chute, you know, coming up next Nice, and almost all of the corpsmen that I talked to are IDCs for the most part, you know, and you've got that in common as well, got that in common as well, but I don't want to get there quite yet.

Dennis Polli 13:47

So when you did you go to?

Gary Wise 13:49

boot camp in great lakes, or did you go to san diego?

Dennis Polli 13:50

san diego and the reason was it was all right. The reason was, um, they didn't want to send people from chicago to boot camp there, because you could just walk out the gate and go home. That makes sense. That's what I was told, anyway. Uh, boot camp was an adventure, man, because when I got there, uh, the company commander was a second class, uh, os2 wallace. I've been looking for this guy for years, man. So he was my company commander and he, uh he called me in the office and he stuttered, which which was I'm trying not to make fun, but he would sit me down like holy, you know you're saying to me so he, let me run the.

Dennis Polli 14:32

He'd go home and told me I was like in charge and then I was there for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Oh wow, so they had us. If you got a package from home, you had to open it and share with everybody, Right? So I was like he made me the yeoman of the Company Because I could write and speak.

Gary Wise 15:00

Okay, so just for context to the people out there listening, what year did you join the United States Navy?

Dennis Polli 15:07

November 1984 Wow.

Gary Wise 15:10

I was like third grade, second grade, good for you, okay, so November 1984, the 80s, right.

Dennis Polli 15:19

Yeah.

Gary Wise 15:21

What was it? So you graduated boot camp. Where was Hospital? 4a school Was it Great Lakes?

Dennis Polli 15:26

Right there in San Diego.

Gary Wise 15:27

San Diego. So what was it like being a young sailor fresh out of basic training in the 80s in Southern California?

Dennis Polli 15:39

It was cool. I lived in an old wooden World War II open bay barracks. I had a heel that came in. The whole building was shaking. I did have an interesting incident downtown. So downtown San Diego was going through the re-gentrification, refurbishing, putting in the mall, and one night I was downtown, not in uniform, just down there and my buddy had stopped to look at something and I just was standing on the street not doing anything and I got a ticket by the police for a loitering. They told me I was blocking the sidewalk.

Dennis Polli 16:14

Okay, and I told the officer because I was heavy into lifting at the time, right, okay, I told the officer, you know I had sort of a compliment because I'm trying to achieve to get bigger. But sir, I'm not, you know, 15 feet wide and not apologize. And so I got a ticket, went to court and I actually went and took a picture of the sidewalk with a measuring tape and I went to court and explained to the judge and the judge was just looking at the police officer. He dismissed it.

Gary Wise 16:40

Yeah, yeah. But did you find like, like the community was good to sailors back then in San Diego?

Dennis Polli 16:48

Yeah, I didn't. I didn't have any issues of who your sailor. Yeah, did not. I didn't have that until later in my career, when I transferred to Norfolk.

Gary Wise 16:58

Okay, so we'll talk about that then, because you know I always grew up on hearing those stories. You know, sailors and Marines stay off the grass, blah, blah, blah. And I served in San Diego because a lot of my time was overseas. But I did seven and a half years in San Diego and they were nothing but great for us as far as the community loved us. Yeah, I loved her. Yeah, now I will tell you. In Long Beach, though, on the other hand, we were up there at Seal Beach one time and a couple of my sailors got their butts kicked by a house party, and that was a little more tougher, but there was no more of a significant Navy presence. It was just you'd go up there and you'd load up your boat with bullets and go out, but it's still Long Beach. Right, it's still LA. You can't go up there. You know you walk by the house party. Maybe you don't say nothing to the house parties. Keep on walking, bud.

Dennis Polli 17:51

Yeah, if you're looking for trouble, you can always find it right.

Gary Wise 17:54

That's a fact, jack. So you're in, how long was hospital core school? Was it like six months? Yeah, yeah, roughly I went, let's see, I got there in. Uh, yeah, about six months. Okay.

Dennis Polli 18:10

So hospital core and then phc school behind that, or the pharmacist pharmacy school, yeah, literally like the next week and that was in san diego too all right, and so I had uh right from right from core school to pharmacy school, graduated from there and then got orders to uh oceana and as oceana to what like the hospital or the clinic, or something to the clinic, yeah so did you take the hm3 test there in san diego? No, no, took it when I got to uh oceana yeah, that's not a I mean.

Gary Wise 18:44

Oceana. Yeah, that's not a. I mean, Oceana is great because it's in Virginia Beach. Did you enjoy that?

Dennis Polli 18:50

I did and it was interesting because I originally had orders to the hospital Portsmouth and one of my classmates had orders to Oceana and I had befriended a civilian that worked in admin, that was handling orders and stuff Right, and they pulled me aside and they said, bro, you don't want to go to Portsmouth Hospital? Yeah, those tunnels, you definitely want to be in Virginia Beach. So I talked to this one guy and I said hey man, you want to switch, and we swapped orders and I went to Oceana and he went to Portsmouth.

From Chicago to the Navy: Early Years

Gary Wise 19:24

What a world where that could actually be a thing, where you could just swap orders with somebody. How did you just call the detailer and said, hey man, you want to change it up?

Dennis Polli 19:31

Yeah.

Gary Wise 19:32

Nice. So you, when you went to NAS Oceana and you were there for the clinic, was that two years or was that a three year billet?

Dennis Polli 19:40

Three.

Gary Wise 19:42

Okay, so three year billet, and it three. Okay, so three-year billet. And and I mean, did you enjoy?

Dennis Polli 19:49

being in virginia beach, did you enjoy the duty station? Oh, I like virginia beach. I I actually wound up, you know, through my career was there quite a bit.

Gary Wise 19:54

I had a house there for about 20 years okay, and when you left oceana, were you an hm2 by that point hm3 hm3 point Okay, and how was promotion as the corpsman rate back then? Was it as challenging as it is now?

Dennis Polli 20:12

If you study, you do well, you know. Like I was a knucklehead First time I took the test, I just thought well, I know everything about everything.

Gary Wise 20:21

Okay.

Dennis Polli 20:22

So it took me a couple of tries to make third, and then I sort of got serious but interesting turn was, uh, when I finished that tour at Oceana, I got out.

Gary Wise 20:40

I feel like I do remember this part, so you okay, but let's go over it again.

Dennis Polli 20:42

So you chose to get out of the United States Navy, yeah, so what happened was I was listening to other people, so I had orders pending to go to Naples and people were like, dude, it's a shithole, you don't want to go to Naples, blah, blah, blah. So I told the recruiter hey, man, you got anything else he goes. Nope, just Naples. And I said, well, I'm getting out. So I got out to, uh, I wanted to go back to school, right, so I got out. I moved to missouri. Um, was going to the university of missouri. I got out like on a monday, joined the reserves. On tuesday, I was in the reserves, was going to school and then, um, I got mobilized for the gulf war reserve unit. We did the fleet hospital in Bahrain and I realized at that time that, because I was looking at going into the, I wanted to be a nurse, anesthetist, so nursing.

Dennis Polli 21:35

And I realized after that tour I didn't like nurses, let alone want to be one. So as I was coming back to demobilize if you remember the old Link magazine, okay, I did so. I made E5 in the reserves, okay, and there was an article in Link magazine about they needed IDCs. So I applied for IDC school as a, as a USNR, okay, and I was an E five under five, just at five years.

Gary Wise 22:13

Yeah.

Dennis Polli 22:14

Which was unheard of. I went to IDC school and it was if I didn't pass IDC school I would have been back to the reserves, I wouldn't have been on active duty. So I graduated IDC school and then converted over active duty.

Gary Wise 22:32

Wow, so I heard that. By the way, I heard the dark, the bark, or you still got those two big old German. Are they big German shepherds now?

Dennis Polli 22:40

You live by the 108 pounds.

Gary Wise 22:42

When I, when I left Guam, they were little babies. You would just gotten them. I remember that the last time I was up at your house, you just had them. Now I heard that Base Okay, so hold on. You got out of the Navy, you go to Missouri. How did you get to Missouri, bro All?

Dennis Polli 22:58

right, ready for this one, I'm ready. I was working at the pharmacy. So at the time I was working at the pharmacy, okay, and I got married and the girl I married was last name Ricketts, as in the USS Ricketts, admiral Ricketts, and they were from Missouri. Her dad was the commanding officer at Norfolk Naval Station for the comms. He was in charge of like all the comms, okay, and her grandparents lived in missouri, wound up there, was going to school and then that's from there.

Gary Wise 23:29

Came back in was she in the navy at the time too, or is she civilian? Civilian so? Was her dad still in the military or he retired, still active? You were dating an admiral's daughter as an hm3 in virginia it was. It was sort of awkward an admiral's daughter as an HM-30 in Virginia.

Dennis Polli 23:43

It was sort of awkward.

Gary Wise 23:45

I bet Okay, but hey, good for you guys, you got married. What did she think about when you got mobilized to go to the Persian Gulf? How'd that go? Was that good?

Dennis Polli 23:55

Well, her dad was actually the CO of the ship and then deployed, so it wasn't a big thing, and then you came back and you decided to go back active duty as an IDC.

Gary Wise 24:08

Was she supportive of that?

Dennis Polli 24:11

Not so much.

Gary Wise 24:13

Not so much. Okay, so you passed. Where was IDC school back?

Dennis Polli 24:18

in San Diego. Back in San Diego.

Gary Wise 24:20

Back in San Diego Graduate IDC school and now you're going back and doing. What are you now like? 32, 31, 32?

Dennis Polli 24:30

I'm sorry. What was that? Are you like?

Gary Wise 24:33

32 years old at that point.

Dennis Polli 24:36

I was 30.

Gary Wise 24:38

30,. Okay, so you get out of the Navy, you go get back into IDC school. You graduate IDC school. Where do you get selected to go for your first set of IDC orders?

Dennis Polli 24:50

So another. You know I've had a pretty blessed career. So here I am in IDC school and that's about a 13-month school right.

Gary Wise 25:00

Yeah, I was going to ask you how was that school for you? Was that complicated?

Dennis Polli 25:04

You know what? It just was a routine. If you go in there and you just focus on the school, you can do extremely well. People have problems when they get caught up with personal issues, family stuff.

Gary Wise 25:16

Yeah.

