Air Force Talent Management Update, 2019 Air Space & Cyber Conference, Lt Gen Brian T. Kelly (Dep Chief of Staff, A1), Col Jason “Ned Stark” Lamb (Dir of Intel, Analysis and Innovation, AETC) at the 2019 Air, Space & Cyber Conference.
Transcript
AFA’s President, Lieutenant General Orville Wright. (applause)
Well, good afternoon. We certainly saved the best and the most important for last. This is your AFA president having so much fun I wanted to keep you all around as long as I could. So thanks for (laughs) being here. This is the last session of your Air Force Association’s Air Space and Cyber Conference. And the topic of this session is Air Force Talent Management update. Nothing, absolutely nothing is more critical than having the most lethal and most capable Air Force on the planet, than recruiting, developing, and retaining the right men and women as its leaders and doers. Talent management incorporates more than just a promotion system. And our two distinguished panelists will discuss developmental category reconfiguration, recruitment, and the overall Air Force Talent Management process. Our two panelists this afternoon are ready to provide brief remarks and answer your questions, and we have a really neat kind of a question system here that Mike’s gonna help me with that actually gets at which questions are most repeated, I think. So without further delay, please welcome, Lieutenant General Brian Kelly, Deputy Chief of staff of Manpower Personnel and Services, and his wing man, Colonel Jason B “Ned Stark” Lamb, Director of Intelligence Analysis and Innovation, Headquarters Air Education and Training Command. General Kelly, over to you. Welcome. (applause)
Well, thanks everybody. And Orville, thanks to you guys in AFA for allowing us to have this forum and it became such a great event for our United States Air Force, so thanks for doing that. Good afternoon everybody, I know Orville said we saved the best for last, but we certainly appreciate you guys sticking around. We know when we’re in the last slot before the event ends, either your car is not working or you got the last airline reservation. So thanks for sticking around for what we think is a really important topic. This topic, and you’ve heard sort of themes this week from lots of folks. But I’ll start from where the chief started before. When we think about the National Defense Strategy and we talked a lot this week about the Air Force we need, and we talked about the operational concepts that are gonna have to be in place, right? Multi-domain command and control operations. Those kind of things that we talked about. You heard us come back to, and you heard Chief Wright bring up in his discussion today, that no matter what we do in those areas, it’s gonna be about people, right? And so we have been looking forward and saying, as we look at the National Defense Strategy, we look at the talent market. All things that are out there. What is the nation gonna need from us in terms of the skillsets that we bring forward in our airmen? And more importantly for us, do we have the right Talent Management system in place to make sure that we can develop and put the airmen forward to satisfy our portion, to join portion for our Air Force in the National Defense Strategy? In doing that, it was really important for us to look far and wide in all places for kinds of ideas. There was no market on good ideas, and we certainly don’t have them all in the A1. So we have been going out and been very collaborative over the last couple of years. And looking for lots of feedback from the force, getting feedback from our airmen, from industry. Lots of different places, to try and put these things together. We did the revitalizing Squadron Report that the Chief lead, and got a lot of feedback from the field, and got a lot of efforts there. We held work force summits with representatives from all our MAJCOMs and industry over the last two years to sort of come up with these different things and talk about these key concepts. And then, when you looked out in the world, you wanted to be able to include and talk to anybody who had a thoughtful voice. People who are actually putting thought, and deep thought, into where we needed to go. Not just about fixing maybe problems or irritants in the past, but what do we need to do to transform our Talent Management system, make it go forward? And that’s where we met Colonel Jason Lamb. So Jason and I have actually known each other for a longer period than when he came out as Ned Stark, and we’ve been able to have conversations back and forth. And exchanged ideas, and do so in an open and collaborative manner. And it’s been really helpful, I think, for me, and for our team to be able to look at those things. Not everything that Jason may have expelled we have been able to implement. But certainly in a variety of manners, his voice was helpful in the larger conversation that we had going on Talent Management reform. That said, I’m gonna get ready to turn it over to Jason here, he’s gonna give introduction. Just as we’ve always collaborated, I haven’t given Jason any instruction for what to say today, or what to do today, okay? So he’s gonna give his remarks and his thoughts, independent thoughts, on Talent Management where we are. And then I’m gonna come back and sort of tell you guys what we’re doing, and things that we’re excited about, that we’re sort of transforming our Air Force Talent Management. So Jason, over to you.
