Burn The Playbook - B2B GTM Strategies with Marc Crosby

Leadership Under Fire: The Framework for Leading When Everything’s on the Line

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Leadership Under Fire: People, Process, & Persistence | Joseph Polanin - Founder Alaka'i Group

Episode snapshot
From special operations to the boardroom. Joe shows how vision, strategy, and talent work only when they work together. We cover hiring for values, over communication that actually builds trust, killing silos without calendar bloat, and taking prudent risk instead of chasing a zero-defect fantasy.

Highlights

  • Vision people love: Keep it short, bold, and shared. Maximum two sentences. State the future as a “we will” outcome, not an aspiration.
  • Stop the technical hero worship: Great operators aren’t automatically great leaders. Hire for values and culture fit, then teach skills.
  • Over communication that lands: Tight say-do alignment, clear themes, the right channels for distributed teams.
  • Silos to unity: Simple cross-functional cadence. Each lead shares wins and asks for help on 1–3 blockers. Results, not theater.
  • Prudent risk: Know why you’re taking it, what you don’t know, and back your people when they act with intent.
  • P3 System: People, Processes, Persistence across four phases: Discovery → Initial Assessment → Strategy Development → Implementation.
  • Rapid Fire: Burn It or Build It: Culture starts at the top (build), return-to-office mandates (burn), accountability as an always-on mindset, leaders who listen, rewards that are prompt, appropriate, and public.
  • One behavior to double execution: Do less, think strategically more. Put it on the calendar. Involve other leaders.

Timestamps
00:30 Intro and Joe’s background
02:11 Military principles that do and don’t translate
04:18 The trap of technical proficiency in leadership
07:32 Writing and deploying a real vision
11:50 Pulling vision through the org without a say-do gap
14:30 Hiring for values and culture fit
18:06 Prudent risk vs zero-defect culture
21:49 Killing silos with a simple operating cadence
27:51 The P3 System and four-phase approach
32:31 What breaks most: people, processes, or persistence
42:01 Burn It or Build It
49:31 One behavior to change this quarter
52:03 Where to find Joe

Who this helps

  • CEOs and COOs leading change in mid-market and enterprise
  • Functional leaders stuck in silos who need cross-team momentum
  • HR and Talent leaders hiring for leadership impact
  • Veterans moving into civilian leadership roles

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Views expressed are our own and do not represent any organizations

© 2025 Digital Rebels Consulting. All rights reserved.


Digital Rebels Consulting (00:30)
Welcome in. I'm Mark Crosby. This is Burn the Playbook. My guest today is Joe Palanen, an award-winning CEO, combat veteran, and bestselling author who has spent his career leading high stakes transformations in complex environments. After 30 years in the U.S. Navy's special operations, more than two decades of that in command leadership, he's brought the same discipline, vision, and execution to the private sector. In 2020, Joe and his daughters launched the Allakai Leadership Group, a firm built on one core idea.

vision, strategy and talent are inseparable. Today, Allakai helps mid market and enterprise companies across industries, technology, healthcare, engineering and government navigate major growth and transformation. Their clients are projected to generate over $12.7 billion of cumulative revenue over the next four years. And Joe's leadership philosophy sits at the center of that success. Welcome in Joe.

Joe Polanin (01:23)
Mark, thanks so much for having me and thank you for that very, kind and gracious introduction. I'm not sure who it was that you were saying all those things about, but if I had a small part in that, I'm glad to be part of that team. So thank you very much.

Digital Rebels Consulting (01:37)
Awesome. Pleasure to have you here. And I'm excited to unpack all your leadership insights and kind of your journey over the last 30 years, the Navy, the last five years of ⁓ entrepreneurial, ⁓ you know, business that you developed. I'm curious, at least from the outset, because I've made that transition from the military to ⁓ civilian life myself in the private sector. I'm curious, what sort of leadership principles did not necessarily translate from the military?

Joe Polanin (01:58)
Yeah.

Digital Rebels Consulting (02:07)
⁓ to the private sector when you started your own business.

Joe Polanin (02:11)
Well, I would say that there weren't any that jumped out that said that they didn't translate well. There were some that ⁓ I had to think really carefully about how they translated. And when I had that conversation,

and brought that resource or that principle to bear, how did that get implemented? For example, within the Navy, we value the intrinsic leadership of our senior enlisted. I like to refer to our senior enlisted leaders, especially the chiefs mess within the Navy, as the fulcrum of leadership.

and excellence within any successful high-performance organization. So you know those kinds of individuals who, when something is successful, they're always involved in it.

And when there might be a problem coming down the pipe, they're the ones who are in a unique position to identify it and stop it before it becomes a big issue. A lot of organizations, have elements like that, but they don't have that necessarily direct translation. So early on ⁓ in my venture into the private sector, I had to think about how that would translate well and how I did

that was, I very simply said, know, everything we do is about people. They are our indispensable capability. They are the heart and soul of every great organization. So if you take out the word senior enlisted and you replace it with middle management or you replace it with divisional or sectional team leader, same concept. So it wasn't difficult, but that one took me the longest.

Digital Rebels Consulting (04:03)
Gotcha. You've worked with a lot of large corporations and fractional CEO, CEO capacities. ⁓ What is something that you typically see as a best practice and corporate leadership today that leaders just need to get rid of?

