The Cost of Unprepared Systems Is Rising with Walter “Wally” Massenburg

In this episode of The Momentum Flow, I sit down with Walter “Wally” Massenburg — President & CEO of LeadByEx, Inc., and Vice Admiral (Ret.) US Navy, NAVAIR — to explore a shift that I think more leaders need to be paying attention to.

For decades, organizations have optimized around efficiency, cost, and scale. But what happens when systems are actually tested? When timelines compress, conditions change, and performance is no longer optional?

Wally brings a perspective shaped by leading at the highest levels of Naval Aviation and defense logistics, where readiness isn’t a concept — it’s a requirement. In those environments, logistics is not a support function. It is a mission capability that directly determines outcomes.

What stood out to me in this conversation is how relevant that mindset has become for today’s business environment. As volatility increases and complexity grows, the gap between organizations built for efficiency and those built for resilience is becoming more visible.

We talk about what it means to build for readiness, how leaders should think about decision-making under pressure, and why the cost of inaction is rising faster than most realize.

If you’re building, investing, or leading in today’s environment, this is a conversation worth your time.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:29

I bring real world experience and investors like to reveal how clarity, capital, and conviction feels sustainable growth. Tune in and let's keep the momentum flow blowing. For decades, supply chains were optimized for effectiveness and then efficiency. Cost, speed, scale. But there's a different way to think about supply chain and logistics, one that doesn't begin with cost, but with consequence. In the military, logistics isn't a support function, it's a mission capability. It determines readiness, it determines availability. And in the most critical moments, it determines outcomes. Today's conversation is about that mindset shift. What changes when logistics must perform under real pressure, when delay is not theoretical, and when preparation matters more than optimization. And there are only a few people who have seen that reality more clearly than today's guests. Vice Admiral Walter Massenberg is a decorator, retired, three-star admiral. I didn't like it. So how do you want me to tell you about that, the Vice Admiral Retired? How do you introduce a military person?

SPEAKER_01 1:48

I would just say I'd I would say I'd like to introduce Wally Massenberg, uh former three-star admiral in the Navy.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Right, that's fine.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

It's very informal and fine.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

So Jennifer, second edit, sorry. Okay, she's the one that gets peace with me. So I want to introduce Vice Admiral Walter Massenberg. He's a decorated three-star admiral with decades of experience in naval aviation, defense logistics, and industrial-based sustainment. As commander of Naval Air Systems Command, he led acquisition, engineering, logistics, and test and evaluation for every U.S. naval aviation program, overseeing a multi-billion dollar portfolio where readiness was never optional. After the Navy, he carried that experience into the private sector, helping organizations strengthen operational capability and leadership at scale through companies like Radhion and BAE systems. Today, we're going to explore what commercial supply chains can learn from defense grade logistics thinking, why readiness is becoming more relevant than efficiency, and what leaders need to understand now is that the way organizations perform. You know, this is the work that I've done any start since since since I'm gonna get it going from the beginning for the last time, Wally, and I'll and then I'll stop. Okay, I won't do it again.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

By the way, this is this is what happened to me in my performance-based logistics uh uh podcast. We had to keep saying stop that that doesn't sound right, or whatever. Yeah, no.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

So but it's it's easier for Jennifer if I just record it. So I'll just go quickly from the top. By now I got it. So my apologies.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

So okay. So when when you say uh I'd like to introduce my special guest, Wally Massenberg, a retired three-star admiral, the former commander of the Naval Air Systems Command. That that really does make it more personal. I'm not in that now. You're talking to me as a person, you're not talking to me as I was I wasn't gonna do it here, but yeah. So Wally Massenberg, retired three-star admiral, former commander of the Naval Air Systems Command, and then you're gonna nail it.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Um okay, so let's get going. So, Jennifer, starting from 2650 more less. For decades, supply chains were optimized for effectiveness and efficiency. Cost, speed, scale. But there's a different way to think about supply chain and logistics. One that doesn't begin with cost, but with consequence. In the military, logistics isn't a support function. It's a mission capability. It determines readiness, it determines availability, and in the most critical moments, it determines outcomes. Today's conversation is about that mindset shift. What changes when logistics must perform under real pressure, when delay is not theoretical, and when preparation matters more than optimization. And there are only a few people who have seen that reality more clearly than today's guests. A friend of mine, Wally Masterberg, a retired vice admiral, is a decorated restart admiral with decades of experience in naval aviation, defense logistics, and industrial-based sustainment. As Commander of Naval Air Systems Command, he led acquisition, engineering, logistics, and test and evaluation for every U.S. naval aviation program, overseeing a multi-billion dollar portfolio where readiness was never optional. After the Navy, he carried that experience into the private sector, helping organizations strengthen corporational capability and leadership at scale through companies like Radeon and BAE systems. Today, we're going to explore what commercial supply chains can learn from defense-grade logistics thinking, why readiness is becoming more relevant than efficiency, and what leaders need to understand now if they want their organizations to perform when it really matters. Vice Admiral Masenberg, Wally, welcome to the Momentum Flow.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