Thank you, Sir. So, it’s an honor and a privilege to be here with y’all. I’m very thankful. Especially to you, Sir, and to General Goldfein. I think many of your peers think you’ve lost your mind putting me up here without any rules. And if you weren’t looking for candor, you picked the wrong guy. But kinda three things that I wanna hit really quickly, because I’m more interested to hear what y’all’s questions are, where that discussion goes. I think there are three things that we really need to look to when we’re talking about any future Talent Management system. And the first one being, we’ve gotta shift from where we are now to a growth mindset, okay? The kinda thing that cares about what you can do for the mission, and more importantly, what you can do for your airmen now. And that we have to move away from the entire concept of sustain superior performance, which anchors us in the past. That your past is interesting only as it relates to what you can do today. That your past is not gonna define or predetermine your path in the Air Force. Or limit you, artificially propel you to places that you should have never been. So I think, I think that’ll be really powerful. Things like stratification, one bad strat, one bad interaction, and suddenly you are not in consideration. You may have grown to a place where we need you to be. And that person who maybe got that strat, maybe decide to sit on their morals, and maybe that isn’t the person that we need for tomorrow, leading and caring for our airmen. So that’s number one. Two is that we have better discriminators for how we select and promote folks. Right now, you know, on the officer side, we’ve got the stratification system that we’ve talked about. And it’s okay, but defaulting, you know, or lacking a system that really allows us to discriminate who is doing the best in terms of leading our airmen and making impact on the mission, so I’m excited about the new system that we’re bringing online. We’ve created things like knowledge based promotion testing, distinguished graduates from school, these, these other. You know, the one million and one annual awards that we have now. Not to take any, you know. I was one of those. But you know, it’s gotten to the point now, where we have the red headed left handed maintainer of the year award. Just because we’re looking for ways to try and tell the people that we should promote from the people that maybe aren’t quite ready. And we need to do better about actually coming up with measures that matter. Actual, objective, variable data. Because that should lead us to my third point, it’s about accountability. For the things you do, the things you don’t do, the things you decide, and the non-decisions. We need a better way to capture that so that we can actually hold people accountable, have a system that has candor. I don’t know how many times I have heard people say, “Well, you shouldn’t hire that person, because X happened.” It is nowhere in their records, because somebody was afraid to slow somebody down, right? So we need a system that incentivizes candor, because that one mistake isn’t gonna necessarily define them the rest of their career. Especially if they learn from it, and they’re in a better place today. The last piece on the accountability, one I’m very passionate about is, senior leaders need to be accountable for who they’re pushing into, or hiring into leadership positions, positions of trust. When we hire someone and they get fired for integrity issues, lack of judgment, creating a toxic or hostile work environment, I promise you it wasn’t the first time that they engaged in those behaviors. And there was a long line of more senior officers who pushed that individual along. There’s no accountability. There’s no feedback loop. That doesn’t affect our senior leaders in any way and until there’s an accountability mechanism and a way to follow up and have actual meaningful consequences, the system isn’t gonna change. Those are just my thoughts, I could be wrong. So with that I’ll turn it back over to General Kelly, and I very much look forward to your questions. (applause)
Well, thanks Jason. I think you articulated things a lot of us have seen. And it certainly resonates when we talked about the surveys that we did, and the groundwork that we did to go out in the field and talk to people. And we’ve talked about this, we squint with out ears. We heard those same things loud and clear several times. When we think about modernizing our Talent Management system and transforming our Talent Management System for what we need to build in the future. We kinda think of it the context that General Goldfein kinda set out before. At the center of all of it is, we have to have competence and character. We’re a profession of arms, and we want to make sure that we’re driving our competence in a way that makes sense to us and that it’s underpinned by the character we know we need to have as professional airmen. That competence piece, and you heard General Goldfein defined it is. Comes into four areas for us and you’re gonna hear this thing