Dennis Polli 25:17

Usually drags me down, but at the time I don't know if they're still doing it If you maintained a 91 average on graduation, you got promoted to E6. So we had a bunch of hungry E5s in our class so we had study groups and we were killing it. Good yeah, so I got lucky. Then again, I'm about let's see March. I'm about let's see March, so around November, so about four or five months before graduation. Again an article in the Link. The Link needed DMTs to go to IDC school.

Dennis Polli 26:04

So my little hamster wheel starts spinning, I go hey, maybe I'll get you 20 years in the navy just going to school. I'm gonna apply for this. See what happens. They said, oh man, this will never happen. But my military advisor, senior chief boss, good dude, he said he came in one day and he said, hey, can you, if I let you go, can you get a physical? Done it today? I said yeah. So I ran through wickets, got my physical done, applied and lo and behold, man, I got picked up for dive school.

Gary Wise 26:32

I was the first person to ever do it that way, to go from idc to dive yeah, I was gonna say because typically they take the dmts as like HM3s and then make them earn their opportunity to go to IDC school.

Dennis Polli 26:46

right, right, I did it backwards, and then here I am, in dive school. I was 34.

Gary Wise 26:54

What's the difference for dive school for DMTs versus, maybe, divers? Is it the exact same school?

Dennis Polli 27:10

um, so years ago I don't know what they're doing now, but years ago that the dmts were going to become idcs, they went to groton and they went to school with the sub guys because of the rad health piece. That's just how it was laid out. I was really the first surface force IDC to go to dive school. Then I had a class behind me.

Gary Wise 27:30

Another guy did it as well. To that point the DMTs are heavily involved in the submarine force. That's because of the whole hyperbaric medicine piece.

Dennis Polli 27:37

Hyperbaric piece right.

Gary Wise 27:39

Yeah, I mean Guam. We got a lot to deal with that because they got that big dive locker there and that big hyperbaric chamber, but I had no visibility at the time of the amount of medical officers that were in the submarine community to be dive medical officers.

Dennis Polli 27:54

Right.

Gary Wise 27:54

Right, and there's a lot of them.

Dennis Polli 27:56

There's a lot.

Gary Wise 27:57

There was a lot. I had no idea about that until I got to Guam and I got a chance to be around the submarine force and see that, and so I could see why your groton would be a piece of that. So you go to dive school and was, how was dive school? Was dive school? I mean, were you a big swimmer? Did you have to be like a big great?

Dennis Polli 28:13

swimmer. I, being a lifeguard, I was in the water, played water polo, so I wasn't scared of the water, right, okay, um, pt, you know I was always into fitness, so pt, so you know, just do your pt. And you know, was I getting my ass kicked from someone 18 to 19, 20 year olds? Absolutely.

Gary Wise 28:39

But uh, yeah, you know, I represented the old guys so just I understand, did you pick up HM1 out of IDC school with that 91?

Dennis Polli 28:51

I did. But it was even crazier because I picked it up and I got called in by the career counselor who told me that because I was under six years zone A I was under six years I couldn't put it on for another year. Oh no, I didn't have enough time to rate. So when I graduated it was in my record, but I couldn't put it on for another nine months.

Gary Wise 29:13

But they let you keep it.

Dennis Polli 29:14

But I got to keep it.

Gary Wise 29:16

I remember that when I first joined the Navy that time and rate was a big deal and then they got rid of that, probably when I was probably about a third class, I feel like. But I remember thinking that was going to be a limiting factor for people in their careers because they were whole. I felt like they were holding you back. And then they got to be this thing where if you got an ep, only certain percentage could promote and then eventually, the whole thing went away.

Gary Wise 29:41

Yeah, okay. So now you're an hm1, you're an idc, you're graduating dmt. Where's your first dive assignment?

Dennis Polli 29:50

I went to uh sdv team two. So I had a choice. The detailer told me so I was going to go to sdv team one.

Dennis Polli 29:59

They were in san diego and at the time I found out they were moving to Hawaii. Right yeah. And then I was in Little Creek talking to. I went to SDV Team 2 and talked to this one chief, dietrich Snelling. He was just a freaking trip man, so back then it was like pirate communities, I walk in, we talk a little bit. And I said, well, I'm on my way to dive school detailer told me I can pick either. And he sort of just eyeballed me he goes you ever been arrested?

Gary Wise 30:35

I said uh, yeah, but I wasn't convicted.

Dennis Polli 30:37

Yeah, he said you ever been to catch mask? I said yeah, but it was thrown up. He, he goes all right, well, if you graduate, call me. So I graduated dive school and called the detailer and said hey, man, I graduated, I want to go to STB, team 2. And I'm almost spending six years there. I got there as an E5, left there as a chief, was their Sailor of the Year as an E6. It was a phenomenal, freaking tour man.

Gary Wise 31:08

And did I hear you say that correctly? Were they Virginia Beach, or were they?

Dennis Polli 31:13

No, virginia Beach and Little Creek.

Gary Wise 31:15

So were they. Was SDV team over in Little Creek. Is that where they're at?

Dennis Polli 31:19

Right, we're on the base in Little Creek.

Gary Wise 31:21

Okay, how was that man? Because now you walk into this Community. That's completely just different than Oceana Clinic.

Dennis Polli 31:30

Oh yeah, it was. So I got to be honest. You know, when I first got there in like my first week, and you know, going out to PT, right, I'm thinking, hey, I'm PTing with these freaking super studs, I'm going to get killed. But I found thinking, hey, I'm PTing with these freaking super studs, I'm going to get killed.

Gary Wise 31:47

But I found out like anywhere else.

Dennis Polli 31:48

Right, you got your people who excel, you got your middle of the road folks and you got some folks who just are there. So I learned a lot though I learned a lot there, I would say, my leadership. At that time, you know, I wasn't really focused on leadership, but that's where everything started taking place the small unit tactics, being responsible for each other, learning to grow your junior people, and so when I was there, I had the XO. One day came in and said, hey, you're going to run the medical department, okay. And then I took a debt out and on the deployment, I got my dolphins because we were assigned to the sub. So it was, since we had already the sub, you could apply for the program and I got my dolphins and that sort of pushed me over the top for other things Got my Dolphins, taylor of the Year, made Chief that year.

Gary Wise 32:51

Well, I was going to ask you how many first classes were in the SDV team. Was it about 15, 30?

Dennis Polli 33:00

Across the board maybe 30, 60. We probably had 200, maybe 200 people in command, maybe 220. Each team, we had four teams. Each team was about 32 people, and then you had your admin staff.

Gary Wise 33:24

So I don't know, maybe 30, maybe so, and it's the thing about those teams is the people that I've met throughout my career. I mean I've never had the honor of being stationed, I'm a regular navy kind of guy, right, I've never been anywhere like that but I do know they typically attract people that are high performers and or that stick around for a long time. So I mean, do, did you look back on that and say I want to be as competitive as possible, or did it just kind of work out that way? I mean, why did you get your fish?

Hospital Corpsman and Pharmacy Training

Dennis Polli 33:56

I think it was just the community. So, uh, when I got there, pt and just sort of fit in, you know, it was just sort of a good niche. And then, as it as time went on, what had happened was we went out on a deck, maybe in a platoon, and we got weathered out because we I told you we spent a lot of time in puerto rico right, doing workups, okay. So I think it was either typhoon hugo came through, but we could, or a hurricane, but because of the hurricane we couldn't do any ops and there was nothing to do on the boat. And one of the chiefs said hey, why don't you freaking told a couple of us, why don't you guys look into that?

Dennis Polli 34:37

so I did and then fast forward. A year later, a year and a half later, we were on deployment. So we're in Rota, spain. We would deploy out of Rota, spain, and then do bilats with other communities. And the chief came up to me. Dan Mikulski, good man, came up to me. He goes hey, you can stay here in Rota and drink every night. Or I talked to the program manager on the sub, one of the senior chiefs. Our next port was going to be Toulon. We were going to Toulon, france, to work with the command of Humbert, right. So he said the boat's going from Rota to Toulon. He said you can get on that boat and work on your quals and do something with yourself. And so I said all right, Chief. So now here I am at 430 in the morning, outside in the submarine, as they're having quarters and thinking what am I getting into?

Gary Wise 35:37

Yeah.

Dennis Polli 35:38

And then I got on the boat and all I did I get up in the morning and work on quals, Got my car signed off and took a board.

Gary Wise 35:49

Well and you know I mean back in the day corpsmen are still kind of at a disadvantage in the diver community because they're still corpsmen.

Dennis Polli 35:57

Right.

Gary Wise 35:57

They don't have their own particular rating. That's going to make them be separated. So when they want to go for cheap or whatever it is, they got to go against all the other corpsmen, right. But that was a big problem back in the day before they had all these individual ratings for all the different special warfare communities. And so I remember being on board Ogden, for example, even on Belleau Wood, and you'd have the special deployments. Where they'd be there They'd be getting their warfare pins because they're trying to be competitive For chief in particular, because it was a nationally recognized promotion system. It wasn't localized in their community and that was a challenge. So I can imagine why they were telling you guys go get your fish, because back in those days, whenever they got the chance to be embarked on board a ship, they're probably trying to get the warfare pants right well it was all about.

Dennis Polli 36:49

How do you? Uh, you know it. So I compare joining the navy like being in the navy to being in your neighborhood when you were a kid playing football in the alley or something you know. It's real simple. You know that that old car is out of bounds, that telephone poles to goal line. I mean, the Navy is structured in such a way where it's not rocket science and once you figure out the formula, you're like all right.

Gary Wise 37:15

I got this? Yeah, you know, I was telling. I was telling a story the other night about when I was at DC one and I had got like a sailor of the year and I got a really good eval and I had no clue what any of that meant at that stage into my career and there was a senior chief that came alongside me and helped me out. Now now, with all my years past, looking backwards, I'm a little embarrassed of myself as an E6, not knowing these things. But I was young, right, I promoted, I was fast tracking and nobody ever gave me that mentorship, and so I think that it's really awesome. You had people kind of giving you that guidance like hey, go get this, go get that. But and when you put it for chief, did you know that year that you were competitive for chief?

Dennis Polli 38:01

so I was sort of fast-tracked. So I first took the Chiefs' jam at nine years. Okay, I caught a 78 out of 80. I didn't make Chief right, I killed the test. I didn't make Chief. Now I'm all butler, right.