Luis, thank you very much for having me. I'm excited to be here to discuss this uh this subject area with you. And and um I'd like to thank you for your work in logistics. Uh, your podcasts have been terrific, and I look forward to participating in this one.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

I appreciate it, Wally. Thanks for being here. It's a real privilege to have you here on the Momentum Flow. So you've led at the highest levels of naval aviation and defense logistics, and you carried that experience into industry and private equity, always operating where execution readiness truly matters. I'd love to start with your story. Give us a bit of your journey and how those experiences have shaped the way you think about logistics, leadership, mission readiness. Tell us a little bit about you.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

So, so Luis, um, and I'll I'll cite uh the year that it all started. I used to be a program manager, and I say that uh uh very lovingly uh and carefully, because as a program manager, I couldn't spell logistics. Uh I was not uh incentivized to understand it. It was always somebody else's problem. And when I left becoming a program manager, and I had the privilege of uh serving as a flag officer, the first job that I got was as the Naval Aviation Logistician, and I couldn't spell logistics. Uh and so it was uh a journey of learning, uh certainly as a flag officer for eight years, because every job I held was a job that dealt with the subject we're gonna talk about, and that's not uh, you know, uh output, it's about outcome, and it's about readiness as a metric that we should measure ourselves against, and not just things and stuff or you know, the rates or whatever. It is truly a metric that matters to the warfighter. So I'd like to start there, Luis, if that's okay with you.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Absolutely. You know, you you have a remarkable life story. So so let's let's let's get that cue. So so what keeps your momentum going all along this career?

SPEAKER_01 8:12

So um one, it's it's it's passion for caring about uh the people that serve. When you get right down to it, everything that I've been motivated for has been to do things to make their job easier. You know, when you ask people why they leave the Navy, uh, and there's a form that you fill out, uh, and each sailor when they leave the Navy has to fill it out. Nowhere on there is one, the Navy is a noble profession. Two, I get the tools and the things that I needed to do my job. And three, I love serving with the people I serve. Nowhere on an exit sheet does that appear uh, you know, to for why someone is leaving the Navy. But those three elements are absolutely important because if all three of those elements aren't there, then people will leave the Navy. And by the way, we're in an all-volunteer force. So you have to care uh about the people that are actually uh serving, supporting, and and fighting uh uh for our country. So it becomes a very noble mission. We need to keep uh in mind that we uh have to give them the tools that they need. And the last thing is it make it enjoyable for all that serve to serve together. That's why uh reunions are really important because that's the time when when you've gone through hell and back uh with the people you've gone through it with, and the country has given you the tools you needed, and you served in the noble profession, then then that's a really good formula for success.

SPEAKER_00 9:51

That's a very nice way to frame it, Wally. So so now it really infers that you truly see logistics not as a support function, but as a decisive strategic advantage. You care to elaborate on that?

SPEAKER_01 10:06

Yeah, so I you know, and interesting. The the Naval Air Systems Command um has been a command that has existed uh for as long as naval aviation. We went over the 100-year mark. The systems command has had some wonderful leaders, uh um, but the systems command uh itself became very internally focused. And when it becomes internally focused, then the systems command does engineering, um, you know, tests and evaluation, logistics, uh, you know, all the different disciplines. They they, if they're looking internally at themselves, then the metrics that they measure themselves are ones they've made up themselves. And it's really important when I took over the job as logistics, is is there needs to be a metric that exists outside their organization that they're measured against. And so when I took over the job as logistician, not knowing a whole lot about logistics, but understanding what was broken in naval aviation, it was readiness. And readiness the the is the measurement of whether you're successful or not. It's really a simple formula. If you have an ON OFF switch and you turn the ON ONF switch to ON and the system doesn't work, all the money you've spent, all the dedication of all the things to make that system, you know, deliver it, uh, you know, develop it, deliver it, and and uh uh work has has gone to for naught. Because if that ON switch doesn't work uh in a crisis situation, we have failed our sailors and marines, and we failed our country.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

I I love how you define it. You you really answer my next question. You know, you really define readiness. I like your analogy of the on-off switch. It's it goes from being a concept to really something measurable and actionable. So that makes a lot of sense to me. So let me ask you then, in your experience, how tightly integrated do the different sub-functions, engineering, maintenance, supply, need to be actually operating to deliver that level of readiness?