for us. We want to talk about, what is your contribution to executing whatever mission you have? How do you execute your mission? We want to talk about how you lead people and whether you have a formal responsibility or informal responsibility. And in that leading people part, we’ll get at those discussions of what is your accountability in terms of mentoring and identifying your subordinates, and evaluating and grading your subordinates. Certainly if you are a supervisor, one of the ways that you’re gonna be graded, in that discussion, is how are you leading the people that you’re leading? And how are you choosing those people? So that we can have some accountability to the discussion. Third part managing resources, how you manage your resources and what you do. And then the fourth part for us is, whatever mission you’ve been given, whatever your job is, what did you do to improve your unit? How did you move it forward? And those four factors really form a basis for us to align and synchronize our Talent Management system around what we value. We’re gonna start with that on the officer side but I think you’ll see us eventually move that into the enlisted ranks as well as sort of the foundation of us saying in a unified manner, this is what we value as the United States Air Force, and things are going to be synchronized around that and focused around that. We already have those four factors by the way, described in what we call the Memorandum of Instruction. The instruction from the secretary of the Air Force who controls promotions on the officer’s side of the house. Her or his instruction that goes to the promotion board already has those four factors laid out and describing there as the things that we’re asking the board to look for in our officers. What we’re doing on the officer evaluation is bringing in a system that will do those same four factors so that we’re synchronized in line. And I’ll come back and talk about that. But overall in the Talent Management system, I think there’s four factors that we have to get at. The system has to be responsive, meaning the inventory that we build, the group of airmen that we have, have to match the requirements we have. I think all of us have seen places where you have too much of one thing, too little of something else. We’ve gotta be responsive, and the inventory has to match the requirements that are set out for what we need to be as a Force. It has to be agile, it has to be able to adapt to threats and change, both at a system level and on an individual level. And we’ve gotta recognize that people have different talents and are gonna go different ways. And we need to exploit those talents and use those talents so it’s not a one size fits all system. Third thing is we have to empower and drive performance. We wanna be based on performance and what people’s performance, not other factors. Jason laid out some of those things, I think. You know, in the past, what I would call proxy indicators that have sort of come to the forefront when you can’t determine performance. Whether you’ve decided somebody was a DG and somebody wasn’t at a school, and that would propel them forward. Or somebody was an annual award winner. And we want to talk about your performance, and how you execute your mission, lead people, manage resources and improve the unit. And the last thing for us, and it’s really important for us, is we want the system to be much more transparent and more simple. It needs to be an open book test in what we do and how we go forward. And that’s really important. So I can say this, it’s my tribe, so I’m allowed to talk about my tribe a little bit. But we in the A1 over time sort of developed a core competency. We had the badge in making simple hard. We can really make some pretty simple things as difficult as we could. We’re getting away from that, we’re trying to be more transparent. You know, one good example of that is that Memorandum of Instruction I just talked to you about. That’s published out there for the entire Air Force to see. Everybody can read that and everybody can understand what’s out there. Doing similar things in assignments to be more transparent. But those are the big four factors. We’ve got a number of programs that we’re gonna talk to you guys about, and hopefully your questions will come in. We’re changing the officer evaluation system, you’ve heard about that. We already launched and put out there a new way to build, who are gonna be instructors? Who’s gonna be the folks who teach the next generation of folks command? We called it The Officer Instructor and Recruiter Special Duty Program. That launched this past Spring. It is designed to help us make sure we value and pick the right people to build the next group of people. We changed our promotion recommendation forum on the officer’s side to what we call a potential focus promotion recommendation form, to make sure we had a clear voice and a clear discussion to the board without any extra outside influence. We’re working on and we’ve been around to road shows to many places. I think we saw 3700 