Gary Wise 38:18

Yeah.

Dennis Polli 38:19

Then I saw the next year scored a 76, didn't make Chief. The next year scored at 76, didn't make chief. And uh, I saw some people that were making chief who were like I thought they were just shit bags. But you know, I get it. And that's when that same chief that was that that's here. And I went after my dolphins but I was having looking at my package for chief hey man, this is great, this is all the things you've done. He goes. Now I need you to look in the mirror and say what are you not doing?

Dennis Polli 38:49

yeah, and that was a you know that was an eye-opener, because we all look in the mirror and want to see that cake. We're all superheroes, but what are you not doing? Yeah, and that sort of brought it in perspective so what were you?

Gary Wise 39:03

still at sdv team too, though, when you made chief, did I? Hear that yeah, what was? What year was that, when you put on your, your anchors?

Dennis Polli 39:13

96 1996.

Gary Wise 39:16

all right, so what was chief's initiation like in 1996 at an sV team? Was there an initiation? Did you guys even do it?

Dennis Polli 39:26

We did. We didn't so the initiation, we were deploying a lot. Okay, so the season, we didn't do the whole season, like a lot of the stuff during the season, but final night man, final night was sort of heinous and they had their own Chiefs club. They lined all the walls with plastic and they had no kidding stocks and a coffin.

Gary Wise 39:51

I will tell you, the more old guys I talked to, the more that told me there really wasn't no season of pride, no season of Chiefs initiation. There was just like a final night and then it was kind of fun. Right, so to give you an idea.

Dennis Polli 40:06

We had to go to the beach, you know doing a white hat ceremony. We had dug holes in the sand at the surf line, kneeled in them. They filled them back up, Mask and snorkel on. Water's coming in, they're pouring stuff down the snorkel. Yeah, You're trying to get it out. And then at the Cheese Club, when we got there, they had the full-on judge. It was no joke, right. They were selling eggs for a dollar a piece. Everything had chicken wires. When they were whipping the eggs they'd break down the chicken wire. It was quite the it was a big mess.

Dennis Polli 40:45

Yeah.

Gary Wise 40:46

But you know what?

Dennis Polli 40:48

I didn't take it. I didn't take it personally, I didn't take it as degrading. Yeah, you know, it's like some people nowadays are like, oh you know, I'm not going to do this.

Gary Wise 40:57

And I get it.

Dennis Polli 40:58

Times change, but I never viewed it that way.

Gary Wise 41:06

I think that it would be. I think where a lot of people confuse it is that they think that it was like seven weeks of hell. And it wasn't like that. It was a night of hell, right, but it wasn't. It wasn't a whole seven week long process, whereas arguably now our chiefs initiation is a freaking it's, it's an exhausting task, not just for the selectees but also for the chiefs, right? Because I mean, I remember thinking, man, it was a lot harder to go, it's harder to do initiation as a chief than it was as a selectee, because I think you get carved out all this sacred time just to focus on your chief selectee crap, whereas the chiefs we got to do our jobs, we got to do a lot of things, plus we got to support all these endeavors, right? Um? But I think the other thing I'm sure back in your old back, when you went through initiation, alcoholism was a main factor and I think that was what I always heard was one of the contributing things that made there be a problem, right? Yeah?

Gary Wise 42:00

like the golf outing golf outings are probably the ones that bring up the alcohol. Yeah, okay, so you put on Chief, you put on Anchors, you get through Initiation. Where do you go after SDV Team 2?

Dennis Polli 42:17

Under construction underwater construction team Team 1, right around the corner.

Gary Wise 42:23

So staying on Little Creek.

Dennis Polli 42:28

Yeah, the CEO at SDv wanted me to stay. I I had originally gotten order there's for for four years. Then they changed our c short at five and three. Then they extended me for a year. So I was at six years that he wanted me to stay there and I said you know, if I stay here, any'll probably screw my career for the future. I went on the water construction team, which is CB's. I did about two years there and then I wanted to be an instructor.

Gary Wise 42:56

What were you thinking about career at that point? Were you hoping for Massachief?

Dennis Polli 43:09

career. At that point were you thinking? Were you hoping for master chief? You know, I I don't. I never thought I'd be an e5, honestly. So when I made uh, you know I was looking at how do I make senior chief. I wasn't really thinking about last week how to make senior chief. And then, uh, just and really at the time, I I realized back then that if you truly come into work every day with the idea of how do you make things better, how do I make my people successful? Do we have the resources we need? You know, thinking positively, that your emails sort of wrote themselves because you're already doing those things. You're in that mindset. And so I was there two years and then I went to instructor duty and that's where I picked up senior chief.

Gary Wise 43:55

What was it like going from a chief's mess in STV to a chief's mess with CBs?

Dennis Polli 44:01

the underwater construction team. So I got to. When I got to the team underwater construction team, I'd only been there like maybe two weeks maybe, and we were going to go on this VEX right, their field exercise, okay. So we packed up a bus like a Greyhound, put all our gear on board and we rode from Little Creek up to Brainerd, minnesota, camp Ripley, to do this fex. So the very first day we now we're all in. So now, the very first morning we're doing quarters, we're going to do muster.

Dennis Polli 44:44

Now, remember, I've spent six years in the field with SEALs, right, yeah. So I go out, it's cold up there. I go out and my uniform's slicked Camis, you know old school cams, but they're slicked. Nothing on them. Right Blouse tucked into my pants, pockets sewn on the sleeves, all the clobbering up my cover, and I'm out there and one match, he goes Doc, what are you doing? I go, we're in the field, man. And even further on, when we had the CO come out and he was inspecting us around the field and he was gigging somebody on their boots, and I started laughing out loud and they gave me a dirty look. I'm like we're in the field, really Okay. So it was a bit of a transition.

Gary Wise 45:32

Oh man, I'll tell you what they take their chief stuff seriously. It's a big deal.

Dennis Polli 45:39

Yeah, yeah.

Gary Wise 45:40

It was a big transition. Yeah, I bet their organizational structure, their discipline. I've got to give it up to the Seabees man because they are hard freaking core man. They really are and I've got nothing but love for them. And if they get to go ahead and support you, you've never had a better friend. But if they don't get to go ahead and support you, you've never had a better friend. But if they don't have to go ahead and support you, you're not getting nothing. You're getting no help.

Gary Wise 46:05

They're not going against the grain unless they get an order. You know that's just how it goes, but you were only there for two years. You said Two years.

Dennis Polli 46:14

I left early because of the instructor duty.

Gary Wise 46:17

How'd you get the instructor duty? Where'd you go be an instructor at?

Dennis Polli 46:20

idc school?

Gary Wise 46:22

did you apply for that or did you get like how'd that work?

Dennis Polli 46:26

they. Uh, I was just. I just talked to the detailer about you know, every six months or so, because back then you could call them up and say what's come up in the pipeline. And because of my, it was really based because of my experience of you know. I was an independent duty corin now for eight years with a lot of field experience and they said, hey, they could probably use you at IDC school.

Gary Wise 46:47

Yeah, and you were a senior chief at the time.

Dennis Polli 46:51

Yeah, no, I was a chief, still a chief.

Gary Wise 46:53

Still a chief. So you picked up senior chief at IDC school Right, and that's still San Diego.

Dennis Polli 47:00

Right.

Gary Wise 47:02

And does 9-11 happen while you're at IDC school?

Dennis Polli 47:05

It did actually yeah.

Gary Wise 47:06

Okay, so 9-11 happens and you're at IDC school teaching people. What's that look like?

Dennis Polli 47:20

from your perspective as a senior chief at IDC school.

Gary Wise 47:22

As far as the training, or just just the, the energy of the navy and the op temple of everything that's going on around you, because I mean, yeah, you've got to finish up your instructor duty, but you've also got all this expeditionary background already, you've already got all this other stink on you and we're sending people forward in a way that I mean, yeah, we did the, the gulf war and you, you experienced that, but it was a little different of an animal after 9-11.

Dennis Polli 47:47

So it was interesting because I actually taught the trauma medicine and sports medicine portion and I wasn't like proud, I didn't go outside of the box to bring other people and instructors and we actually got at the time. We actually were able to set up the LA trauma where we could take IDC students for a weekend up to LA and they'd work up there in the ER. Because my mentality was psychologically, the first time they see something shouldn't be the first time they see something like in battle, yeah, and I had some pretty Chilling Videos that I would show in the class and I had some. I had a couple of instructors tell me you're sick, dude. They walked out and I had to sit and talk to him and say look, if don't they don't see this, they don't brace themselves and they're going to freeze.

Dennis Polli 48:45

We also had a very robust animal lab pig lab that we ran that you know, take them in sort of doing a lot of live tissue stuff and it was a lot of hands-on and it's very humbling because I still have people to this day. There's a guy here, literally at the clinic here on base here. He was one of my students, he's a PA now. Nice, he goes, man, this guy taught us so much stuff.

Gary Wise 49:16

I'm like it's humbling, I mean the hospital core rate. They really just earned their paycheck, I mean along with the United States Marines, along with everybody, right. But the corpsman in particular, right, that corpsman up was a thing again, right, it was a big deal. And so, after IDC school, where did you go to go back to deployable duty?

Dennis Polli 49:37

I got called up for went to projects, air projects. Where is that?

Gary Wise 49:41

What's that? It's this thing.

Dennis Polli 49:48

Naval Research Lab NRL. That was out of Wainimi.

Gary Wise 49:55

Okay, and so were you working with Seabees again.

Dennis Polli 49:58

No, no, just group of pirates.

Gary Wise 50:06

Okay, how was that three years? How was that are?

Dennis Polli 50:09

you still married to your?

Gary Wise 50:12

wife at that time. No, no, okay, I was, but you know the thing was that uh, that was.

Dennis Polli 50:17

It was a weird duty, um gone a lot. If got an award, you had to bring your uniform in and a dark bag Couldn't wear it until you got over there. Your award is pretty much said for being here and doing you know.

Gary Wise 50:34

Doing the things? Yeah, doing the things. So you did that. Was that a three-year hit, mm-hmm, did you?

Dennis Polli 50:41

enjoy that. It was, it was, it was. No, I enjoyed it. Well, I did and I didn't. So what had happened was it was a people would go to that command. You could stay there for 20 years.