SPEAKER_01 12:16

So I will I will give you where we started and I will try to finish up with where we ended in the Navy, but the consequences uh were the same in industry. And so what I learned in the Navy, I brought to industry both at BA systems and at Raytheon. So when I talk about the Navy, I talk about discovery, learning, cycles of learning, uh, and introducing concepts that valued things that the system didn't value before. When I took over uh the organization in 1999, the organization was stovepiped, um, maintenance and supply and engineering and test and evaluation and operators, uh, the whole system uh operated in stovepipes of activity. Uh normally what the behaviors you would find would be that in stovepipes of activity, they valued their stovepipe at the expense of all others. And so what you created was uh a natural inefficiency in the organization uh that didn't value what I would consider the greater good. The greater good is do you give the horse fighters the the things that they need to fight and have it work when it was required? Nobody went to war and discovered things and corrected things after they went to war. They went to war with what they had. And if they hadn't done the preparation, if they hadn't done uh the internal look at that thing called readiness, then when you go to war, you're making it up as you go along. If you prepare and you know what you're doing, uh and you put the right people together in teams, and we're gonna talk about teams a lot, uh then you will enter a war unprepared, and you will always be chasing uh a tail. So I'd like to start with where it started with for me is understanding logistics. So somebody in industry, because I've been in both, would say logistics is, oh, that's just that transportation thing. That's uh that's the trucks that are out there moving and you see things go by, XPL, it's that's logistics. Well, logistics is 12 integrated logistics elements. And each of those elements, uh, if it's working in a synchronized, synchrophased way, then we'll deliver whatever metric it is uh that you you design. So the most important thing is to understand uh the way that you should start thinking about uh this thing called cross-functional relationships uh in order to deliver to a greater good metric. So I'd like to talk about greater good metric and and how that gets developed.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

Okay, you want to elaborate right now or you want to to elaborate later?

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Nope, we'll talk about it right now because it'll follow into all the other things that you've asked me for. But so so, not knowing what I was doing in 1999, uh went on a journey. Uh and the first thing that you have to understand about teaming is if you don't have a crisis, then you will not be able to effectively and efficiently team. Because nobody will care. They'll all live in their activities, they'll come to meetings, uh, they'll go home and say to their bosses, boy, I sure made it through that meeting, and uh, and they didn't get any of my skin. Uh, and so the idea of teaming in relation to something greater than themselves becomes the operative functional organization that needs to be developed. And it's a behavior model, it's not a dictated uh vertical model that is most important. So the first priorities of the discussion when you finally get people in the same room together from all these different disciplines, is they have to decide outcome first, then once you decide what the outcome is, you have a metric, a single metric that goes with that. And once you have that single metric, then you can look at the processes that are necessary to deliver on that metric. And then and only then do you think about organizational structure. People uh in the military normally every every so often they get to you know change their their jobs, and everyone, when they get to the new job, uh does what? They try to reorganize. And the answer is every time you try to reorganize, it costs money, people, dollars, intellectual capital in order to do that every time you change. So I'm not saying change is bad, but change needs to be understood in relation to outcome. So the most important thing that you talk about in these transformations to understanding logistics, literally in a denied environment, is outcome. What do you need? The how do you want the force to fight? How are you going to measure it uh in order to deliver on that readiness?

SPEAKER_00 17:20

I love how you frame this logistics as a warfight capability. I think you know, focusing on outcome, on outcome, and really then focusing on a single metric through strong processes and not worrying too much about the organizational structure trying to change it. So I I it makes a lot of sense to me, but obviously I share that background with you on the on the logistics side. So so I it's very clear to me. I think this sets a strong foundation for a conversation. Um I would like now, if it's possible, to step into what happens when that system is really under pressure, right? Because that's it it's when the rubber hits the road, right? So without getting into specific conflicts, let's leave that aside. We're we're gonna talk about that. But what fundamentally changes in logistics, in the logistics thinking, when uh a delay directly impacts the mission success?