airmen across the Air Force and the road shows that went out, on developmental categories. How do we reorganize our promotion system so that we can unlock developmental agility? We have discovered over time, and you guys will probably resonate with this that, there’s sort of a one size fits all developmental path. And that one size fits all developmental path really served us well, right? It’s built the best Air Force in the world for us over time. But what has happened is, and we’ve gotten into this path where everybody has to go on the same command track, where you go through being a flight commander, squadron commander, group commander, wing commander, going forward. To be after the National Defense Strategy and what it requires, is we need more agile development. We need to let people develop in different ways. Whether that’s in space, cyber, support, force modernization. And what we’re doing is, by unlocking. Unlocking the ability to not be beholden to or not worry about how you’re going to compete against others in a promotion board who maybe not like you. It gives us the idea that we can develop differently and develop in the ways we need to. So that’s really important. So all those things are ongoing. And we look forward to your questions. I wanna point out what we have up here, is we have a way for you guys to type your questions in, and bring them out, and you can vote. So we know we’re gonna have a limited amount of time here today. And you can vote for which questions you want to go to the top. And our moderator, she will take the questions that are at the top, and keep asking us to answer those ones. And any ones that we don’t get to, we will come back and make sure we publish them out on the website, make sure we get all your questions answered. And with that, I want to be quiet and listen to you guys, just like we have been, squint with our ears and hear what your questions are about our Talent Management reform. So over to you guys.
Thanks very much, Brian. This amazing system. So we got the most votes for the question that I’m about to read. But before I do that, I have to sit here as sort of the elder in the room and make an observation. So for our officer leadership, I can say this based on about 50 years since I raised my right hand. We have the finest leadership, and every generation is better. But we have the finest senior officer leadership our Air Force has ever had. And while we got CQ Brown, General Brown off working the, strengthening the war fighter and industry relationship, we got Misses Brown sitting here. So thanks for being here. And then Mac McMurray who’s deputy at the Air Force Material Command at Right Path. And ensures we have the most capable lethal weapons systems in the world. And then Tony Cotton, the Vice and strategic direct global strike command. And ensures the planet remains safe. And we have a credible deterrence, we have a chain of credible deterrence, for two legs at the triad. And then of course, General Cobra Harrigian, who’s looking the Russians in the eye every day. Terrific leadership. With that, let me read the first question here. Oh, hold on Mike, we’ll get it. Second one, okay. When will we stop using time on station to drive assignments and actually look at preferences and mission qualifications and/or developmental needs.
So I’ll go first, and then Jason if you wanna hop in if you have any comments in this so that. One developmental transformation I’ve just mentioned, developmental categories, gives us the opportunity to do just that. Right now what happens is, I think all of us get into this mode and of, if you stay too long on a station you might be considered, right? A homesteader. And when you go to a promotion board, or you go to look at something. Somebody will say, “Well, they stayed too long at that place and they’ve homesteaded.” As we’ve worked on this developmental categories idea, we looked at how to break it down from our current single line of the Air Force category, into six developmental categories. Air and Special Operations, Space Operations, Nuclear and Missile Operations, Information Warfare, Combat Support, and Force Modernization. Each of those areas now has the ability to adjust those discussions and decide, what’s the right time on station criteria? And how do I look at time on station different? I’ll use the force modernization category in particular which General McMurray and his team out there. But there is great value in us having more continuity and more time to work in a program, an acquisition program. And have that continuity from year to year as we go through a program. This will allow us to do that without that having a negative impact in terms of the promotion, because the force modernization category will be meeting at promotion board and looking at other officers who have the same set and same values and discussions. So this gives us the opportunity to do that and adjust those time on station things to what’s appropriate and not just have us move through, just to move through and be competitive, so that’s where we’re going.
