Operational Alpha: A Fighter Pilot’s Framework to Scale Your Business ft. Hasard Lee

All right, I'm excited about this one because this guy is a real-life badass.

So—

and what's also cool is we got the first female combat fighter pilot in the US sitting in the room, Martha McSally, in the back. So this is kind of cool that you're here at the exact time that I'm about to introduce my friend Hazard Lee. So Hazard Lee didn't just lead missions as an elite US Air Force fighter pilot making life-or-death calls on over 80 combat missions. His most important role was as architect of organizational performance. Tasked with building the training system for the world's most advanced aviators, he deconstructed hundreds of teams and found why some thrive under pressure and others crumble. He then developed these, those lessons into a battle-tested system that installs a culture of absolute ownership and decentralized execution. That framework became the Own the Outcome operating system, the foundation for his number 2 Wall Street Journal bestseller, The Art of Clear Thinking. Today he installs this cultural operating system into ambitious companies to solve for their single biggest unpriced liability, slow execution. He transforms their initial friction into operational alpha, a weapon over their competition that measurably increases decision velocity, momentum, and value. Hazard's title is Operational Alpha: A Fighter Pilot's Framework to Scale Your Business. Please help me welcome Hazard Lee.

Awesome. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Imagine you're in the cockpit of an F-16 weaving your way through the mountains on a full moon night. Looking outside, these mountains rise like black daggers 20,000 feet into the sky, but inside you're calm, you're focused. That's exactly where I was, my wingman and I performing close air support for a group of US soldiers on the ground. Inside, it was quiet. You could hear the vibration from the engine and the rhythmic hiss from my oxygen mask. The air from it smelled like opening up a new box of sneakers. On my wing was one of the newest pilots in the squadron. And our commander's intent was simple, to bring everybody home alive. Midway through the operation, a static cut through my helmet. It was a second group of US soldiers. Viper, this is Jag. We're under fire. We need air support now. And in that moment, I had a dilemma. Do I keep my forces together in accordance with our doctrine, or do I split them apart in accordance with our commander's intent? And the decision came down to one thing. Did I trust my wingman? I chose to bet on my wingman. I said, Viper 2, you're cleared to support. With that, he peeled away, and for the next hour, I heard that new wingman turn into a leader. His voice could have been shaky, but it was calm and clear, a signal cutting through the noise, providing the support that those troops on the ground desperately needed. And the operation was a success, but more importantly, everybody made it home alive. And they made it home alive because that wingman didn't just have a task to follow. He had a mission to own. In combat, it's just like what Joe Polish was talking about with the prison. It pushes you to the edge. It breaks you down. And you realize that you can't do it all yourself. The ability for a team on the edge to be able to operate on their own in a dynamic environment is called decentralized execution. It allows you to stop giving your team tasks to follow and instead missions to own. It's a strategic force multiplier, just like Nels was saying for his operating system. Now the misconception that many of us are taught is the hero leader myth, where the leader The leader has to be the smartest person in the room. And this is one of the things I love about Genius Network. It breaks this myth down better than just about any other thing I've seen. We had this misconception as fighter pilots too. There'd be the fighter pilot that had seen Top Gun one too many times. But you know what? Those people were the ones that usually washed out first because the mission is far more important than any one person's ego. When you have to do everything yourself, and I've been there too, because you think you know you're the only person that can do it right, you don't reduce the risk, you become the bottleneck. Your team has to all go directly through you. It slows everybody down, it slows down their execution. Not only do you waste your most precious resource, your time, you waste your team's most precious resource, their initiative. A leader is not defined by their individual performance. They're defined by their ability to create this culture of ownership of the mission on their team. The goal of a leader is not to be indispensable. It's to build an indispensable team, just like Nels was saying. So how can we do that?

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video, and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description, or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can simply go to JoePolish.com and you can get a copy there.

Well, the first concept is cover. This is the non-negotiable contract of top cover. That you will take 100% accountability and blame for somebody on your team that makes a mistake when they're acting on your behalf. Not 95%, 100%. Because when you do that, you unleash their initiative. And 2 is clarity. This is the compass that you're giving your team. You're showing them the direction. You're giving them the why so that you can trust them with the how. It's the commander's intent, what we had that night over Afghanistan. And the way you give a commander's intent is through the acronym CLEAR. 5 letters. C-L-E-A-R. C stands for constraints. What is the decision mapping rights? Where is the edge of the canvas for the folks on your team? How much risk are you willing to accept? L, what's the larger purpose? What are we trying to do here? What is the company trying to do in 5 years? You need that vision for your team to be able to act on your best interest. E, what is the end state? What does done look like for this specific mission? A, these are your actionable imperatives. This is your 1 to 3 strategies, 3 max. What are the strategies that are gonna get you to that end state? This is the F in Joe Polish's Don't Bock Yourself. The focus that you need. You have to focus on your strategies. It tells your team what they're not gonna do. And then R, what's the required timeline? How much time is it gonna take to get to that end state? That sets the tempo. That affects all the rest. And when you have these 3 things, or 5 things lined up, You have a clear commander's intent. And so here's my ask to you. When you get back to your team, go to the most junior person on your team, the one with the least amount of experience, and ask them, how are the tasks that you're doing, how do they feed into that commander's intent? Because that's the ultimate ground truth. Do they understand how what they're doing ties into your commander's intent? And when they do, You're unleashing their initiative. This works not only in combat in the skies over Afghanistan, it works in business. One of the companies that I'm working with is Westwood Professional Services. I'm sure many of you are familiar with it. It's one of the top engineering firms in the United States. And their rapid growth was causing what many of you, I'm sure, are familiar with. It was causing a gravity on their culture. It was burning out the leadership team and the CEO. As the CEO put it, trying to manage all these different teams is like setting his hair on fire and trying to put it out with a hammer. And so my mission was to come in and to instill decentralized execution so that they weren't burned out, so that they could offload some of those tasks and increase their decision velocity. And the result, they've grown 20% year over year, but more importantly, they have a blueprint to scale when they acquire new companies, when they hire new employees, they now are mission first. That's how you can give a wingman decentralized execution. So today, when you walk out that door, Don't let your team just go back to a task. Have them go back to a mission. Engaged, decentralized execution. And you'll not just have a team. You'll have a force that owns the outcome. Thank you.

Okay, I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead. They're over here. Do it now.

Come on.

Thank you.

Watch them.