SPEAKER_01 18:22

So so let's talk about the three elements that that make up uh a balanced system. Because if the system is not balanced, then what you get is pendulum swings uh where people want to spend money in specific areas. There are three areas that are most important. The first one that everybody thinks about, excuse me, is capability. So everybody's willing to spend money on capability. You know, let's design, develop, and produce the next system. And so industry mirrors the government in in that way of thinking. And so if you don't change the way you're thinking in the government, then the the in industry doesn't change at all. So if if the government says capability at all costs, industry says I'll deliver. What they fail to realize, it's a three-headed uh monster. Uh and the three-headed monster is capability, availability, and affordability. And those three things, those three uh areas or those three principles need to be balanced if you're ever gonna have a warfighting fork focus or force that can fight on day one. And so uh when I took over in 1999, uh our organization called Naval Aviation was totally focused, 100%, I'm telling you, a hundred percent on capability. And and here was the the comment that the the powers to be would would would use. Well, if we don't build it, then you won't need the logistics. And so what they would end up doing is they would mortgage logistics in order to get things built to a a requirement that was was not uh a real requirement. It was we need 27 airplanes. Okay, why do you need 27 airplanes? Well, if you don't start with readiness in mind and work your way back to why you need those 27 aircraft, then what you're doing doing is building aircraft, just to build aircraft and not align to any type of warfighting capability that doesn't really that doesn't really necessarily adds to availability, and definitely doesn't help with affordability to your words.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

So so it makes it makes all sense. So so now, you know, the on the other hand, you you on the military want to build redundancy, right? And and and the pre-positioning and planning depth needs to evolve in those environments. So how how how do these concepts redundancy, prepositioning, planning, evolve in the in the in this environment where you're trying to to to lead um and to build uh an army literally for battle or for for or at least to be ready in case of.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Sure. So they're they're they're signals that we get in the in the providing community, and I'll call it providing community because providing is you know supply, it's maintenance, it's test evaluation, it's all the disciplines or the 12 logistics elements as far as uh uh uh aligning to a war plan. And there are war plans for contingencies all over the world. Most of them are are secret in nature. Uh, but what it does is it gives decision makers the understanding of of what they want. Uh you know, for instance, uh oh, I want to fight uh a two. uh front war. Well that creates a very significant logistics problem in getting uh the the the actual units there, having them man, trained, and equipped, ready to fight with all the stuff that they need, given different uh war scenarios. And if if the system says, well, I want to be able to fight two wars at one time, by the way, that's probably somewhere in the war plans to fight two wars at one time. What what they they do is is they talk themselves into how capability is going to affect those war plans and not readiness that is the true effect of what shows up on day one of whatever war you're trying to fight. So you really have to convince people that uh that this this balancing of capability, that's what you buy, that's what you deliver, affordability, I'm sorry, availability, which is when it gets out there and and how often do you want it to be available? Of course the the powers of be will say I want 100% availability. That's crazy because uh if you're really talking logistics and you're gonna you know have this Ford available 100% of the time, well when do you do the maintenance? How do you buffer for supply? What if there's all these other questions that you have to answer which in some of the planners' minds doesn't exist. They say no we're gonna have 100% of this on day one. When you start looking at the now affordability which is the governor on what you can afford between capability and availability then then all of a sudden you start to realize that you must balance it every time that a budget is done every year. If you don't do that then you're going to end up with in in some cases what we've ended up with in the past and that's um that's a fort that shows force that shows up that's not ready. So readiness this concept of readiness is really important and the concept of a single fleet driven metric is superbly important and it it goes through the thread of readiness today that's the force you have readiness tomorrow that's the force that you're building meaning what you're developing and producing and then readiness in the deep future all the new things that are coming down line in the world of logistics that can ensure you're going to be able to afford the things in capability availability that you need to have and have it show up when it's when it's required very important concept though.