Thank you, Sir. So my preference is to actually have a system that’s flexible, where commanders and supervisors can work with a member. And as long as we’re being intentional, they can choose what’s right. There may be something going on with the member, and it makes a lot of sense. Either programmatically or for the member, for them to stay in place. I think our total force mission partners don’t necessarily have a problem with people staying in a place for a while. And I think they’re pretty darn good at what they do. So I think this is something that we can crack. I think on the officer side, it might be more practical in the short term, ’cause we’re implementing the talent marketplace. I know there’re plans in the future for talent marketplace to be employed on the enlisted side of the Force. Some of these things are just a matter of scale, and how do we do it at scale, and accommodate everybody’s professional development requirements and balance those, that with their needs. Just my thoughts.
[Orville] Okay, next question. Why do we put so much weight on DG, distinguished graduate from school for promotions when that does not show leadership?
Yeah, so I think this is a great question and you heard Jason tee this up before. And he and I have talked about this subject. I guess I would argue our current system doesn’t do a great job of being able to truly allow performance to be the distinguishing factor between two airmen. Too often, whether it’s because of the stratification system or other ways, there are lots of reports that look very similar. And what happens when reports look similar, if you are looking for an easy button, you start to find other discriminators and other ways to tell the difference between one officer and another. And so you revert to things like, this one was a distinguished graduate, this one wasn’t a distinguished graduate. This one went to this particular award ceremony, this one didn’t go. And those not always the very best means to determine performance and really figure out. What we’re putting in place with those four factors in our discussion. Is not only using those four factors, but using those four factors to help us come up with a objective score. And the objective score will be something like this. Each of the areas, leading people, executing your mission, will have sort of a vignettes of behavior that describe your behavior against a set of competencies in there. The rater is gonna go through and read those different areas and say, okay, are you a novice in this area? Or are you an expert in this area? Let me just decide what your behavior describes itself at. That’s going to lend itself to having eventually some kind of score. We’re still in the formation stages, but right now we’re thinking about a seven point scale. And you can say okay, when I go through this process, for executing a mission I get a 5.5 on my scorecard, and when I look at leading people I get a 4.9. And then want we want to be able to do, rather than have a stratification is, use that and have that be measured, both from the rater’s profile, you know. What is this rater? Is this rater an easy grader? Is this rater a hard grader? Are they Santa Clause or are they Grinch? In terms of what they give out. Have some kind of normalization of that, like we’ve seen our sister services do in similar fashions. And then give us a chance to compare that person’s score across their peers. Whether it’s in that developmental category, but at that grade. So all majors who happen to be this AFSC across this category. This is how you score and how you fair it out. We think that’s a better way for us to be able to drive and empower performance and make sure we’re doing that without getting into a discussion of who was a distinguished graduate or who wasn’t. So that’s our method, and that’s where we’re going right now, and that’s what we’re testing out.
I’ve written on this. (laughs) Right? I’ve been a distinguished grad, I’ve been a top grad. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care what you know, unless you actually use it to do something. So if I were king for the day, DGs would be gone, they’d be mass, they wouldn’t be handed out anymore. They just wouldn’t. Because as long as they’re around, somebody’s gonna look to them. Looking forward to the day when we have an evaluation system where we don’t have to. The problem is, if we do away with that, we’re gonna latch on to something else that’s, you know, equally worthless or worse. But it should be gone tomorrow. On the broader subject, valuing the school, and those kinds of things. I have four Master’s Degrees. Why? (laughs) (applause) Three of them are in the same subject, so no wonder I was the top grad the last time around. It only took me three tries to figure it out. What is it we’re trying to do here? I think there’s a question where a blank whiteboard is really valuable in saying, what is it we’re actually trying to accomplish? And if we were trying to build that today, and that’s a lot of discussion that we’ve had, quite honestly. So don’t think that I’m talking out of sync. These are conversations that we’ve had, real, good conversations. What is it we’re actually trying to do? And how unintentionally in trying to do the right thing have we strayed from that target? Those, you know. So I got the first Master’s Degree on my own. Those other three, those are three years that I wasn’t out there leading airmen. That was three years where I could have been contributing the mission, that were lost. I mean they were, they were just lost. Yeah. Just my view.