Gary Wise 50:57

Yeah.

Dennis Polli 50:58

And that command went through there and at one point the whole command was pretty much all Master Chiefs.

Gary Wise 51:03

Oh, wow.

Dennis Polli 51:04

Yeah, it was pretty crazy, you know, it was like very few lower enlisted right. When I got there it had changed, you know historically. But what had happened was it got to be like Groundhog Day and I had a bad, bad time with the CO and the XO. So you know, one of the things in IDC school you're taught you never throw your commanding officer under the bus or anything.

Dennis Polli 51:35

We were in a meeting one day and he was actually asking me about dental readiness and I explained it to him and we had, if you think about like a wardroom meeting or you know, got everybody around the table. He goes well, I'm not doc, I'm not right. He's like, and I pulled out my list and I go well, your name's on this list. So I just thought it was in bad taste to throw you out in front of everybody. We would have talked after meeting, but since you brought it up, so when the director of the program had come out, he asked me how I liked it. I'm like, yeah, it's okay. So then he calls me out in front of the director. Well, let me back up. So what happened? They made me the PRT coordinator.

Gary Wise 52:19

That's a bad idea, you should never be the prt coordinator I was already cfo qualified on prt.

Special Warfare Journey: SDV Team Experience

Dennis Polli 52:27

Yeah, he was going after. He was going after this one chief who should have been gone. This guy was probably 35, he was huge, yeah. But prt comes around, he failed. Coxo, couple of chiefs, all these people failed and I just put it all in the system and he goes hey, did you put that in the system? I go, yeah, but if you want me to lie, I can change it. He stormed out, ordered me to get a new scale and so when he called me out in front of this program manager, right, that came down from dc about doc, understand, you don't like it here. And I said well, sir, it's not that I don't like it here, I just, you know, I've done my time deployed. And he goes, what is it? And I go, we can talk, he goes, we're all family. I said, well, you're a hypocrite, I really don't respect you as my commanding officer. I just don't think we're a good fit. Yeah, and that was sort of game on man that's it.

Dennis Polli 53:30

Yeah, that's it, that's a wrap but I have made master chief at that time and when I they I went to the senior enlisted academy, came back, I made master. You know what he said to me. Now, I don't believe you made it. Once the senior enlisted academy came back, I made mass G. You know what he said to me? Now, I don't believe you made it. So now I'm a mass G and I called the detailer Right and I said hey man, you know, do I need to transfer what do I? You know what's up? He said they just built this new command in Little Creek. We want you to go to it. And I'm still medical right. So I went. It was NECC, but it wasn't called NECC when it first was Was it.

Dennis Polli 54:13

Riverines no, it was. I'll think of it, but at my cross country trip when I got there now it was NECC OK, so now I stepped into that bill. It is the force. Medical master chief.

Gary Wise 54:27

But was it river rains at that point, was it?

Dennis Polli 54:30

River rains was one component. It was EOD, river rain diving, mesg it was. It was. So what had happened? They took all the dogs and cats that really didn't have a TICOM and sort of pushed them all up under NECC as an expeditionary command.

Gary Wise 54:47

Okay, so that's where the force master chief that's like where Rick's training went to and stuff like that was NECC.

Dennis Polli 54:53

Right right, so he was the force for NECC. I was just medical at the time when I got there Force medical.

Gary Wise 55:00

Okay, so then how long are you? Is that a whole three year bill back in Virginia beach?

Dennis Polli 55:06

for. So what happened was I hear I'm sitting there as a force medical mass chief and about three months into my tour they said hey, we don't have a command mass chief, would you dual hat for a couple months? So all right. Three years later, four years later, I'm checking out. Well, three years as a CMC and a force medical and now I'm on my way to fleet forces.

Gary Wise 55:32

So back in those days was there CMDCMs in that warfare arena or was it like just collateral duty, like EODCMs? No, they weren't because they didn't even have eod cms, then right they didn't palm for the billet yet.

Dennis Polli 55:49

okay, so they were. It was in their, it was in their requirements, but they hadn't gotten the billet filled yet. So when they asked me to do it, they had a guy doing it. He left, he was an MA, then he left, and then they asked me to do it and I wound up staying there for four years.

Gary Wise 56:13

You know, I was talking with Lisa Tisdale the other day on this podcast and we were talking about unfunded billets. God, I hate unfunded billets. You know, nothing is worse than the united states navy telling you we know you need all these people and then we're not going to fund it right right, there's just nothing worse than that, man. And then they're going to hold you accountable to mission success while telling you in the exact same breath that we know you're short about X amount of bodies.

Dennis Polli 56:42

Right.

Gary Wise 56:43

Right, make that make sense, man. Like that does not. God, I hate that, right. God, I hate that. Anyway, I digress. So you got your first taste of the CMC roll there, right?

Dennis Polli 57:02

What did you like that taste? You know I want to say it didn't really. I was ambiguous at the time because remember now the navy I grew up in, the senior master chief command was command master chief, right, right. And so now here I am, sitting the seat, and both from the medical side and from the CMC side, trying to do things in the community where people would say, well, I'm senior to you or you know, throw that out, excuse me. And I had a. What was troubling for me was the shenanigans in the mess, the shenanigans and the mess. For the White Hats it was, hey, master Chief, it was no big deal Because I was already a Master Chief there and I was already working with them. But I'll give you a little example. So one day, admin, which they moved to the third floor I don't know why, but they did it in this building.

Dennis Polli 58:02

They had a bunch of paper like hundreds of boxes on these, these pallets there was no elevator in the building at the time, so we had to do the old-fashioned loaded up the stairs. So I come out and I see them loading this paper and I'm like where's your working party? So I just took off my boss and started helping them, right? Well then, when a couple of chiefs walked by and saw me out there, then it was hey, we got this, we got this. But if I hadn't been out there, they wouldn't just let him keep going.

Gary Wise 58:31

Yeah, they would let the one get carried all by themselves yeah.

Dennis Polli 58:35

But if I can digress just a little bit, I want to back up. But when I was an instructor in IDC school, the paradigm of leadership that really struck a chord. You had a commanding officer there and it was all about servant leadership and it did a real deep dive and that was what I sort of modeled the rest of my career on servant leadership. So if you take the pyramid right and flip it upside down, where you're holding the pyramid up and I always use that as my model of how you know. Again going back to how do I make my people successful? Do they have the tools to do the job? And that was always my biggest, foremost concern. You know, how do we get people what they need to be successful and how do we mentor them and instill in them the professionalism to pick up the torch.

Gary Wise 59:35

So would you say that so you had all your students when you were an IDC instructor at that special projects job? I mean, I don't know what that staff would look like, but would you say that that CMC role you filled at NECC was your first real taste at having a whole bunch of people organizationally underneath you that you were responsible for directly?

Dennis Polli 59:55

I think well that from a from a military perspective, like as the independent duty corpsman, you always have a lot of people you're responsible for right.

Gary Wise 1:00:08

For sure, medical readiness, all that stuff yeah.

Dennis Polli 1:00:11

But from a military perspective of.

Gary Wise 1:00:17

Like direct report.

Dennis Polli 1:00:19

Yeah, and I got to be honest. I had a real life-changing experience there, man. I had a hardcore, freaking chief of staff. I used to call him, and we had an award ceremony right, yeah, and it was sort of you know half-assed award ceremony. And he afterwards he pulled me. He goes if you can't get an award ceremony right, how the hell are you doing anything right? And that really hit a chord with me, man, and it became sort of a point of pride.

Dennis Polli 1:00:55

Well, a point of pride. But also later on it led to another interesting development in my career.

Gary Wise 1:01:01

Okay. So at NECC, was your boss an admiral or was it an 06? Had a two-star, Two-star, yeah, and the chief of staff was an 06,. Post-tour major commander yeah, okay, yeah, okay. And you know, because you know, the higher you go up in the food chain is where officers start to lose their attachment to their senior enlisted, at least in the Navy, right, and they start to get this bigger than now thing where I could hear him say those words to you, right, because I'm opposed to our major commander, I'm a wallet and he was.

Gary Wise 1:01:37

Yeah, I could see that. Was he a SWO? He was. Was he an EOD guy? He was.

Dennis Polli 1:01:40

SWO. I could see that Was he a SWO.

Gary Wise 1:01:41

Or was he an EOD guy? He was SWO, he was pissed off he was part of the NECC command. What's that? I was like he was probably pissed off. He was a part of the NECC command as a SWO.

Dennis Polli 1:01:53

Yeah, the original command was pretty eclectic but I got to tell you something that really the admirals that I had there probably one of the smartest for me that I thought most spot on admiral Admiral Pottinger. She was freaking on the money man of like business rules and you know enterprise rules and she listened. So, for example, we had all the rankings, the chief rankings, senior chief rankings, and then they always did a breakout where they let the department heads you know civilians and the department heads then do their own rankings.

Dennis Polli 1:02:37

So I went in and said, hey, can we not do that this year? Let's get them all in the conference room. Said, hey, can we not do that this year? Let's get them all in the conference room. I'll put the rankings up on the board and I'll speak to each person as to why they're ranked where they're at. I'll answer any questions in an open forum and then we should be able to move on and we can discuss anything. And I told them. I said I know this is just a recommendation from the mess, but I think it's better to have this face-to-face instead of them second guessing. So I had, uh, prior to that, I had the chief of staff called me in and he goes hey, can I talk to you, master? I'm a little concerned about the rankings because all the masters here what you know and I said before you insult me and go any further you're number one e7. Number one thief is a black female. Do we need to discuss this any further? No, I said, all right.

Gary Wise 1:03:26

Good for you. Good for you. So got the orders going to Fleet Forces Command coming out of NACC. Did you want to go to be a Fleet Forces or was it medical? Were you going there to be the Fleet Forces medical? For, like at that time was it considered to be first flea or not first fleet?

Dennis Polli 1:03:46

but it was still fleet forces at the time so what happened was I was at uh, I was at necc, right. So fleet forces from the medical perspective was our, our tycom right right.