SPEAKER_00 24:45

I fully agree you you hinted on on on on that on that description you also hinted about the effective decision making how does it look like when all this on top of everything you're operating with uncertainty and in compressed timeless no so how that that the the speed of decision making it doesn't it doesn't sound like it's very expeditious from what you describe.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

Well the speed of decision making in war is pretty quick you know because you get to make decisions based on crisis. I mean whether it's at a platoon level or a battalion level or whatever you know what if they're running out of ammunition or what if they're running out of this what if they're running out of that decision making becomes very local. However decision making when you have time uh in order to to make decisions that have consequences in those crisis situations of war that's the time to think about it and that's the time where where people and decision makers should consider um this single fleet driven or customer driven metric. And that's a customer driven metric uh at cost at predictable cost and so you never lose the capability availability and affordability uh uh monikers um because what you have is I want to get to the capability everything I want and all of a sudden this ugly thing uh called availability uh reaches up the head and the logisticians of the world say you just can't do that uh wars are not fought on capability alone in fact once you're in a protected war uh logistics is king if you can't support fleets and you can't support battalions and you can't support armies that are marching without supply, without maintenance, without all the logistics elements, guess what? You're gonna run out of schlitz as patented uh in in running out of gas and whatever in one of those campaigns when they were marching to Germany. So logistics becomes extremely important and it's best to think about that before you ever go to war.

SPEAKER_00 26:58

So this is very interesting because just using again the your the the concept that you bring to the conversation so it sounds like capability and affordability assessments are happening before the crisis or before the mission. However once you're in the middle of it everything is around availability and around logistics and that's because the cost of failure is real right is that is that a fair statement it's a fair statement but it it's it's when is the decision made that that determines failure.

SPEAKER_01 27:29

So if the decision is made to get to the capability at all costs but you mortgage your future read uh you know your future war scenarios availability in order to buy that that all that capability and availability what shows up is a is a is a war fighting capability that doesn't work that's the ONOFF switch so unless you look at it as a whole and the a whole is capability availability and affordability and what you're trying to achieve is an outcome and if you keep redefining the outcome what you get used to is decision making as if you wanted something to show up in day one and then you have these rich conversations between people who do design develop produce instead of abandon it's design develop produce and sustain. And sustain the metric of sustainment is readiness for instance in aviation naval aviation early on what we tried to do is come up with a a metric and because we were having trouble putting people through the training commands because the training command aircraft didn't fly we had to look at it uh the metric as aviation uh um uh train uh aviation training squadron aircraft uh availability that's the metric we started with now you notice I didn't say anything about cost you notice I just concentrated on training aircraft and yet the training aircraft is just a small percentage of it but we learn in that cycle of learning is that that if we didn't have the airplanes and the people and the pilots and the maintenance and the supply to get those training aircraft up and operating when they were needed then guess what we continued to fail in the training command and we continued to fail to make pilots.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

So that was our training ground it was a thing called NAPI Naval Aviation Pilot Production Initiative where we turned things from vertical to horizontal and and through this cycle of learning we we started to learn about all the logistics elements there are 12 of them I won't list them but hopefully you'll provide readers with a a copy of the 12 elements uh but we we understood how important each of those elements were in relation to that metric which is training aircraft availability training aircraft availability now you notice we just ran the pendulum to availability uh but we didn't you know cover the thing was oh what would we want what happens when we run out of those airplanes and we got to buy new but we didn't count on that so any time of these pendulum swings to one or the other or to affordability uh as as a a metric if it's a metric by itself we're guaranteeing failure in the end game yeah you know it's it's really interesting talking with you on military terms because only you know it comes across your passion for the topic and but as you talk I also hear a lot of analogies with for example manufacturing systems when the measure of person effectiveness efficiency OEE where you have to do is is a is a product of quality machine equipment availability and labor availability is similar in concept so to me the morale here is there's a lot of applicability of best in class practices in the military to the logistics and the and the supply chain so so let's let we can continue talking about this but we only have to I want to talk about your last point I want to talk about that last point uh and a translation to like a manufacturing line or a production line or whatever teaming teams exist everywhere if people want them to exist if if you live in a in a uh archaic way of thinking in in industry today and you keep stovepipes in place without any cross functionality or cross communication or whatever um then you're guaranteed guaranteed to be less effective and then therefore less less efficient.

SPEAKER_01 31:51

And so the concept that you just said that what whatever I talked about with this aircraft training aircraft problem exists in a in a in a value stream in industry and and everyone has its its similar um um requirements for instance if I were to take that um uh line and I'd say what do you want of that line what do you want the outcome to be well if you're talking just to the line supervisor he would say outcome get the stuff out as quickly as you can damn quality damn all these other things I got to worry about just get it out the door and meet the requirement that that's been given to me which by the way becomes a financial requirement.

SPEAKER_00 32:35

So let's let's dig into that so why do you think most commercial supply chains struggle to achieve readiness then?