Joe Polanin (04:18)
Well, there has been a consistent theme. One is something to get rid of and one is something to do better. There's a consistent theme that I've seen that there's an over reliance on technical or technical knowledge and proficiency. So, for example, to be a great leader.

Maybe your technical skills, your proficiency, your education, your qualification, that got me in the door.

But because you are excellent at one particular field or because you have a certain high level of proficiency or qualification, that does not necessarily mean that by default you will be a great leader. I'll tell you story. I was working with a company in biotech and they said, well, what we're really looking for is we're really looking for someone who has 18 years of experience in biotech and three PhDs after their name.

I said, okay. I said, please understand that there were probably some very fantastic leaders out there. But if you are only looking in that particular field, you may not find the best person from the job. You're only going to find the best person for the job from within that very finite small group. Think about Carnegie. What did he know about steel? Nothing. He wasn't even interested in steel.

Digital Rebels Consulting (05:48)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Polanin (05:51)
But what's he known for today?

So leadership isn't about technical knowledge. And I have seen a trend of an over reliance and an over acceptance of because an individual has a certain degree of proficiency or technical knowledge. That means they're going to be a great CEO or they're going to be a great leader. And it's not not necessarily true. ⁓ So that that that has come up. The other thing that's come up very systemically, you mentioned it at the onset, which is what we're focused on at al-Aqsa.

that synthesis and that interdependence between vision, planning and people. I have seen it very often come up in many companies, multiple industries and sectors, where there is a systemic disconnect. They might have a great vision, but they don't have a great plan. They might have a terrific plan that they paid a company a lot of money to develop and write and it sits on the shelf and gather dust because people don't understand it. They don't love it.

⁓ Or they have the vision and they have the plan, but people are disconnected and there's an element, there's a loss of intensity, there's a loss of value, there's a loss of a sense of ownership. The passion, the energy and the enthusiasm to say, know what, this isn't the boss's vision, this isn't the CEO's plan, this is mine. I own it, I love it, I'm excited about it and you know what, I'm losing sleep tonight because I'm so excited. I get to come to work tomorrow and do that.

When a company has that, whether it's a team of two or a team of 20,000, that's a rare and special thing. Hang on for the ride.

Digital Rebels Consulting (07:29)
Yeah, that's actually my next question as far as ⁓ a vision statement. ⁓ Does it matter how big the company is? What should a vision statement look like? If you're a team of two or if you're a hundred thousand strong, what does a vision statement look like? How should it be formed? How often should it be revisited? Is something that should be plastered all over the walls or how do you deploy it?

Joe Polanin (07:32)
Hmm.

⁓ So there's a lot to unpack there, but I want to start here. It has to be short. It has to be bold. And people have to love it. Love is not often the word that is used in business, but I'm going to use it a lot. Okay?

⁓ It has to be short. It can't be a page long. It can't be a paragraph long. Maybe maximum two sentences. It's got to be so short, but yet it has to say whatever your time aperture is or whatever your goal is, here's where we want to be in the next five years and here's what that future state looks like. When we get there, because we will get there, when we get there, here's what success looks like.

It's not, I intend to do this, I will do that, we want to do this, we aspire to do that. I've seen a lot of companies make a mistake by including words like that in there. If I aspire to do a lot of things, that doesn't mean I'm gonna get them done. When you say, we will do this, and here's what the future looks like, that's powerful. Number two, it has to be bold. It has to be so audacious that people go, wow.

Really? That's what you're going to do? I remember vividly and I reflect often back to President Kennedy saying, we're going to put a man on the moon in this decade, not because it's easy, but because it's hard. That's all he had to say. He didn't sit there and try to figure out all the answers. He didn't sit there and try to figure out all the hows. He had NASA for that. But the boldness of that statement was like a rallying cry.

that generated what, that third element that people fall in love with it.

And it's not someone else's vision, it's our vision. We love it, it's ours, it's our shared vision, we understand it, and we love it, and we're passionate about it. And that's what I have seen, that the most successful vision statements are short, they're bold, and people fall in love with them. An example, like you said, ⁓ why are you doing what you're doing? You wanna be, if you're in engineering,

engineering

and manufacturing. Well, maybe you want to be the best engineering firm in your field. Maybe you want to innovate better than anybody else. Maybe you want to develop certain products that nobody else is developing. So it definitely shouldn't be something that is just kind of written down and said and that's it. It should be something that does a lot of strategic thought placed into it. Because to answer the last part of your question, it should not be something

that you revisit too often. It should be something that is so bold and so audacious and so wonderful that people fall in love with that yeah you can put it up on the signs in the wall but if you do you better live it.

And every fiber of every leader and every manager's being, all day, every day, better be singularly focused with unity of effort about the actions that they take every day, lead up to and support that vision. Because if they don't, the words on the paper on the wall won't mean anything. And I know you know what I'm talking about there.

Digital Rebels Consulting (11:15)
Absolutely. I think that, ⁓ you know, in the military, a lot of that's just kind of just maybe forced and driven into you as far as what that vision is on a regular basis. And eventually it kind of becomes you as far as who you are, what you do, and you start to live and breathe that vision statement. I don't know, and I haven't really seen it in the corporate world, as far as that translating down to middle management, translating down to the people who are running the business. So how do you pull that through as far as the vision statements?

the leadership principles down through the rest of the organization in an effective way.