Dennis Polli 1:04:02

And then we were to echelon three, I believe, because we were the tycoms right. So it was necc surf plant sub land, all the all the tycoms. So yeah, the guy who was sitting the seat calling me up, and I had orders already. I was getting penciled in to go to uh, I was supposed to go to siganella and then they wanted me to go to bahrain. So I was on, I was ordered, I was penciled in to go to bahrain to be the fifth fleet medical guy. And then I got a call from the guy at fleet forces and he said hey, would you consider putting a package in for this job? I said I don't know, man, I don't really qualify, I'm not a fleet sailor he goes I think you'd do well here.

Dennis Polli 1:04:55

When I interviewed for the job the admiral at the time good man, he's like what do you think your detractors are? I said I don't have the street creds. I've never done ship time. I mean, I've been on ships but I'm not a fleet sailor. And he asked me at one point. He said what's your pros? And I said well, sir, I'll tell you when your pants are down. I said I won't pull punches and we had a great relationship.

Dennis Polli 1:05:31

I went over there and but again going back to looping that story in, so I go back there now, my fleet forces and there was an award ceremony and person who was the command master? He wasn't around, so Mike Stevens was the fleet at the time. He goes. Hey, can you handle that? I said, yeah, no problem. So we had this award ceremony and that was when Second Fleet went away and started merging the fleet forces, right. So when they did this big ceremony they had a guy at the flagpole putting running up colors. While our flagpole was multi-directional, he started putting flag upside down. They pull it down, went to pull it back up, upside down again yeah, admiral harvey if you have not heard about admiral harvey.

Dennis Polli 1:06:20

he old school. So I think if he had a gun he would have shot the guy. He's yelling and screaming the bands. I mean this was a big deal, right. Yeah, so we had the award ceremony. That was on a Friday, thursday. Mike Stevens calls me on a Friday. He goes hey, you saw what happened at the Second Fleet ceremony and everything. I go yeah, that's unfortunate. Blah, blah, blah. He said Admiral Harvey wants you to be the command master chief. I said I'm very humble, not interested. I did that for three years. You have post-95, 80s in the command. Not interested, I did that for three years. You have post 95, 80s in the command. And he just said well, we're not asking. And that was it.

Gary Wise 1:08:13

You there? Thank you, okay. Okay, hey, can you hear me?

Dennis Polli 1:08:14

yeah, is that you or me? That's me.

Gary Wise 1:08:16

Oh, wi-fi dropped, okay, well, the good news is I was uh recording that, so hopefully I'm going to go back and check my recording here. Should be good up to that point.

Dennis Polli 1:08:28

Alright.

Gary Wise 1:08:29

Let me check my library here.

Dennis Polli 1:08:35

How can you? You're in the States, man. If anybody's Wi-Fi dropped, it should be me.

Rising Through the Ranks: Making Chief

Gary Wise 1:08:39

Alright, brother. My neighborhood has got problems when it comes to the Wi-Fi.

Dennis Polli 1:08:47

You haven't thought about Starlink.

Gary Wise 1:08:51

I've not gotten there yet.

Dennis Polli 1:09:01

Let me go back into the studio here. I still see your emblem up on the corner of the screen, do you? Mm-hmm? All right, I'm back. Can you hear me? Yeah?

Gary Wise 1:09:17

Yeah, all right, all right, all right, so we are back. I will have to make sure I get that edited when I do my editing. So they ask you to be the fleet master chief.

Dennis Polli 1:09:33

So be the command master chief for fleet forces For the staff CMC. Right.

Gary Wise 1:09:39

Okay, so you go to be the staff CMC. You know I could see where the Nick Ponder he's a fleet force of CMC could use somebody to help keep the cats and dogs.

Dennis Polli 1:09:47

Right.

Gary Wise 1:09:48

The way, so he's not getting into trouble. I mean, you know, I did a hit as a staff CMC, so I definitely see the need for that. Did you enjoy that?

Dennis Polli 1:09:59

It was interesting. It was a rough time. It was during a rough period and everybody was scared to talk to Admiral Harvey, but I he puts his pants on like everybody else, right, so if you went in there and you were halfway intelligent, you wouldn't get flame sprayed. But it was during the time when we were doing performance serve, okay, yeah, and so I think that was one of the hardest jobs I had to do was tell. So if you remember when we did that big rip and I had to go tell sailors that, hey, you know what? You've been a stellar sailor, you've done everything the Navy's asked for you to do you got to go home.

Dennis Polli 1:10:37

Yeah, I had a message that had us in awe.

Gary Wise 1:10:46

How do you think?

Dennis Polli 1:10:47

that affected us to today's current manning challenges. I think we did it to ourselves. Yeah, Because we didn't manage the communities correctly over the years. Okay, the performance serve, though, really bothered me from the mental health perspective, Because I talked to the admiral. I said you know, think about this. I got an E-5, two kids. He's a year out. His wife says where are we going? He says I don't know.

Dennis Polli 1:11:12

Now he's six months out and they still can't plan because they don't know if he's staying in the Navy or not right, yeah, the other interesting thing that happened during that time Rick West was the MCPON and I already knew Rick and so he had come to command so he would sit in with, like Fleet Stevens and all the TICOMs, and because I was the command master, he thought he'd get invited to the meetings. And he said to me he said, doc, what's on your mind?

Dennis Polli 1:11:45

And I always felt like, oh, you know, I I don't speak out here and all these big wigs. And I said, well, you know, my concern is that you have thousands, literally thousands of people on limited duty and you don't know where they are. Yeah, and he said, what are you talking about? I said, well, back in the day, if you were on limited duty, you were assigned to a unit at the hospital. So you were at one of the big hospitals on limited duty. You mustered. Every day you went to your medical points and we don't do that anymore, we do the 105 status. And I said, and so you have people that literally have checked out on the day. You just call in and you don't know where they're at. And he was like looking at me and so I called a friend of mine that was out in San Diego at the time. He goes.

Gary Wise 1:12:28

I got some guy just found out he's in.

Dennis Polli 1:12:30

Colorado, he's not even near here. So that's when they started implementing. What they did is reinforce the programs that are already supposed to have LIMDU coordinators command, which didn't have to be medical, just the point of contact for follow up and make sure people were seeing through their whatever they were doing.

Gary Wise 1:12:49

Yeah, and I'll tell you that limb do program is still a problem. You know, when I was in the Navy it was I mean, fortunately you didn't get a bunch of limb dues in Guam. And now I'm starting my base CMC job. But I've heard horror stories from other base CMCs that would just get all these limb do bubbles and not have nothing for them to do and be playing shenanigans with the hospitals. You know so.

Dennis Polli 1:13:13

I'll tell you one of the big issues I had in it. It sort of percolated up but we had a seven or eight females that showed up because they were all pregnant. They were on a carrier I think they were on the hike or whatever carrier they were on and they showed up and said man, so I put them on quarterdeck watch because they couldn't get into some areas because they didn't have security clearances.

Dennis Polli 1:13:34

Right, yeah. So they came into the office one day complaining about you know, being on a quarterdeck and blah blah, and I said and I had to heart to heart with them I said you know, the Navy invested a lot of money in all of you. You all went and got pregnant because you didn't want to be on the ship. And now you're off the ship. So your other shipmates are sucking up your duties because they're short. And now you're here and I said this is your job, this they're short. Now you're here. I said this is your job, this is your appointed place of duty. For now, get used to it. What had sparked that was I had to come up with a lactation station.

Gary Wise 1:14:17

I have been there. I have been there. You know I've been there. I have been there, I have been. You know I've been there. Oh my God, I remember I had these limited MAs and they couldn't arm up and I was like you know what I told the CEO. I was like I want to just re-rate them, right, right, if you're not going to be able to fit, if you're carrying a gun, then you need to change rates and we'll go ahead and get that going. That started getting a bunch of people pissed off at me. Boy, that was really what started getting me to have problems with all the MAs is because when I started saying we're going to re-rate people because they were doing things for the security forces, they just weren't standing watch. They were doing other things for them. But guess what? We need them to stay and watch, we need them to be on post, that's all we need Before we get ahead of ourselves and get on to there.

Gary Wise 1:15:10

is it during your Fleet Forces time that you decided to put in for the Command Master Chief program?

Dennis Polli 1:15:15

I didn't decide to. What had happened was.

Gary Wise 1:15:20

What had happened was.

Reflections on Navy Leadership Culture

Dennis Polli 1:15:22

I got called into a meeting with Fleet Stevens Glenn I forget Glenn's last name. In essence, I got called into a meeting with all of Matt CMCs from all the TICOMs, Okay, and was told that you've been riding this train too long Because I've been wearing that badge now going on five years, right.

Gary Wise 1:15:47

How many years were you in the Navy at this point?

Dennis Polli 1:15:51

24. 20, 24.

Gary Wise 1:15:55

Okay, so you've been a Master Chief now for a couple of duty stations, wearing a cookie right as a collateral duty senior enlisted leader, and now they're telling you basically um, they're about to make you an offer you can't refuse you pretty much.

Dennis Polli 1:16:08

And then I said, look, even if I wanted to, I don't have enough time to uh, do all the pqs and get everything done. And they pretty much got everything signed that day. And so there I am, I put my packaging.

Dennis Polli 1:16:22

I said we know a guy one thing what one of the reasons that I did sort of look at it was because of the way the CMC program in general was going. I realized if I didn't, I couldn't be in a position to facilitate any changes and my focus was still the hospital core. So if I wanted to think about being the force of the hospital core, or do I want to be in the towel in the basement, folding towels, you know?

Gary Wise 1:16:51

Yeah.

Dennis Polli 1:16:52

And so that was sort of the driver that I said all right, if I do this, that'll give me the chance to make a difference. Okay, chance to make a difference.

Gary Wise 1:17:03

Okay, so then, what was your first CMC duty station after Fleet Forces, I mean you? Got all this talent, they send you to Guam.

Dennis Polli 1:17:12

So what had happened was during the time of my. So this was interesting. So the Command Master Chief Billet at Pack fleet had opened up. Okay, so I went in and told fleet steven. I said hey, I want to put in for that billet. He said you can't. I said why not? I said I'm good enough to be your cmc here at a four-star command, but you're telling me I can't put it. He said it doesn't work that way. That's what I started realizing those little stuff going on in the community. Yeah, so now I'm in in the cmc course and I get called in and they said, hey, I have a guy who I know, who's struggling out in Guam, who could really use your expertise, because I was, you know, here I am now an expeditionary sailor for freaking almost 20 years, right. And so they sent me out here to be the CMC at CRG. Oh that's a tough one.

