Episode Description

Twenty years ago, a young logistics lieutenant solved an impossible field problem with a Franklin Planner, a satellite phone, and a contact who happened to be at his desk. It worked — but it ran on luck. Bill Pessin has spent his career since making sure the mission never has to. He joins Tyler Sweatt to trace the line from Army logistics to leading Salesforce’s Missionforce, and why acceleration, not just speed, is the point.

What’s happening on the Second Front

• How a satellite phone and a Franklin Planner solved an impossible field problem — and why depending on luck is a system failure
• Why Salesforce is the “central nervous system” of the mission enterprise, from HUMINT to workflow
• How Missionforce was born from a single dinner between Marc Benioff and a combatant commander
• What “acceleration” really means when moving faster through the mission is the goal, not the metric
• The one piece of government friction he’d fix first if he had a magic wand

Bill Pessin is SVP of Missionforce at Salesforce and a U.S. Army veteran who has led the company’s national security business since 2014.

Connect with Bill

• LinkedIn: Bill Pessin

Connect with Tyler

• LinkedIn: Tyler Sweatt