Selection Processes for High Potentials and Senior Officers in Military Organizations

Speaker A So my sense of it is that what we're looking at in the practical world is seven, and to the extent the promotion system works, it ought to be pacing individuals up this chain in an up or out fashion, so that they just about get to where they need to be at the time they're ready to learn something else. Now, this is a key difference between the US. Army and maybe other armies as well, and industry. We do not keep people. What we do is we constantly prepare for the next war. So we constantly move people in and up and then out so as to keep a force in being that is capable of doing what it needs to do. Now, that then takes care of that. My sense of it is that most officers are probably at least mode four. We're going to find some mode threes, but most are probably mode four. So when you're looking at this young captain, you may be looking at a mode five who is working a progressions curve, and he's moving hopefully at a pace up the curve that will allow him to manage capability to level as he goes. Is that a fair statement?

Speaker B Yeah. Now, this is our development curve. These are our levels. And we have a schoolhouse at every level.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker B And it varies from eight to ten weeks to a year. We spend far more time in training than anybody in the world in terms of that. And everybody goes up about the same rate at the car lot to the war college, basically, yeah.

Speaker A It's almost lockstep. Now, after the war college, it's a whole different matter. That's a key point. Some go out and some go up quickly. Now, how do we how do you recognize talent? Say again?

Speaker C How do you recognize talent and not shoot it before?

Speaker A Now, we did this.

Speaker B This is the chart I used because when I reconstructed it, here is a four star. Really? Here's a level eight. If you go back and look at his career, this was his capability in eight league, but he wasn't in a job as a 25 year old major or captain. He was in a level two role. But he had level four capability at the time. Yeah. Kept in World War II. But what happened was colin Powell was in the white house as a major. Max Thurman, as the four star general, used to go around and say, I want to be the dumbest guy in the room. And he would surround himself with very, very bright young majors, lieutenant Colonels, who are extremely capable. And he had no problem with the fact that they were much more knowledgeable in their area than he was, that he wanted the data to do the so inevitably, if you track the careers of those youngsters, they became very competent.

Speaker D And rose very quickly.

Speaker B Fortuitous. He knew what he was looking for. He found them, he picked them out put them in roles, don't have a system that does. That very dicey, because this guy assesses all of them, or did. So we made some predictions, remember.

Speaker A And basically what you have, boy, this could get me in trouble. But my sense of it is that our military does a very poor job of finding future potential. It depends on stuff like Steve was talking about, where a very, very capable general officer and Max Thurman was identifies potential and draws it forward. Now, by and large, our oers assess past performance. And so if you know that each succeeding level entails responsibilities of almost a qualitatively different nature, trying to predict future performance based on past performance, on less complex tasks, doesn't make a lot of sense. So this is a horse that Steve and I have been riding for a long time.

Speaker C I would add that we have the similar difficulty in the Canadian military. I think what we've tried to do is we've tried to and it has nothing to do with requisite, I'm afraid. But what has invariably come out is that in the development, in the evaluation process is the assessment of potential by the mor, to put it in simple requisite terms. And so that is taken into account. But it has nothing necessarily to do with cognitive capacity, although in a strict sense. But it is that judgment and discretion of the mor that this individual has the potential to move up at a rate faster than their peers or whatever the case may be. But that's probably about the only way that we've really been able to nail that one.

Speaker B To your other issue, we don't use the term mode. We don't use the term level referring to an individual. We're very reluctant to talk. I think people are overestimating the number of people who are capable of operating at a very high level AIDS in society. There aren't a whole lot of them. I find it very fascinating to attempt to describe them if you haven't been there, because one of our operating assumptions is you can't write the doctrine describing level seven work if you haven't at least been and operated a level seven operation. And so I don't have very many. That means the doctrine at the senior level has to be written by retired four stars, and only certain retired four stars are capable of describing what they did. So it's very interesting in terms of that. The demands are there. In fact, you could see a requirement for that kind of capability. But are we systematically growing them? Our education system is educating for a level. We train for a job. We spend lots of money, over 12 billion a year in our education system. Nobody in industry does that. And we're having trouble intuitively. Look, a lot is done intuitively by good leaders or managers or commanders.

Speaker A Nothing new.

Speaker B What's new is putting it all together in a total system. That's what's new. And having some principles, but there are bits and pieces of this that commanders and managers have been doing it all along. I mean, I had a manager call me from a plant. He said when he read about the Mor role, he said, for once, a justification of why I want to wander around. And he said, now I can tell my immediate managers. It's my job. And he intuitively felt he had to be down two levels, seeing what's going on, because he was accountable. But he was always hammered by his bosses for meddling. He said, Come on in and train my bosses or me, my subordinates, but I'm not meddling. I'm doing my job. And so he had an intuitive feel for that. So I don't say this is radically new. What may be new is putting it into a total package and having all the pieces together and tying in all the other systems. That may be new, and that's hard. But that's why Roger and I are working on what we're calling a new management system, because it's a total system and having those kinds of things in place and then applying it. You know, young Liz comes in as a political point. He says, Get rid of them. I said, what's your principle? And if you don't like mine, give me another set. And where's your data? You at least have you have something to stand on in terms of those guys.