Gary Wise 1:18:23

Yeah, their morale was tanked I will tell you in the cmc community, the crg billet in guam is, in my opinion, top three most hardest, most difficult cmc jobs in the navy. Because of their mission set. It's freaking. They're all over the place.

Dennis Polli 1:18:42

Yeah, but you know it wasn't. I got to tell you, though it wasn't hard because of my spec ops, you know, being at SDV teams yeah.

Dennis Polli 1:18:53

I was in the small unit stuff, so I reformatted it. We had 144 deployers and instead of just what they used to do is, hey, we got this mission, who wants to go? And so you'd have people with 200 days underway and you'd have people who didn't deploy. So instead, what I did is I broke it down into 12 teams, or 24 teams of six, and five people deployed, one person stayed back as the touch point for the home debt, and you did everything as a team. Was this a?

Gary Wise 1:19:26

similar mission set like it is now, where they're essentially providing security. Yeah, same set, same set. I remember watching Mike Marler have that job, and that was just a bear man job.

Dennis Polli 1:19:40

That was just a bear man. When we reformatted it and did it in that capacity, you knew ahead of time. You knew that you were going to be deploying at this time, that this was your work schedule. It wasn't last minute stuff. At the same time we implemented this 96 for 96. 96 days alcohol free you got 96 hour liberty. 96 days alcohol free you got 96 hour liberty. We went like 712 days without an alcohol incident because it was all pure Right, it was pure driven. It wasn't me, don't screw us over. Ninety six, yeah.

Gary Wise 1:20:16

The other thing we did is every Friday.

Dennis Polli 1:20:18

We did a liberty intention sheet For everybody and so you know who would you contact. And one day somebody put my name down and the chief was a little upset and I go, I don't care, they didn't call me once, I don't know. Something happened. But the other thing that happened there there was an eye opener. So when I got there I told the guy that was the commanding officer, all I say said hey, we need to start doing quarters. We PT Monday, wednesday, friday, as a command, we should have quarters. He said well, what do I say? I said, well, good morning, we'd start there, you know.

Dennis Polli 1:20:56

So it was our first day of doing quarters and the khakis officers and chiefs were off to the side of the White House and so we break for PT and all the khakis are bolting. So I go to find the IDC, who I actually put through school. I said, mario, what are we doing? He goes well, they're broken, they're on permanent limb do or permanent limb do, no pt. I said well, I don't know what navy you're in with, that is not my navy. And if they're broken toys, we fix them and we get them seen. But no, that stops today. And they pt with us and they got to leave from the front. They said I'm the oldest guy out here, bro, I'm like 55. Yeah, I'm doing it, they're doing it with us. So when I started implementing those changes, the junior troops saw it and they were very accepting of hey, this guy cares so that helped.

Gary Wise 1:21:56

What year did you land on Guam? 2012. Okay, and that was I mean because during that was that the tour that you met, like Rolo and Stella and all those different players.

Dennis Polli 1:22:06

Rolo was in was first class when I got there. Yeah.

Gary Wise 1:22:09

Okay, what was Guam like in 2012 versus what it is now?

Dennis Polli 1:22:17

Just different. I don't want to say it was, you know, I mean it's growing, you know everything changes. But it was uh, it's pretty low-key as far as okay day-to-day stuff and it would seem like it was. I was more focused at the time at crg so I wasn't really into a lot of the command. I didn't get into the command stuff till after about a year and I started looking at the base. What's the base doing and how do we help the base?

Gary Wise 1:22:47

How was like technology and all that like Wi-Fi Internet, was it high speed it?

Dennis Polli 1:22:53

wasn't bad.

Gary Wise 1:22:53

It wasn't bad. Okay. I was in Japan 2010 to 2013, and I remember so I was in Japan. I was on GW for Tomodachi when all that happened, and I just remember that internet. I remember that being the first time over overseas where internet was actually a good connection with back home you could actually like facetime people or skype.

Gary Wise 1:23:19

Really it was like skyping or whatever it was um, I didn't do a whole bunch of that because I was underway a whole lot, um, but I remember that okay. So after you had three years at crg two, what happened?

Dennis Polli 1:23:34

you got pulled to go somewhere else I got called up from the force at necc because, remember, crg was part of the NEC enterprise Right. And so Jeff called me up and said hey, how do you like mom?

Gary Wise 1:23:51

Like I love it.

Dennis Polli 1:23:51

Man, I'm biking out here and you know cause I was still doing all the biking and runs and all that he goes. Well, we're standing up a CTF 75. We want you to stand it up, so, all right, I'll bite. Yeah, at that time I was at 28 years, okay.

Gary Wise 1:24:12

So you were the inaugural CTF75 CMC. Yeah, okay.

Dennis Polli 1:24:17

Plank owner there.

Gary Wise 1:24:19

Plank owner there, yeah, is that where you retired out of Right? Okay, plank owner there, yeah, is that where you retired?

Dennis Polli 1:24:22

out of.

Gary Wise 1:24:28

Right. So once you did a CTF 75, got all that going, why did you I mean, you're at 30 years Is that why you retired? You just were at 30 years in the Navy and it's time to go, or were you done?

Dennis Polli 1:24:37

No, it was interesting, so I was looking for another job. Okay, at the time I had, jj was still the CMC of the base JJ okay, right.

Dennis Polli 1:24:51

And so they had talked both of us into applying for the Korean billet you know, go to Korea and for the CTF billet. And so we both did it. And we both did it and we both interviewed out of my command because we had a Stu phone and everything, we didn't care, you know and so we interviewed and then it was interesting because that's when I learned how the CMC program really worked. So I go to Korea and now, you got to remember, I'm in the building doing the confidential breach and doing rock drills.

Dennis Polli 1:25:30

Admiral Franchetti was there, I'm talking to her, and then the Admiral from the CTF that we interviewed for was there and I said how's the new mass chief working out? And he goes well, I don't know him, I haven't met him yet and I go how the fuck did you pick a? I don't know him, I haven't met him yet, and I go how the fuck did you pick a guy you don't know? When you know me, right, yeah, and uh, that's when I really realized that it was things were, they were starting to gain things.

Dennis Polli 1:25:55

I already knew who was going in and billet, um, if, there were 10 packages, they only saw two and I just had a bad face in my mouth. I'll tell you all that stuff you know and I'm like. And so then, when I was getting ready to retire from there, so then I got a call about the Intel where Dave Graham went, the IG billet in DC Interviewed for that job. And Admiral, and I had a great discussion, man, good dude, and he said, and I respect him, he said you know, while we're having the conversation he said you and I think exactly alike, exactly. He said, and I think I I can't have that as my advisor, I need somebody who has a different perspective. He said a lot for me, but but I just this wouldn't. Everything would be skewed one way, right, and I understood that.

Dennis Polli 1:26:48

And then the final thing was they wanted me at one point to go to up to region oh, at Mariana's, and put a package in, and at the time Gio was McConn. We put a package in but it was just taking too long. Admiral Boulevard asked me if I'd come up to be her master chief until everything was sorted out and I said I'd love to, but my last day in the Navy, technically 30 years, like November 30th, yeah, and I got to think about me. I said, if you can do an extension like until March, regardless if they pick me or not, I said, but right now I got to worry about 30 years coming up, right yeah.

Gary Wise 1:27:31

I deployed.

Independent Duty Corpsman and Dive School

Dennis Polli 1:27:31

I was like still deploying up to like two weeks prior to getting out.

Gary Wise 1:27:36

Yeah.

Dennis Polli 1:27:38

Yeah.

Gary Wise 1:27:38

Yeah, yeah. So, since you already know how I feel about that whole thing as well, it's shenanigans, right, and they could try to act like there's a whole bunch of new systems or processes or whatever it is. But, brother, you could still track the admiral to the senior enlisted leader as they follow each other around the world. Yeah, or which I don't, I mean I got it. If that's your person that you like having near you, or whatever it is, so be it. I mean they do it with their flag riders, or you can. You know you talk to people behind the scenes and they'll tell you who's really in the hunt for it, and it's just disheartening for the people that don't get the opportunity to be in those conversations, you know.

Gary Wise 1:28:19

But, at least you got some interviews, because you got a lot of people that are just like what the hell? I'm not getting nothing.

Dennis Polli 1:28:27

I'm trying to think back. Who was the? I can see his face. I'm just losing his name. He was the corpsman. That was the McPom before Rick West. Oh man.

Gary Wise 1:28:41

Oh, the guy with the mustache, terry Scott.

Dennis Polli 1:28:43

No, I'm sorry, might have been after Rick Not.

Gary Wise 1:28:46

Rick Scott oh man.

Dennis Polli 1:28:46

Oh, the guy with the mustache, terry Scott.

Gary Wise 1:28:47

No, I'm sorry it might have been after Rick, Not Rick Scott Joe Campa brother.

Dennis Polli 1:28:51

Joe Campa. You know what they actually told our class. I asked a question. I asked a question like why do we even do this? Why is that the senior guy in the class in the command, the master? And they said we don't want another Joe Kappa.

Gary Wise 1:29:10

But you know what?

Dennis Polli 1:29:11

They never gave you a reason why.

Gary Wise 1:29:14

The deck place loved Joe Kappa. He just wasn't liked by all the insiders. Right, he was draining the swamp. He came to drain the swamp and that's my opinion. My opinion was because he was an outside pick, he wasn't a part. He didn't work his way up the ashes for 4-3-2-1 and be a part of this senior group. You know, like I knew, bro, when they start to get these little meetings where they really start to think that their shit don't stink excuse my language and they really think that they're the ones making policy, bro, you're not.

Dennis Polli 1:29:52

And it was sad to me over time because it appeared we became the animal. We were trying not to be that, we were trying to prevent.

Gary Wise 1:30:00

I will tell you that there is nothing more powerful than the unit level chief's mess, right? But when you start getting these people at these different tier levels who think that they're really in leadership positions and they're just advisors to flag officers, bro, you don't have anyone who works for you directly. And then they started bringing in these staff CMCs, which, I mean, like you already have shown, right, you were the guys, the staff CMC, taking care of the staff. I guess the idea behind this is you're supposed to be taking care of all those CMCs that are out there in Essex, right? But here's the thing they're not doing that neither, because they're too afraid to put themselves in the line of fire.