Joe Polanin (11:50)
Yeah, thank you. There's a word I'm going to use and I don't want it to sound ⁓ like it's too out there, but I love it and it's called over communication. So over communication is not repeating yourself to the detriment of what you're trying to get across, right? Because the leader or the manager who starts to sound like a broken record, guess what? They won't have credibility, they won't have trust. But.

Overcommunication is we're going to be very consistent in our themes and messages. Everything that we say is going to match up with what we do, right? There's no say do gap. If a leader says something, they do it and it lines up with the vision.

people get inspired by that. People start to build trust that way and they say, okay, I know this person. I know they believe what they're saying and oh, by the way, they did it because I saw it last Tuesday. And then there's a consistency that comes with that, that you're using all means of communication that are available to you to reinforce that theme. So if it's an enterprise of 25,000 people operating in 80 countries, okay,

you're using multiple means that the vast majority of people you need to lead are not in your zip code or in your time zone. So you're using some different means. You're using meetings like this. You're using email. You're using newsletters. You're using all types of written methods, right? In addition to reinforcing it at team meetings. And then the last thing that I've seen that has worked really well, because we could probably have another session just on this one topic because it's so important. But another thing

that I've seen that's worked really well is taking the vision and taking the goals and sort of flipping them upside down and saying how are we going to make sure that it's never perceived as one individual or one person's goal but it is perceived and it is understood and it is loved as the grassroots and the whole team's goal. When people start using words like we instead of I, we instead of they,

them an hour instead of anyone else's, then you know you've turned the corner and as you said you've kind of pulled it through that leadership chain.

Digital Rebels Consulting (14:14)
That makes sense. And then how do you, you talked a little bit about qualifications for a job when we first started talking. So how do you hire, I guess, and for large organizations when there's a job requirement and there's also that vision and the culture that you're trying to, to hire for. And I guess how do you balance that in a tough, I don't know, hiring environment? Are you hiring for the job or are you hiring for the person and that fits into the culture and the vision statement?

Joe Polanin (14:30)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I will answer that by telling you a short story from a colleague who I respect greatly. And he said to me, you can teach someone new skills. You can teach them new capabilities. You can send them to a school to get additional qualifications. You can't teach someone to care. You can't teach someone to be curious.

You can't teach someone to be humble and you can't teach someone to want to work on a team.

This same colleague said to me, know, if you're an individual who likes to work by themselves and, you know, does doesn't really like to interact with others, ⁓ then you might or might not be successful. But if you're the kind of person that says, you know what, I'm not the smartest person on my team. I know that there are lots of other people around me that are better, smarter, stronger, faster, more capable than me. I have lots of things to learn from them. And we're going to go much

further together if we all realize that and we all harness one another's unique skills. Now translate that into the answer to your question. Yes, certain positions there is a certain level of ⁓ academic, technical or qualification minimum standards that are needed. Absolutely understood. I view that as a minimum

that gets somebody in the door to have a conversation. When I'm hiring and I'm having that conversation and I'm advising others who are in positions to hire, I'm looking for a value alignment and a culture fit. I don't spend time asking them about their degrees or their certifications or the multiple letter codes after their name.

I spend time asking them about what motivates them, what their core values are, what they stand for. And I ask them questions like, why do you love the core values of our company? Why are you so fired up to join our company? And how would you describe the culture of our organization? Because if there isn't a values alignment and there isn't a culture fit,

It may be six days later or it may be six months later, but all the qualifications and all the technical and tactical acumen in the world won't matter because guess what? Sooner or later, that person's boss or that person will become dissatisfied because they're working in an organization that they don't fit the culture. And that's okay. It's better that that's identified before the person's hired than it is after they've been there for a while. So values and culture, most important to me.

Digital Rebels Consulting (17:33)
What are your thoughts on, um, like people taking risk and, you hear the, guess the phrase failing fast and, you know, you learn from your failures and all that. And I've been in those interviews where they're typically asking questions about, me something that failed and, know, and how was a colossal disaster and how did you fix it? Is that important for you when you're looking to hire somebody or you're looking for.

Joe Polanin (17:47)
Mmm. Sure.

Digital Rebels Consulting (17:54)
I don't know, creating alignment across groups as far as what the failures are, or I guess encouraging them to fail by taking risk. Is that important to you? Or you think that's overstated in the, I don't know, in corporate today?

Joe Polanin (18:06)
I think it's important because I feel like there are a lot of organizations that have, and please correct me if you have a different viewpoint, or I'd love to hear your viewpoint, but I feel like too many organizations have what I refer to as a zero defect mentality. There is no such thing as perfection. There is only progress in the direction of excellence. That's it. Now, the way I look at it,

is I say we don't want to eliminate risk. What we want to do is we want to take prudent risk. So any company, any industry, any sector, when have you ever had, you're a decision maker. When have you ever had perfect information? When have you ever had everything you need to know at the exact time and place when you need to know it to make a perfect decision? No, nobody does.

Digital Rebels Consulting (19:01)
Really.