Speaker A One of the things to keep in mind about progression in the military from one level to another. We talked this morning about building a conceptual map, a conceptual frame of reference that can be used as a template to understand the complexity of a given situation. So it isn't just size. It's being able to recognize a situation for what it is, understand where the levers are, and understand then how to influence that system to move in a direction that you want it to go. So my best guess is that this works in the army by levels as we see it, because by trial and error, we've just about found out how long it takes to grow a frame of reference from one level to the next. And a lot of the progression that an individual goes through in terms of assignments is calculated to build the various pieces of the frame of reference that will be required at the next level up. So to some extent, these schools and assignments are sort of tailored to produce the growth of a frame of reference that will work. And I think that may be one reason why the frames work, the levels work the way they do.

Speaker D I think you're saying if you're not capable of functioning at seven or eight, you probably won't recognize a seven or eight.

Speaker B Right?

Speaker D We do a very good job since I can't get in trouble. We do a very good job of driving out strategic talent early, because you have to survive at the tactical and operational level to be a strategic leader. And the work requirements are so fundamentally different that you may not be very good at an operational level, but you could be a master at the strategic level, but you have to survive at one to get to the next one. And so, as a result, we tend to do a fairly good job of driving out some of our most innovative creative. I think that's just a casualty of the system. Sometimes you'll hear of a, quote, mentor who's reached out and protected someone or pulled them up because he realized that notion. And I won't give any names of that. But, I mean, I think it's tough because high potential people at any level are difficult to manage because they work to their capability. And so you give them a task, and it comes back with much more than you asked for. And you shake your head and you say, jesus, I just wanted this. I don't need all this other stuff. But they're working to their capability. And if you're threatened by mean, if your subordinate is more competent than you.

Speaker B Are and you're threatened by them, they're.

Speaker D Dead one way or another. Now, whose job is it to sort that out?

Speaker B That's right. And.

Speaker D Here'S what pains me. I'll have a senior raider, which is the mor say, I don't have time to be looking. I got 60 of those dudes. I said, that is your job. And when we restructured the installation command, I said, I did the math on leadership. We never do math on how much time it takes to lead. We always assume leadership is, by the way, event.

Speaker B And I did the math.

Speaker D I said, okay, it's about 190 days out of 240 days a year to lead your unit. Now you don't have any time to do anything else.

Speaker B That's a full time job, leading your.

Speaker D Unit in terms of going out and visiting, et cetera. So that's why we got rid of a lot of other stuff in terms of that.

Speaker A Okay, just quickly adding to what Steve was saying, the thing that's wrong with the manager once removed is that frequently and unfortunately, the manager once removed will ask the manager to write the report.

Speaker B Right.

Speaker A So you don't get the manager once removed providing an independent judgment of the potential. If you did, that would work. I think that would work.

Speaker B It's pretty good on the warfight side because the two Star will actually spend time with his colonels, lieutenant colonels.

Speaker A Oh, we'll see them. Of course he will, because he needs.

Speaker B To know who to replace his brigade commander if there's casualty, so he has a vested interest. There's a disaster on the other side, but they fob that off to the staff officer, or they'll go out there and then I love it, because in the back of every room is mission, vision, values, right. Statement. We value our people. Oh, but I don't have an hour to spend down spend with the Jerry, talk about his career.

Speaker A There you go.

Speaker B And so the operating values and stated values are on the same.

Speaker A And there's one other piece to the business of losing high potential people. If you take a look at what's required down here, it's high energy and attention to detail. If you mess up on detail at the company level or the platoon level, it's very noticeable. So you've got to be able to take care of business down here. But if you look at the data about the preferences for high capability people, they don't really get attracted to detail work. So what you have is your high potential people being vulnerable to messing up on detail at this lower level if they don't have somebody to watch out for them. And either discipline them on detail like, look, you've got a couple of years here. Do it or go to special duty somewhere, but that probably gets more high potential people out than anything else.

Speaker B Or the colonel has to have a conversation with the lieutenant colonel about why you don't want to do that rating with Jerry and why you may want to rethink what you said about Jerry because he's got a feel. Of how Jerry fits in. And so he's made a judgment about potential. And he's going to have that conversation with his immediate raider about that.

Speaker A And there's one more piece to that, too, if you take a look at that lieutenant colonel who's now rendering a report on this company commander. How often will he have given that company commander intermediate performance feedback? That's not on the OER, so the performance counseling isn't there as it should be. There's one other word to add to David's question. We've been talking almost in an all or none fashion, and that's a mistake. We talk about driving out high potential officers. We don't drive them all out. Some of them are original and at the same time can take care of business. So they're versatile. They're well rounded, they're whole people. They can do it all. And to a very large extent, those individuals do get recognized. And that may be the saving grace that avoids the loss of competence. Because if you do take a look at and in the special operations community, if you take a look at the people who are there, they are incredibly more talented and capable than I was at that age. And maybe, as we say, most of us.