Dennis Polli 1:30:43

For their American keeps the politics, just so. I was sort of always. I always believed in doing the right thing. It might not be the popular thing, but I believed in doing the right thing and I didn't let the politics sway me. Now I would listen, but I didn't feel it was a good decision. I would voice my opinion, knowing that what I had to say was just a recommendation. It wasn't a, it wasn't my decision, but I would at least put it out there you know what taste really hit me in the mouth?

Gary Wise 1:31:16

that was sour is when I started having flag master chiefs tell me how important it was that they were aligned with the jag or the pao right, and I'm like you're more worried about what the jag and the pao say than you're worried about what the master chiefs are telling you from the deck plates yeah bro, that's a problem because their freaking jobs as the jag or the, unfortunately was weaponized to push narratives.

Gary Wise 1:31:47

Then you got these CMCs, who are more worried about being aligned with JAGs and PAOs than they were with the deck plates. And then here you go. You got a whole bunch of people that are freaking politicians and they're federal bureaucrats and wearing anchors.

Dennis Polli 1:32:03

They're just Well, the sad part? I think the sad part is that when you, when you turn that corner, you lose the perspective of the servant leadership. Right, if, if I'm not focusing on the quality of life and the mission readiness of my juniors yeah, because I'm too worried about who's parked in my parking place here then it becomes an issue. I really believe if you don't get out there, you lose touch. I'll give you one example of that here.

Dennis Polli 1:32:35

I am the medical mass chief of fleet at ECC and we're looking at all this gear and I got a guy that comes in and says, hey, I got this new bag and he's trying to sell me on the bag. And I said, brian, that's great, I think it's a great piece of kit. I'm not going to be carrying it. Let's go out to the different commands and talk to the E3s and E4s and let them T&E it. And he just looked at me. I said, if they like it even because when you're at that level you're just a walking checkbook, right Well, I'd have people come in and try to sell me stuff for second fleet. And I said, well, that's great, but I need second fleet to tell me they want it. I don't need you trying to sell it to me.

Gary Wise 1:33:18

Yeah, yeah.

Dennis Polli 1:33:19

And so letting the sailors have input into their gear and their mission readiness. That empowers them. Right? How do you empower them so they feel like, hey, I own it, I'm part of this.

Gary Wise 1:33:33

I will tell you that nothing is so. 7th Fleet, for example, right, I remember being on the deck plates and seeing all the TADs and seeing all the TDYs that we're using to cover all these gap billets. And this was happening when I'm on the ship Ashland down in Sassamo and we're down there being creative in their expeditionary strike group trying to make sure we're all able to go to sea. And I'm just thinking to myself like who the hell is managing all this crap, because you got all these damn NECs we got to have. Then I get pulled up and go to Seventh Fleet and I'm sitting in the room I'm thinking no one's talking about this, but of course this is after Fitz and McCain. And so now everyone's like freaking, oh my God, how is this happening, bro? Been happening.

Gary Wise 1:34:26

Nobody was talking about it from the deck plates because, no, I, just I I'm not here for it. Right, I'm not here for it, because it's just like the unfunded billet conversation. People were just shutting up and doing their best to make it work right, and everybody wanted to claim freaking, plausible denability. I remember I was in one meeting one time and they were up there mapping out the ops schedule for the whole fleet and we're in the Blue Ridge. We're in this freaking little room that they have all the officers in.

Gary Wise 1:34:55

And I'm like where's the Liberty Ports, bro? Where's their Liberty Ports? Where's their R&R Liberty Ports? For all these underway days that we were told that after Fitz and McCain, they were going to start to have less underway days or less up-tempo days or whatever it was, and you should have seen the looks, I got Like what the hell? Who are you? I'm just like I'm the staff. Mass chiefs I'm nobody, but I'm just like I just came from that ship. Master chiefs I'm nobody, but I'm just like I just came from that ship. And they're great, but they deserve as a liberty port, those marines want to go to liberty port somewhere.

Gary Wise 1:35:29

Yeah, we gotta be planning that crap out who's. And it was just I look at and then I watch people go. When you go from being freaking a type comp or like, say, you start off being like an air wing or a carrier master chief and then you go to being a fleet master chief or a ctf mass chief and a fleet mass chief and a force brother, you are part of the problem by that point. Right, you, you are just carrying the water all the way to the top and you're not. And here's the other thing. I know how you are behind closed doors when somebody doesn't agree with you and you throw a freaking temper tantrum, right, right, because you forget that we're all just chiefs in the chief's mess and you want people to kiss your ring because supposedly you get special access to the admiral. No, bro, you go in the same time as the jag does, at the same time as the pao that you're so worried about.

Dennis Polli 1:36:23

You know the reality of the big picture. You know I would tell the chiefs I said when we on the timeline right, we're at 250 years the Navy's been an organization.

Gary Wise 1:36:38

Yeah.

Dennis Polli 1:36:39

All of us were just a blip on that timeline and, at the end of the day, your legacy is not your shadow box. Your legacy is the people's lives that you touched, who became great sailors and continue to move forward and are still passing that down. When I get phone calls and messages from sailors that work for me as E3s, who are now chiefs, senior chiefs, master chiefs still thanking me and helping them out in their careers the mentorship piece that's really your legacy and I think people just lose that. They I don't know. I'm better.

Gary Wise 1:37:27

I don't have time, I will tell you. The other thing I have for this one before I'm done talking about it, though, is I feel very strongly that if you get put in the position to be an instant command master chief, your job is to not just to give advice to that freaking naval officer that you're attached to, but your job is to watch out for every one of the command master chiefs that are with your supporting commands, right, because if they get in a position with a commanding officer, that's a jerk, right, they have nobody except for you. And when you get people in those positions that are just cowards and politicians that are just worried about their next job, you get good people that get straight, just shillelagued, right. And I can tell you story upon story of good CFCs that got left out to dry. And when they're up when the master chief should have been walking into that freaking flag officer's office and saying this is not getting, that, that's not how this goes and making us think about it, no, they just, brother, just, it's okay, just retire, bro, it's okay, it's not a big deal, okay. But then they're worried about are they gonna get that next flag job or whatever it is, because they want to stay in the Navy longer. And I will tell you, when I started seeing all that, I was disgusted, and I still talk to people to this day. I was just on the phone the other day with a brother from the leadership mess. That was just raging over the phone, bro, because it ain't got no they're all scrambling right now.

Dennis Polli 1:39:04

I talk to people that same thing.

Gary Wise 1:39:07

They're all scrambling right now because it's all about to get gunky, gunked up. But I mean, ultimately, you know what, once you retire, you don't get no higher of a paycheck, bro, because you had a freaking flag officer as your boss, whatever, I guess, if you want to go work in dc. But how's that working out for all those gs, jobs, doges, cacking all those things away anyway? So when you retired from the navy, um, why did you choose to stay on guam as a retirement home, retirement location?

Dennis Polli 1:39:43

So I found Guam to be very family-centric and for Don and I, you know we had been here. Now she retired in 2014 and she came out, so we've been here together for two years, and then she's from philly, I'm from chicago and it's like, well, we don't like the cold, yeah, so we stayed and then I was managing well, you remember where I was living, in it on the bay and then they asked me to manage it that's right.

Dennis Polli 1:40:19

So while we were thinking about, hey, well, we'll figure something out, you know, so I was living there free, managing the complex, and then they brought me in as a training officer for the base. And then Okay, and so, and it was weird because I had only been retired from the Navy about maybe seven, eight months when I started that job. So it was almost like being a Master Chief again, going back in there as a training officer. But I knew all the players right, it wasn't like new ground. I knew all the players, everybody knew me as a Master Chief. So it gave me I think it gave me a leg up on the job. And so it gave me, I think it gave me a leg up on the job. And then we now retired. But there's really, you know, we're invested in Guam, we got properties out here where, when I look back and see some of the stuff going on in the States, there's nowhere I could say right now that I want to go move there.

Gary Wise 1:41:20

Yeah, now I would say Guam is great, as long as you don't mind being away from everybody. Right, that you want to see in the States? Right, I love Guam. That's a part of my heart. On Guam, I love the people, I love the community, I love the island, so I can see it, right. Plus, I love just being able to go out to the beach whenever I want to go down to the ocean. That my pool in my backyard, me and erica, we literally picked things that give the water the same color as the water in guam. Right, that was a hundred percent part of our purpose because of how much we love the island and we just wanted to. When we looked at our, when we look at our pool out of our back window, I want that color of water out my patio, right, because I mean walking out my house for all those years in apper, you could just look right out and see the ocean and that was.

Gary Wise 1:42:08

You can't, you can't make it up. Um, I think when you were the training officer for mvg, I don't think people understood how big of a job that really was. Right like that's. You were coordinating all those training areas, coordinating all those different things that was going on there, and then, oh, by the way, there's so much demand for what CNIC is tasked with in the world. That should not be CNIC's responsibility.

Dennis Polli 1:42:36

Absolutely Right Right.

Gary Wise 1:42:38

Absolutely. I loved Guam for so many things. God, I hated working for CNIC. What a freak Right behind my lack of taste for some of the senior enlisted leader positions. Whatever, cnic is another place that I think that the United States Navy needs to just reorganize that whole thing.

Dennis Polli 1:43:01

Right.

Gary Wise 1:43:01

My heart went out to Admiral Manoni when he ended up becoming the cnic admiral bro, because I know he had to hate that job right god, but cnic should I mean that should be. Honestly it should be. I don't know who should own that job. I mean I heard they restructured jrm a little bit to now give them a little bit more of an operational role.

Dennis Polli 1:43:28

Vice yeah, but there's some weirdness going on out here. They uh. So they got. They put an indo indo paycom build up there.

Dennis Polli 1:43:37

So you got a two star and a one star in the same building in the same building and I just I just found out about six, seven months ago no, about a year ago, I was in, uh, I was in at sugi and they're talking about moving a four-star into pay comp to at sugi and I said, well, how are you going to do that if you got a three-star at southern fleet? You know we'll be stepping on each other. I don't know where it's at in the process, but just some weirdness yeah, I'll did.

Gary Wise 1:44:08

Does the two-star get his own cmc as well as the one-star get his own cmc?