SPEAKER_01 32:43

So the it uh well readiness is made up of a bunch of different things at a bunch of different levels and we were in that first uh instance where we're talking training aircraft we were just taking a snapshot of a piece of naval aviation that was failing the rest of naval aviation already was already failing but this piece if we solve this piece maybe we could find the model that works and so what we did in these cycles of learning is we solved the training aircraft problem. Now I'll give you I'll give you the bad side of that the unintended consequences because when we solved that cycle time problem which because that that's what it was and we brought all to bear of all the logistics elements guess what we did in the end game in the year that we were doing that work we produced 239 pilots in excess of requirement because of how efficient we got and literally that year we had to say goodbye out of service to 239 budding naval aviators who really wanted to be in the Navy and fly airplanes they had to leave service because we didn't understand the consequences of being so effective and so efficient. So so you you exceeded the target of the of readiness target because there was no there was no governor on it there was nobody that was looking at the hole that says wait a minute okay we had a problem building aviators we solved that problem by the way that was an industry government team that solved that problem but then you get to the next problem is well we made too many well the system isn't ready to uh you know to to act to that or react to that so when you talk about outcome you always got to give yourself the opportunity to change the outcome other words change the metric when it makes sense so the metric changed from training aircraft you know ready to all aircraft ready and when you made that change boy it got really hard really quick because when I took over there were 72 type model series aircraft teams that is uh one team would be a F-18A model aircraft that would be one team one configuration there were 75 of them when I started 40 when I left because when you look at logistics every time you have a different configuration guess what follows it's a different SKU it's a different bill of materials it's a different everything different everything and so when we went on this journey we had to learn what the outcome had to be as we started to grow this good behavior model. And the good behavior model by the way it went from aircraft ready for tasking it went I'm sorry training aircraft ready for tasking to aircraft ready for tasking then all of a sudden in the middle of this we found out that dollars cost matters and we said wait a minute you can't have a metric unless there is a cost associated with it.

SPEAKER_00 36:02

And so we we we had a a a cycle of learning an aha moment and the cycle learning said okay now I'm gonna shift from uh training aircraft now to all aircraft now it's all aircraft at cost and boy did that change the dynamic because now we it wasn't you know geez we have all the money in the world to spend on this we had to you know understand what was the money available for the readiness we could actually buy so you're different uh uh model but the the outcome uh changed the metric changed in the in the end game it was now if they listen to this aviation units that's the the things the supply the people the the the ranges the exercise whatever um at at re reduced cost so once you that became the metric aviation units ready for tasking at reduced cost avoided that metric change and we accelerated our ability to be ready so let me let me translate this to to to the audience to to more uh traditional uh uh commercial supply chain right i think wally hinted about uh what i would call portfolio management right number of of of units or number of types of aircrafts and equipment he also hinted to the concept of on-time delivery or field rate and you know all that balancing with cost so I think the more accurate there's a lot of of parallelism within the um military side and the commercial supply chains and a lot of learning that can be done from one to the other now where do you normally see while where do you see industries more consistently underestimating systemic risks because at the end it is the risk of the full system of not delivering the outcome right so where do you normally see that underestimating on the commercial on the on the not on the military but in the on the on the more uh corporate america side so uh I I will uh try to be very short with this little anecdote uh but when I took over as a systems command that was in assess in essence in charge of all of naval aviation not flying it man training equipment I had a hand in all that I asked the CEOs of the 11 largest companies uh that that created you know stuff to make naval aviation work and I and I put them in a room and I said hey look uh you know I've been out of program management for a while this was this was five years after I left uh the capabilities side of the house and I got them in a room and I showed uh them a picture of an F-18 that had no wings no engines no nose no no nothing it was just sitting on at no landing gear because it was sitting on crates and I I showed them that and I said look um if if if you're going to do work with me uh and honor our contractual obligations then you have to help me solve that problem that sick airplane because everybody in this room all 11 of these companies had something on that airplane that caused that airplane to look like that and it was interesting uh because when I asked the question it says what motivates you and they said we build you things and I said well unless you help me with that problem then I'm not gonna uh you know uh give you any more contracts we're just and by the way I'm the head of contracting authority and I'll just stop all of them and they were shocked that you want me to take care of that airplane that looks like that I said yes because you can take care of that airplane that has no wings no landing gear no engines no radars no systems in it it's just sitting there like a carcass way earlier in the cycle to go on a journey with me that is much more performance based because I need things at the end that don't look like that that's what I need.