Joe Polanin (19:02)
⁓ So what I am a fan of is I am a fan of taking prudent risk. We're not haphazard. We're not taking unnecessary risk. We know what we know. We know what we don't know. And we know what we're striving to go out and get. We take the best possible information based upon the right time, the right place, and we make the best decision as we can at that point. And we understand the risk we're taking and why.

If we don't understand the risk that we're taking and we don't understand why we're taking it, then we're making a bad decision. So I'm a fan of those individuals who say, know what?

I am not going to just launch headlong in the wrong direction on the highway. I'm going to understand the risk I'm taking. I'm going to understand why I'm taking it and the potential consequences. And then with the support of my leadership, I'm going to take well-intentioned prudent risk because I would mark, would always much rather work with someone who has taken

a well-intentioned step in the right direction with their heart and their ethos in the right place, aligned with the values and morals of the company or with the team or with the organization. Take a well-intentioned step in the right direction and make a mistake and fall down. I'm going to support that person all day long because they did it with the right intentions and guess what? We all learned from that. We've all done that. We've all been there. So take prudent risk. Understand why you're taking it. And then when

When somebody makes a mistake, they know, guess what? My leadership team is going to back me up. That doesn't always happen, and that's a very important aspect of this.

Digital Rebels Consulting (20:47)
Yeah, was just going to say that last part is your leadership will back you up as probably the most important aspect of that. Typically what I found in corporate is that the requirement for someone failing and taking risk is appreciated maybe like in a job interview, but when it comes to the day to day, they're a little bit less tolerant for risk. And especially as I think a lot of ⁓ leaders in business and I don't blame them at all is that they're probably in a job for a couple of years. They want to minimize the risk and not.

take too many steps outside the boundary, to speak, regardless if it's a.

99 % sure, but if it's something we haven't done before, then I'm not really sure if I want to do that. Let's just kick the can down the road perhaps. and so that's where I think there's typically a misalignment as far as, I don't know, wanting somebody who takes risk and I guess having some sort of innovative mindset and then actually deploying it is it's, don't know. That's typically what I see. Maybe you see the same thing from time to time and working with some of the businesses that you have. ⁓ but they're just typically not in alignment. I guess along the same lines as far as,

Joe Polanin (21:40)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, you're right.

Digital Rebels Consulting (21:49)
alignment, typically, at least in my consulting business and a lot of the spaces that operate as far as sales and marketing and executive leadership, we talk about the operating in silos or our teams are misaligned and sales is not aligned with marketing. And we can talk about that every single day and nothing will change. How do you create alignment within an organization ⁓ that's, that's effective and not just checking a box.

Joe Polanin (21:54)
Thank

Yeah, you used a very powerful word there and that's silos. A lot of organizations I found there's comfort in silos because there's a little bit of assurance, there's a little bit of this is what I know, this is the lane I'm in, I'm not deviating from the lane. ⁓ The best ways that I've done that ⁓ to create what I refer to as unity of effort, right, I'll use the analogy of the crew team.

I did not row, but I had a lot of friends that rowed crew. And if you think about, think about the Vogue crew. Well-honed athletes, a lot of strength, a lot of speed, a lot of endurance, a lot of coordination. They're rowing in unity. They're very powerful. They're very fast. And they know they're going to cross that finish line first. And they're all facing backwards.

because they cannot see that gold line. But there's one person who can see that finish line and that's the coxswain. So the simplest way that I have found that's been very effective to do that, and it might sound too simple, ⁓ is just having people sit down and talk to one another. I was advising and consulting for a manufacturing firm about five years ago. I was their fractional chief operating officer. And I was having a conversation with the CEO

Digital Rebels Consulting (23:15)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Polanin (23:42)
And I said, ⁓ okay. I want to emphasize by saying I am not a big fan of meetings. Okay. I'm the person that will cancel 80 % of the meetings if you let me, because I'm a big fan of results. But this particular company had a lot of silos going on. So I knew that. And I had a conversation with the CEO. said, well, do you have a staff meeting? no, we tried that once. It didn't work.

Digital Rebels Consulting (23:52)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Polanin (24:08)
I said, OK, so when does your attorney talk to accounting? he doesn't.

okay, when does operations talk to training? Yeah, they don't do that either. How about sales and marketing? No, they're pretty much to themselves. I said, ⁓ okay, here's what we're gonna do. I said, we're gonna have a meeting. Everybody's gonna introduce themselves or reintroduce themselves. They're gonna talk about one to three things that they did that were important for the goals of the firm, and then they're gonna talk about one to three problem areas, but they're only gonna talk about problems where they need help from the other people in the other silos.

And that's it. And then when we're done with that meeting, we're going to provide you an outbrief. ⁓ And we'll go from there. We did that for about four weeks and he came back to me. He was like, wow, this is the greatest thing since sliced bread. said, it really isn't that hard. It's just, it's amazing what happens.

When you've gone out of your way to bring great people into your organization and then you create an environment that is fueled by mutual respect where they can talk to one another and all of a sudden those silos go away and as a good friend of mine like to say when you have lions don't keep them on a leash and very often we bring in these great people these lions of leadership and management that are super in their own areas and then we put them in a silo. No. ⁓

Digital Rebels Consulting (25:29)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Polanin (25:32)
Let them work together and let them create that unity of effort, that rowing mechanism for themselves.