Dennis Polli 1:44:12

I would imagine. I mean really, you know, by doctrine I guess they're two separate entities, but all that stuff comes out of hawaii anyway.

Gary Wise 1:44:20

So I they probably gave the two-star like a Marine. That's what I would do, right, I'd give them a Marine by a sailor just to offset that, because now, with the Marines coming there, it just makes sense, right, yeah, okay, looking back on your time at MBG or looking back on your time after Guam, anything in particular that you want to hit on for that? Or are you just glad that it's all over as far as Just your career, your life in general? Because I will tell you, you were a major player when I got to Guam. You gave me a lot of advice, you, tim Moon, and just getting familiarized with the island and all that. But then after COVID I think that was after COVID, I think, when you kind of called it right, was that when you look, was that when you gave up being the training officer?

Command Master Chief Path and Challenges

Dennis Polli 1:45:07

Well, I was working with that, uh, the new OPSO, the Marine Colonel, yeah, and uh, we just didn't, we didn't click, and I just finally said, hey, man, if you're going to micromanage me, I said I worked on a four-star staffer I don't need you know, because he sort of where we used to go and sit on the meetings. We weren't allowed to go anywhere. He represented us. Nobody else had a word. Working with Ann Sweeney sort of wore me down. He was about the best E5 ever, said he's a good E5, just not XO material.

Gary Wise 1:45:44

I love the guy. Man, it's a tough place to work. Man, it was CNIC. It was a tough place to work.

Dennis Polli 1:45:54

It's interesting Now being here in Guam, I'm still doing some property management. Out here I'm getting involved with the uh couple of the senators and the congressmen on the va initiatives and veteran stuff.

Life After the Navy and Final Thoughts

Gary Wise 1:46:10

so working through the vfw and uh doing that I got, uh, I got, so I got captain grimes on tap. He's gonna be appearing on this pretty soon I'm excited for that conversation. I love the fact that he's up at Anderson Air Force Base right now as their executive director, Because all the crap that he left and I got put through for him because they didn't like him. But now it's poetic justice. He's on the island still kicking ass taking names.

Dennis Polli 1:46:44

I saw him at the wreath laying ceremony up at the VA cemetery and I was getting ready to go out of town. But I told him we need to catch up.

Gary Wise 1:46:56

I can't wait to have him on and just a talk shop with him and hear what his thoughts are. Hey is Trusted Traveler back off again.

Dennis Polli 1:47:04

Well, they raised the we're in Bravo. Now it was back on. It was back on, but now it's because of Bravo it's off.

Gary Wise 1:47:19

Hey brother, I appreciate your time. I'm going to wrap up real quick by doing some rapid fire question and answers and then we're going to call it okay, sure, all right, here we go. So if you had your choice, would you have pizza or wings?

Dennis Polli 1:47:33

Pizza or wings Wings.

Gary Wise 1:47:35

Okay, okay. Would you rather clean the barracks or would you have the worker party Clean the barracks?

Dennis Polli 1:47:45

Okay, clean the barracks, or would you have?

Gary Wise 1:47:46

the worker party. Clean the barracks. Okay, clean the barracks. Who would you rather see De Niro or Pacino in a movie?

Dennis Polli 1:47:53

Pacino.

Gary Wise 1:47:54

Pacino okay, what was your favorite? Is Guam your favorite duty station?

Dennis Polli 1:48:00

No, I love it, but.

Gary Wise 1:48:11

SDV team.

Dennis Polli 1:48:15

You started bouncing in and out again.

Gary Wise 1:48:17

What was your favorite duty station?

Dennis Polli 1:48:19

SDV team.

Gary Wise 1:48:22

That was in Virginia. Beach.

Dennis Polli 1:48:26

Here's why you show up in the morning in pt gear. You pt okay two, you know hour and a half. Take a shower, you put on pt gear and spend the rest of your day doing whatever you go okay I mean it was pt fitness heavy. So that was yeah, correct, uh.

Gary Wise 1:48:41

Throughout your career, what was your favorite Liberty port, favorite place to go on Liberty man? Spain road to Spain. Okay, what was the hardest watch qualification you ever had to get?

Dennis Polli 1:49:03

when I got my Dolphins.

Gary Wise 1:49:05

Okay, that makes sense.

Dennis Polli 1:49:09

When I finished my board, I had a three-hour board and I felt like I was two inches tall and I actually apologized to them for wasting their time, okay.

Gary Wise 1:49:20

I think I know the answer to this one. I'm going to ask you anyway Would you rather be overseas or stateside in the Navy?

Dennis Polli 1:49:27

Overseas.

Gary Wise 1:49:28

Okay, would you rather be independent duty or on a team?

Dennis Polli 1:49:36

Man, that's a hard question. I like independent duty but I like the camaraderie of teams, so that's sort of a hard choice.

Gary Wise 1:49:48

So the next question is your personal leadership philosophy. But I think I know that you're going to say servant leadership, yep. So you know, for Chiefs Mesh, chiefs Initiation, we've got deck plate leadership, institutional expertise, professionalism, technical expertise, character, loyalty, active communication, sense of heritage, right.

Dennis Polli 1:50:16

Out of that dip class.

Gary Wise 1:50:22

I order which one's your favorite Debt plate leadership. I love it Awesome. Okay, so would you rather lead or follow?

Dennis Polli 1:50:32

Well, to be a good leader, you got to be a good follower. Okay, you got to be able to follow Yep.

Gary Wise 1:50:38

All right man. Do you have any saved rounds or alibis?

Dennis Polli 1:50:42

Yeah, there was one last thing I just wanted to share about sort of leadership. When they implemented a policy on the base, here they were doing when they were having the uptick in sexual assault, they instituted this chief's watch bill for barracks and you know, basically you walk through the barracks, tnts, sort of like short retreat on the base right.

Gary Wise 1:51:09

Yeah.

Dennis Polli 1:51:09

So the very first night, the very first duty, I told JJ that I'm going to take that watch. And JJ's like, well, you're a freaking command mass chief. I said, yeah, but how do I have my chiefs stand to watch if I can't even explain it to them? I said, well, I'm going to do the very first one and see so we can make sure we got our heads around us. And everybody was like blown away. They were like, really, I'm like, yeah, not a big deal. You're going to ask somebody else to do it. You might as well be out there doing it with them, Right, yeah, and one other thing, before we go, when you drive to Jacksonville and you go through the gate, and if there's an active duty sailor on the gate, yeah, you roll up to him and as you give me your id, I want you to look at them and say who you are warrior or what's up warrior, and watch what happens.

Dennis Polli 1:52:11

They stand a little taller. They'll even smile, because they don't. Nobody explains to them their relevance and importance of the job. And just those two words who you, you are warrior. When you see them, watch the change in their spirit, it's amazing.

Gary Wise 1:52:28

For sure, man, I will tell you that it's agreed 100%. You know, I'm blessed. I get to see this every day with these cadets, with these kids that are coming through my program and anybody. They just want that recognition, right. And, and I agree, gate guard is is a tough duty station, especially with all the civilians that are intermingled in there and there's just so much conflicting energy, right. So, yeah, for sure I. It was a. Without a doubt, one of the hardest things I ever did as a cmc was to love and care for the MAs, right, because that's a tough rotation to try to take care of.

Dennis Polli 1:53:13

I lost IQ points. I had 144 MAs, so my IQ dropped 10 points. Working with you guys.

Gary Wise 1:53:20

You should have seen me trying to do the math of the watch bill rotation for the gate guards, right. I I was like, I still advocate that I think freaking necc should own all the installation security, yeah, all the installations and that all the mas that are a part of crg should be doing wet side and dry side security forces period, blank right. And then I think we should get rid of the GSs because they're just doge. The doge needs to cut all them loose, right? That's my advice, because you got GSs that can't even freaking pass a PFT, right, and they're going to really anyway, I digress, brother.

Dennis Polli 1:54:03

It was good talking to you, man, it was good man, I've got to catch up and uh, bless you for what you're doing with them young kids, man, if you change one person's life, it's worth it oh, all day long, man.

Gary Wise 1:54:13

These kids are freaking amazing, man. I have, like I told you, I had 10 of them down at a drill camp. Today. They're on summer vacation, they don't have to be going to drill camps and leadership training camps.

Gary Wise 1:54:26

I heard them say they were going to put a new ice facility on Camp Blanding in Florida, where we spent last week at. They better go walk those spaces before they start putting those freaking people there, because where they had me and my cadets sleeping they're going to get in trouble if they put a bunch of freaking dudes from Venezuela there. That's all I'm saying. Hey, do you compete against Rolo? No, rolo's up in Pensacola in a different area.

Dennis Polli 1:54:51

Okay, so you guys don't compete in any of the.

Gary Wise 1:54:53

No, not any of our competitions or nothing. But you know, I would tell you, rolo's my guy man. He's on my list to get him on here as well. Nice, and he's on my list to get him on here as well. Nice. I remember when he was in Bahrain trying to figure out what he was going to do after the Navy and I was like bro, you need to go ROTC. And I'm glad he did it, man, because he got himself a good position. He's doing great things.

Dennis Polli 1:55:17

Nice.

Gary Wise 1:55:18

Yeah, so all right, bro, I appreciate you, man. Hey, tell Donna, I want to get her on here next.

Dennis Polli 1:55:24

I know she said she wanted to listen to see what kind of questions you're asking.

Gary Wise 1:55:28

When is this thing?

Dennis Polli 1:55:29

broadcast.

Gary Wise 1:55:31

I'll probably put it up later on tonight. I got to chop out some of those things that we cut out here and there and then it'll go out everywhere that my podcasts are played on, so you can, anywhere you could, apple podcasts, whatever it is, and then I'll put it up on YouTube. If not tonight, I'll do it this weekend when I get back from the retirement, no worries.

Dennis Polli 1:55:50

But when your podcast, so I can go back there and like pull up Lisa and everybody else and there's like a library, awesome, yep All right brother.

Gary Wise 1:56:16

All right, very cool man. Peace, talk to you soon. Yep, bye, they just don't get it. I think they forget I'm not done till I'm on top.

Dennis Polli 1:56:22

I know, I was born for this, I know.

Gary Wise 1:56:28

I was born for this. I believe. I believe we can write a story.