SPEAKER_01 40:21

And so they were I went on a journey with them a government industry team that valued readiness first readiness first outcome first aviation units ready for tasking at predictable costs and when you got to predictable costs you reduced the costs and that that became in my context the profit of naval aviation when you could get to the point where you satisfying the readiness requirement or the outcome at a particular cost now you went on a journey to do cycle time reduction or reliability improvement coincidentally with industry and government to make that picture of that that that hangar queen aircraft to look just as sharp as it was and ready to fight when you needed it. And oh by the way they went on that journey when government led them there. If government doesn't lead them there then they'll stay in the same model that they're in which values capability uh at all costs and that means they'll value uh they'll value uh um uh a system that does not work and does not deliver readiness that that's that's a pretty pretty rich way of of framing it I appreciate all that all that context i we're gonna have to move to our last section i'm gonna do a little bit different here i'm i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna there's i have three or four questions and i'm gonna be looking more for for short answers just to get your perspective on that so one is on the leadership under pressure if you have to pick three leadership behaviors that are essential when operating in high stakes high complexity systems you only have three bullets which one to pick the first one is make a decision so you know make a decision is a function of time okay you can make a decision in peacetime without really a time constraint i mean they they may put a time constraint on it um but uh again uh it's make a decision if you can make decisions uh appropriate decisions in peacetime when you get to war and you're in crisis and make decisions in in crisis you have to make the decision so if you haven't taught yourself that how to do that in peacetime it ain't gonna work in wartime so that's your first bullet the second one uh the second one is is trust your teams you're you're you can't possibly do everything and if you're a leader what what it requires for you is first of all to build teams now you know people in leadership will will you know tell you um that it's not you're you're not gonna solve the problem yourself you're not you know one guy with a rifle is gonna go out there because you're you're leading people over the hill that that's not how it works you develop those teams whether they're in uh industry and government teams whether they're type model series teams whether they're cross-functional teams in industry whether they're a production team on the on the shop floor whatever it is if you don't produce that team to where they have trust and confidence in you then then when crisis hits remember what I said about crisis to begin with yeah if you you can't team very capably unless you can address crisis right so so bottom line is develop teams so the first one is be able to make the decision second one is have a team that's going to support those decisions. Okay you pick two bullets only those are the two that you pick no I got another I got others but I the next one that I would pick would would be put together a succession Plan. If you happen to drop dead, it's a terrible thought, but if you happen to drop dead today, the team and leadership on the team would be able to pick up the slack right off the bat and operate as if you weren't there.

SPEAKER_00 44:14

You know, it's so interesting that you pick those three because the three of them are not talking about the equipment or the process. They focus on the people side, right? And at the end, it's so important at the end of the game, they how people interact in systems, whether it's in logistics in the military or it's on commercial logistics, it's the same concept. So make decisions, trust teams, and succession plan. I love those.

SPEAKER_01 44:41

So let me let's one last thought to that. Uh you know, I'm a big metric guy. When I didn't have a voice back when I was a first caught flag officer with this big problem, I decided I was going to go out to every air station, every ship that I could get to while it was in port every year. So they saw me year after year, and my metric was shake a thousand hands. Shake a thousand hands. So I'll give you this little scenario. When you shake a thousand hands, it takes some time, but not much time. I used to go on a ship, they'd probably have 2,000 people on the hangar deck. I'd be addressing them on these subjects we're talking about. But before I address them, I shook a thousand or two thousand hands, whatever it was. So at the end of a conversation one time, somebody in the audience said, Why is it that you shook all our hands? Because I told them is it's the only thing you're gonna remember. You're not gonna remember a thing I'm gonna say. The other thing is I've taken 20 minutes of your question and answer time.

SPEAKER_00 45:50

So you're cheating. You're doing that with me, Wally. That's not fair, okay? So hey, so so let's let we're converging on the conversation. So so maybe a last one in this section, then we're gonna have to converge down. So so at the end, how do you build organizations that are truly designed for continuity under stress? Because that's that's something that the military excels at. Not just performance stable conditions, right? That that's I would argue that's easier uh or different at least, but continuity under stress is unique, right? It's a skill. So how do you build it?

SPEAKER_01 46:27

So so again, go back to teaming and and you know, what kind of stress um you know do you put on the team? Uh, if you I will tell you this, if you don't have a crisis, then people will come meet, they'll call themselves a team, and they'll they'll have no skin in the game. Uh they come to a table, oh I I I I can go back and tell my boss there I didn't lose any any of his equity. You know, that's not the way this works. This works is your teamwork and your objectives on your teams become more important than your connection to your boss, who writes your fitness report, who pays you, who does all these things uh in in order for you to succeed personally. So you really have to instill in a team the fact that that a crisis drives them to a particular place. If they don't have a crisis, I always used to say, create a crisis. Because they're not going to get together if they don't. It's not being dishonest with them, it's just being they won't get together unless you create a crisis that they all can recognize.