Digital Rebels Consulting (25:39)
example, you're just talking about what was the frequency and I guess the timeframe as far as those meetings, like how long was the meeting? How often did you meet? it every day? Was it once a week? What did that look

Joe Polanin (25:48)
So because, in this unique circumstance, because this particular group didn't have anything going on, we used to meet about once a week.

to kind of get everybody back to a relationship and kind of understand the flow. And once the flow was down and people were really focused on what they could do together as opposed to what they were doing in their own group, we backed off to about once every two weeks. And then what would happen is ⁓ either we would debrief the CEO after to get his guidance or he would come into those meetings.

maybe once a month, sometimes more frequently, to kind of rub elbows with the team. But that was our free, that's what worked for us, that's what worked for that team at that time. I would suspect that, you know, it's a little different probably in each organization, but that was our cadence.

Digital Rebels Consulting (26:44)
Sure.

Yeah, that makes sense. It's amazing the possibilities of what can happen when you talk to each other.

Joe Polanin (26:52)
I'm telling you, simple, right? Bob,

talk to Sally. Sally, do you know Tom? No, no.

Digital Rebels Consulting (26:58)
Yeah, it doesn't seem that hard, but I think those are typically the

problems that we see in organizations is that, uh, I don't know, there's too many meetings, but at end of the day, we don't talk enough, which kind of seems at odds. And as far as just what that means, but it's true. There's a lot of meetings, uh, that, uh, had nothing accomplished and the right people typically aren't talking to others in the organization to get, uh, anything done, or at least to understand from their perspective, typically, at least in my business, it's.

Joe Polanin (27:10)
right.

Digital Rebels Consulting (27:23)
putting yourself in your customer's shoes and understanding what it looks like to do business with you. And typically businesses don't do that. A lot of the problems are simply internal as far as just understanding how things are connected to one another, how people can benefit and help each other, having a different perspective, which I think is always good just to have a, from a consultant lens is having an outside perspective. So imagine if you could apply the same principles internally.

Joe Polanin (27:30)
Mm-mm.

Digital Rebels Consulting (27:47)
and just getting the right people in the same room. It doesn't have to be very long. It could be 15 minutes, but at least, hey, what's going on in your world? Tell me what's going on in mine and let's see if we can fix something. Tell me about the P3 system you created.

Joe Polanin (27:51)
Nope.

Yeah, people, processes, and persistence. So this is a proprietary methodology of our own design at Allakai. I took it from the best practices and lessons learned of my military experiences.

So best practices, not something that worked well once or twice, but something that we saw that was habitual, that was successful time and time again.

whether it's a small organization, a larger business unit, or even a global enterprise. These were things that consistently worked well and delivered superior results. Lessons learned, on the other hand, were things that were systemic mistakes, errors, even failures, that, again, they were not one of, I tripped up.

like we were talking about earlier, the well-intentioned prudent risk, I made a mistake, this didn't work, I'm going to try something else. These were things that we saw time and time again at scale that did not work well.

So I took those two elements over about 20 plus years of learning and experience ⁓ in many of those command level roles that you spoke about analogous to being the CEO or COO, sometimes both at the same time, depending upon the size, scope, scale, the organization. And I fashioned that into a consulting methodology. And that methodology, people, processes, and persistence. I believe that people of a heart and soul and the indispensable capability of every

You have the best tech, have the best materials, you have the best facilities and infrastructure. It all sits around and gathers dust without human beings to breathe life and ingenuity and creativity and love. There's that love word again, into the organization, right? Processes. Okay, you got fantastic people. You have a company to run. You have an enterprise to run. You need disciplined standard operating procedures ⁓ and persistence. ⁓

Face

it, anything that's worth doing is going to be hard work. So as an old boss of mine used to say, hard is authorized.

When you are in the pursuit of excellence, grit, persistence, resilience, resolve, that's all authorized. It's all necessary. It's all compulsory. So the system, and I'll wrap up here on this point, the system has four phases. The first phase is discovery through which I gather data and information about the potential customer or organization that I'm working with that I can support. I have a list of questions that I've

developed that are unique to Alakai that I give that are customized and tailored to that company depending upon where they are. Once I gather all that data, our team analyzes it. ⁓ I don't use AI for that. I use brain power of human beings. And ⁓ we then come back with an assessment. And it's a very initial assessment. And it says, hey, here are the facts that we found out about your company. ⁓

Digital Rebels Consulting (30:59)
Hmm?

Joe Polanin (31:21)
analysis of those facts and based upon only the facts in our analysis here's some recommendations we're making. For example,

If you don't have a vision, don't wonder why your people are disconnected and why people are leaving your firm because they're not motivated. Don't wonder that because you haven't given them a vision. You haven't given them that bold, clear statement. Then once we get through that phase of initial assessment, we then move into strategy development where we help the organization build a plan of action to get from point A to point B, whatever they want to do. It might be building a strategy for

the

company. It might just be a specific project. And then phase four is once we deliver that strategy for implementation, we help them implement. Could be for a few months, could be for a few years. It depends on what the organization is doing. So people processes and persistence breaks down into four phases. Discovery, initial assessment, strategic development, strategy implementation. And I hope that answered your question. I feel like, you know, there's a lot more to it, obviously, but those are

the high points.

Digital Rebels Consulting (32:31)
What typically is the biggest problem? People, processes, or persistence?

Joe Polanin (32:36)
people. Yeah, 100 % without even thinking about the other two. Either organizations have brought in the wrong people or they have great people but they're uninspired and they're disconnected from the vision or they have over time

Digital Rebels Consulting (32:37)
You

Joe Polanin (33:07)
promoted people beyond what their level of competence is or should be. And I'm grossly oversimplifying to make a point, but there are organizations that I've worked with that have all three of those problems. Even if an organization has one or two of those challenges, it all comes back to people. However, the organization that has

amazing processes. That's why I answer the question people because if you have an issue with your talented people, you won't ever get to persistence because they won't have that intangible drive that, ⁓ you know, like I mentioned earlier, the kinds of people that say, wow, I love this and I'm losing sleep tonight because I wake up tomorrow and I get to do this.

Not, I have to do this. Or, you you've probably read articles about, you know, Sunday night, people are anxious because tomorrow's Monday, right?

Digital Rebels Consulting (34:14)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Polanin (34:15)
When you have people who really don't care what day or time it is, they're just so excited to move the ball forward for the vision, that's the area where I have seen the greatest challenges. Because once, as the saying goes, once the right people are on the bus, the bus is going to get to the right destination.

Digital Rebels Consulting (34:36)
Absolutely. ⁓ You mentioned something before about, well, you said crew. I wrote down boat teams. I was thinking, know, Navy SEALs and BUDs and things like that. ⁓ But my question is around like team building. And I think that I typically haven't seen this a whole lot, at least done properly as far as, you know, going through a crucible like environment where we're all like, you know, shedding.

sweat, blood and tears, and then we go back to work and, know, we're a stronger unit because we went through that difficult time together or some sort of, I don't know, environment like that. What have you seen as far as effectiveness? Maybe you've done it yourself or maybe you've seen other companies do it. ⁓ what, does effective team building look like done right to where it's not just a one time thing where we went out and had drinks. It's something that we actually went out and we forged a bond relationships to help us do our work better.

Joe Polanin (35:28)
Mm-hmm.

Digital Rebels Consulting (35:30)
and work ⁓ as a better unit.

Joe Polanin (35:33)
Yeah, I'll answer that question in two ways. One will be from my experiences in the military, and one will be purely from the private sector, ⁓ with the understanding that ⁓

You know most private sector companies right that they can't take someone and put them in a crucible of high-risk training with a team to come out on the other side and say wow I'm glad I survived and and look I made it with my teammate. Okay, I

You don't have to be in a life-threatening environment to understand the value of trust and a teammate. So I'm going to answer it two ways. One will be military experience. One will be private sector only. Military experience, are a number of extremely rigorous

high-risk training programs where in order to qualify, in order to certify, you have to be exposed to an extremely high level of risk during the training. Not, okay, I'm qualified, now I can go be exposed to that risk. So, school. For a week, ⁓

You're in the water eight to 10 hours a day swimming circles ⁓ while instructors are imposing ⁓ hits on you ⁓ to shake your confidence, make you feel like you're drowning, and make you want to bolt to the surface, which if you do that, you fail and you're out because you could literally die.

Digital Rebels Consulting (37:12)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Polanin (37:13)
Demolition training, where you have to learn how to use explosives safely ⁓ before you can even begin to qualify with more advanced levels of explosives. ⁓ So there's an individual component of team building where you have to meet a certain individual standard of physical, emotional readiness. But once you make it to that level,

The team building comes in whereby there's a shared individual experience that we've all kind of been through that hell together. And then you take that and you leverage it and you use it to build a greater team. Whether it's a team of two, a team of eight, some of the units I worked in were right around eight to 10 people. And you get to know everybody really closely. And at some point you make a judgment call and you say, you know what?

Digital Rebels Consulting (38:02)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Polanin (38:09)
I know that this person has my back and I have their back. And if we're in a situation where either one of our lives are in jeopardy, I know they're going to be there for me and I'm placing my life in their hands and they're doing the same. now. So you go from you go from individual risk, individual.

Digital Rebels Consulting (38:22)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Polanin (38:28)
to small team to large team, but that essence is the same. In the private sector, the way that I've seen that done really well is companies will say, okay, we're gonna do a strategic experiment or we're gonna do a strategic exercise. We're gonna bring in our team leaders, ⁓ divisions, departments, management, whoever you choose, depending upon the size, scope, scale of your company. And we're gonna say, hey, what do we think

the top three to five biggest risks to our company.

Another pandemic.

or ⁓ logistical problems or financial problems. Somebody sits down and lays out, these are what we think are the top three to five major strategic threats for our company. And then we're going to get together at an offsite or we're going to get together ⁓ not at work ⁓ in a conference area or some other type of a very calm, very quiet setting. And we're going to do an experiment or an exercise

even a war game where we're going to have facilitators take us through a whole bunch of different scenarios about those bad tough situations and then we're going to see how we're going to work through it together and then when we're done we're going to see what that looks like. Okay what does that mean? That's a trade-off because in order to do something like that at a company what do you have to stop doing?