SPEAKER_00 47:32

I wouldn't call it create a crisis. I would create the birdie platform because I don't I don't like to create crisis, but but I understand the concept is valid nonetheless. So so let me one last question, Wally? So at the end, this podcast is called the Momentum Flow, right? Because at the end of the day, it's all about how leaders build and sustain momentum when it really matters, when it matters most. So as you think about everything you've seen in your career, from mission critical operations to building capabilities at scale, what's the one mindset from your perspective that leaders need to carry forward to keep that momentum going? Especially going back to the previous question when the stakes are highest, when when there's a burning platform, when there's a crisis.

SPEAKER_01 48:20

So when the world is not in crisis, you should continue to measure yourself with the outcome that you desire in crisis, which means the outcome is always going to be readiness. The outcome for a supply guy isn't just availability, it's availability in relation to the readiness requirement. Uh and so again, uh in peacetime, you have to be jealous and protect readiness. If not, the the money people will take money out of that to do things they want to do. And so true leadership is understanding when you're not in crisis to protect the things that are most important when you get into crisis. And that is readiness. Always readiness.

SPEAKER_00 49:09

You know, it's it's so interesting that concept because I go back in memory lane to to COVID times, right? The companies that far better were the ones that at the end, on every day before the crisis, they were operating at the same standard. And then when they went into crisis, they just had to continue doing the same. Yes, some extra challenges, but they were used to operate at that standard. And when you're used to do it, you can do it. When you don't, you know, companies struggle, the military struggles, right?

SPEAKER_01 49:38

So I'll give you one anecdote in the industry side of that. When I was a quality guy in Raytheon, I was hired in as a quality guy in Raytheon to begin with, just to get me on board. Um but I went and got qualified as a ASQ uh you know credentialed guy in quality. And the interesting thing is is in crisis, if you don't consider quality in the normal activity of your day, then you create crises when when a system goes out to the end and can't deliver because of your commitment to quality. So quality is like readiness, you know, you can't, it's not touchy-feely, you know, whatever, until such time as it turns turns into a crisis itself. So take that in in times of peacetime, if you care about readiness always, and readiness is capability, availability, and affordability in a balanced approach, then we'll have a force that will fight. In industry, if you care about readiness, i.e. whatever you're delivering out the door to whomever you're delivering it to at on their metric, then capability, availability, affordability for that outcome. If you don't think in terms of that, then you get all sorts of wacky things going on. Uh chasing budgets and you know, taking money out. And yeah, you know, and industry follows government. And that that's that again, leadership in industry and government needs to work together to create a force that can fight. Same in industry. Deliver their whatever their product is, that's their their product to fight.

SPEAKER_00 51:18

I think that's a great, a great place to leave this conversation, you know, with the note to capability, availability, and affordability. I think you made that point very it should resound in people, it resounds in my head. Uh, at the end, Wally, thanks for this conversation, you know, and sharing your perspective and experience so candidly. It's been a real privilege for me to have you at the momentum flow.

unknown 51:39

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 51:39

Well, you see, it's great to know you. It's been great for the year and a half or so that we've been associated, but I couldn't wait to get on this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 51:47

I appreciate that, Wally. Thank you so much. Well, thank you, Bruce. At the end, to the audience, what stands from this conversation with Wally, with Vice Admiral Massenberg, is a fundamental shift in how we think about logistics and leadership. This isn't about optimizing systems for efficiency only. It's about designing organizations that can perform, that can perform when it truly matters. The idea of readiness comes through clearly, is built well before the moment of need, through integration, discipline, and deliberate preparation. And whether in defense or in industry, the lesson is consistent. When systems are under real pressure, performance is not determined by intent, but by design. For leaders today, the takeaway is simple while not easy. Move beyond efficiency at the end goal and start building for continuity, for decision velocity, and resilience under stress. That's where the real momentum is created, and then sustain. So, to our listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share with your fellow operators, innovators, leaders across the different parts of the supply chain ecosystem. I'm Luis Olana, and this is the Momentum Flow where clarity, capital, and conviction keep supply chains and leaders moving forward. Until next time, stay curious, stay connected, and keep the momentum flow going. Thanks for listening.