Digital Rebels Consulting (39:51)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Polanin (40:00)
you have to stop doing the day-to-day operations or you have to turn the day-to-day operations over to somebody else, which requires what? Trust, respect, capability, capacity, and you have to say, okay, B team, you have it for the next week. The A team is going to the offsite to build teamwork because we're gonna put ourselves through some of these tough situations. I've seen that work really well, ⁓ especially in... ⁓

Digital Rebels Consulting (40:03)
All right.

Hahaha

Joe Polanin (40:27)
Again, there are all kinds of threats, there are all kinds of risks, there are all kinds of challenges. Your life doesn't have to be in jeopardy to learn how to build a team. But I do have kind of the benefit of both and I'm glad to share that.

Digital Rebels Consulting (40:40)
Yeah, I think that war game idea is fantastic. At the end of the day, like you were saying, you got to step away from the day to day a little bit, zoom out a little bit, take a breath, look at the big picture, have everybody's input, you know, and then communicate to people and say that this is the reason why we need to step away and give it to the B team for at least a period of time. But I know that for a lot of people, that's just difficult to do.

Joe Polanin (40:49)
Yep.

It is, and I don't mean anything negative by the B-Team, right? It's just that if the people that you want in that room to build that camaraderie, to build that esprit de corps, to have that, like you talked about that, that essence of trust and team building, if that group of people isn't doing the day to day every day, then there has to be a group of people that you trust.

Digital Rebels Consulting (41:26)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Polanin (41:26)
to run the store and keep the trains running on time, so to speak, while that other team is off doing it, right? So, 100%.

Digital Rebels Consulting (41:33)
Yeah, well, and there should

there should be a B team identified at least as a good backup support system just in case of whatever reason somebody goes out on leave or you know, there's got to be a backup system in place. I know that I had that in the military. I've had it in corporate. It's just a good best practice, but that's the conversation for another day.

Joe Polanin (41:37)
Absolutely.

Yep, that's exactly right.

Depth on the bench, right? One is none, two is one.

Digital Rebels Consulting (41:56)
Exactly. Let's transition over to everybody's favorite burn it or build it rapid fire segment of the burn the playbook podcast. I'll ask you a few questions about the hot topics. Most of these are about leadership because it's aligned with what you are an expert at. And so we'll just start at the top. ⁓ Well, the first question is culture starts at the top. Burn it or build it.

Joe Polanin (42:01)
Okay.

build it. Absolutely, absolutely build it because culture is what we do every day. It is not something you write about. It's not something you talk about. It's not a set of core values on the wall.

It's everything that counts the most in an organization that you cannot count, that you can't see, touch, or feel. But it's evidenced through our actions. So you want to what the culture of an organization is? You look at the actions that people do every day. You're going to get that pulse point in about six minutes.

Digital Rebels Consulting (42:51)
Awesome. Build it. Return to office mandates.

Joe Polanin (42:55)
Burn it. Your seat, your office, and your zip code don't matter. I have known teams of three who work in the same office all day every day and their physical proximity.

has nothing to do with their ability. In fact, they were very disconnected. They didn't communicate well. They didn't accomplish goals on time. Whereas I've known people that work all over the world that are in 14 time zones away and their alignment with each other and their alignment with the vision and mission of the organization is ⁓ phenomenal. So burn it.

Digital Rebels Consulting (43:35)
Burn it. Yeah. Any questions about that? Just rewind 30 minutes and listen to everything about culture, leadership and trust. ⁓ Next question. Motivate first, hold accountable later.

Joe Polanin (43:42)
100 % 100 %

⁓ burn it because accountability isn't something that you

do earlier or later, accountability is a mindset, it's an attitude, and it's an ethos. So lot of people hear accountability and they think, ⁓ somebody's getting in trouble. ⁓ No, accountability is our ability to help each other influence one another and influence the mission and influence the vision. Accountability is like this. I need help. I can't do this by myself. Mark, I need your help. Guess what?

that's accountability. That's not a sometimes thing, that's an all the time thing. So definitely burn that one.

Digital Rebels Consulting (44:32)
Gotcha. Next question. Best leaders are always in control.

Joe Polanin (44:36)
Burn it. Two reasons why. Always is not a good word and control is not a good word. The best leaders that I know and that I have served with, very rarely if ever, like one of the best leaders I've ever known, I never, in three years, I never heard the man tell anyone to actually do anything. He'd come in a room, people would tell him what was happening and he'd say, hey, I really like this.

But, Mark, what do you think about this? And he would just listen. And then when it was over, he'd say, okay, that sounds great. ⁓ Who's got it? And everybody knew that what they had to say mattered. so ⁓ leaders aren't in control. Leaders are committed to a process of learning.

growing and developing other leaders to become better than the best they ever knew. So burn that one.

Digital Rebels Consulting (45:35)
Well said, I like that. ⁓ Middle management protects the culture.

Joe Polanin (45:41)
I'm gonna say burn that one because they aren't protecting the culture, they are the culture.

Everyone in the company is the culture. So middle management has no more or less responsibility than the newest frontline employee who was hired yesterday, than the CEO does. Everyone, as we mentioned earlier, the culture is all the intangibles. It's our actions. It's what we do. So middle management, not more or less than anyone else. They don't protect it. Everybody in the organization

lives it every day or they should and if they don't that's when you know you have that culture of misalignment.

Digital Rebels Consulting (46:26)
make sense. ⁓ Rewards for success should be short. Let's just, you know, reward our people and then move on to the next thing.

Joe Polanin (46:35)
I'm going to say burn that one because it depends on how you define short. Like if it's short, like, Hey, Mark, you did a great job. There are times when people don't want a big accolade or a big award. they really want is for someone to say, Hey, thanks a lot. You did a great job. What I would say is I would reframe it and I would say that rewards should be prompt. They should be appropriate and they should be public.

The best leaders that I've known, always downplay their involvement in any type of accomplishment, but they never rest until the people who were involved in making it happen have been rewarded and recognized for that. So short from the standpoint of we don't need to have like, you know, a three page long doctoral thesis on why Bob did a great job, but they should be prompt.

and they should be effective and they should be public and it should be something that people go, hey, and rewards and recognition, mean different things to different people. So when we know our people and we know what's important to them, ⁓ we reward them in a manner that's consistent with that.

Digital Rebels Consulting (47:52)
Gotcha. Last question. Leaders eat last.

Joe Polanin (47:56)
⁓ build it. ⁓ You know, I love that. I think that Simon Sinek book and that's certainly an ethos and a cultural paradigm and part big part of the Marine Corps. But ⁓ it's the element it's metaphoric, but it's also real in that leadership is never about the leader.

Leadership is about those whom we serve and the people who are in so-called positions of leadership but really aren't leaders themselves because leadership is a conscious choice. You have to say I want to be a leader and I'm going to go out and I'm going to become a better one. ⁓

you don't just get, it just doesn't get thrust upon you. So I say, I say absolutely build that because the leader who recognizes that they're not there for them, they're there for everybody else all the time, 24 by seven, that's the one you want because nobody's gonna have to tell them to eat last, they're just gonna know it, they're just gonna do it because that's who they are inside, it's part of their DNA.

Digital Rebels Consulting (49:10)
Mm-hmm.

Gotcha. ⁓ Final takeaway for our listeners. There's a business leader out there that can only change one behavior this quarter to double their execution. Don't need to put a boatload of cash towards the effort. What can they do differently today and know that it's still going to work in 30 days.

Joe Polanin (49:31)
Yeah, do less and think strategically more. So I'll share with you a quick story of what that means. I was having a conversation with an albeit successful leader. He happened to define his success by his ⁓ financial ⁓ accomplishments and the profitability of his company.

And we were talking instead about the alignment of vision and planning and people. And he said, wow, I love that. I love that and our whole company needs to do that right now. The only problem is I don't have time for that because I'm too busy making money every day. And I said, well, if that's what you think.

then I've failed you because I've failed to explain the importance of this. ⁓ Certainly profitability enables you to do what you want to do, but profitability is not your vision. Profitability is not your people, and at a certain point, it's gonna wear thin.

And when leaders make a conscious choice, I was just talking to a colleague about this this morning, when leaders make a conscious choice to say, I'm going to stop being the person who does a lot of things and I'm going to be the person who enables teams of people to accomplish greater things. The only way you can do that is to let go of some things that you're doing every day, make more room for strategic thinking. The best leaders I know actually schedule it on their

calendar and they say here's two hours where I am not doing anything else except thinking strategically about the growth of the firm and then takes the extra step to include other leaders. Right. The CEO, the president, the managing partner. These are not the only people that need to think strategically about the growth of the firm. So bringing in those other leaders and saying, hey, here's what I'm thinking. What do you think? That doesn't have to be a strategic offsite. That can be a Tuesday afternoon.

Digital Rebels Consulting (51:12)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Polanin (51:41)
And it should be a Tuesday afternoon because when it becomes a habit and it becomes ingrained in what we do every day, then it's not something extra. It's not something different. It's not something that we're going to do once in a while so we can get back to normal. It becomes the new normal.

Digital Rebels Consulting (51:42)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

100%. That is amazing to end on and ⁓ good tips there. How can people find you Joe and alakai?

Joe Polanin (52:03)
Thank you.

Sure. So one way they can do that is our website, thealakaigroup.com. ⁓

You'll find everything you want to know about our company there and there's a page where you can submit a request and we'll get back to you ⁓ within 24 hours and let you know how we can help you have a conversation. They can also email me directly at joe at the alakai group.com again t-h-e-a-l-a-k-a-i group.com ⁓ Connect with me on LinkedIn any any other way that you want but

As you might imagine, Mark, and as I think we've shared in the past, I love people. I love learning from people. ⁓ And I love sharing ⁓ what I can to help ⁓ organizations and teams grow. So if there's a team out there that is growing, expanding, or maybe has encountered a problem or challenge in pursuit of a bold goal, let me know. I'm glad to help.

Digital Rebels Consulting (53:12)
Alright, sounds good. Well, thank you for joining the Burn the Playbook podcast.

Joe Polanin (53:17)
Mark, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it. Absolutely honor and privilege. Thanks so much.

Digital Rebels Consulting (53:20)
Cheers. Thank you.


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