Yeah, thanks. Let me just add one other part to this. You heard Jason say, you know, why do I have these? And what am I doing? We really want to get to. So competencies and your degrees and stuff are about what you learned and what skillset you have. But what we’re really interested is, what you do with that. What is your performance? How have you actually translated that competency and that skillset into producing things? How have you translated into how you execute your mission? How you lead people, how you manage your resources, and how you improve your units. Those who can exploit those things and use their competencies in a way that’s going to be resonating. Those are who we want to make sure we push forward in the system, and who we want to make sure we’re building towards the leaders we need in the future.
Okay, next question. How do we reward late bloomers, and at the same time slow down high potential officers who don’t perform as they get older?
You can start, I’ll come.
Thank you, Sir. I was hoping this would get asked. So not all this is original thought okay, so please nobody criticize me saying, well, that’s not new or think that I’m some genius that I’m not. year groups need to go away. They just, they need to go away. You’re either ready to be considered for promotion or you’re not. In the zone, above the zone, below the zone. It’s all driving unhealthy behaviors with the best of intentions. All this was created for the best of intentions with a great purpose. Just like most of the laws that the congress have passed. Right? And that’s also why on the hairdryer it says, “Don’t use this in the shower.” Because some idiot did. So do away with the year groups. But also we get, we get towards those. We get towards those measures that we were, we were talking about before. But the. Sorry, completely drawing a blank. The way that we really wipe the slate clean is by masking previous evaluations from promotion board consideration. At least when you reach the new rank, right? ‘Cause what you do, once you’re promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, why do I care what you did as a Major? Unless you’re actually applying that to what you’re doing today. So we shouldn’t be reaching to the past, we should be looking at where people are now, and having a system that allows us to evaluate where people are today. I don’t know how many times I’ve had a really sharp Master Sargent that was ready for the next stipe, but the council I got was, you’re wasting your stratification, you’re wasting the push on this individual, because two years ago they screwed up and failed their fitness assessment. Doesn’t matter if that person is the most fit person in my unit today. And the most ready to lead, and does the best taking care of their airmen, I’m wasting that. Why? They learned from that mistake, look at where they are today and what they’re providing for our airmen, and what they can do tomorrow? So why are we putting someone in a multi-year penalty box for. (applause) For something non-criminal. So I think when, you know, when people. People start ringing their hands, though, when you start talking about masking at least for promotion purposes, previous evaluations. But I think that’s the only way to get there, really. Where are you today is what I care about.
Thanks Jason. A couple things to add in that discussion. So I know our enlisted force here already knows this, but this is already what we’ve sort of transitioned to on the enlisted side. So we only look back a certain number of years to make sure where we go. We don’t go back through the entire record. I think we’ll eventually get to a similar discussion on the officer side. But one of the things I wanted to point out in this discussion of year groups and time phasing is, the opportunity that we have that the congress allowed us to get. So in recent years, there’s been a lot of discussion about Talent Management. And the United States Congress, in particularly The Sennett, has helped us by passing some things last year. One we call the Defense Officer Personnel Management Act, DOPMA. New reforms that gave us opportunities, and tools, and flexibilities that we’re just now exploring. I’m gonna point out my friend over here, Vice Admiral John Nowell, from the Navy N1. He and I, and our counterparts in the army and ring, are all sort of working towards, how do we exploit these new things that we have? One of the options that it gives you in these new authorities from DOPMA, is to set up sort of a way for your promotion system to rather than have a promotion year group, work through the process and say, this is your in the zone promotion and this is your above the zone promotion upper out, is give you a sort of five year space to look at those promotions over that time. And some folks might be developing on a faster pace, it might be more competitive in the beginning part of that zone. Some people might be developing on an average pace with their peers, and be ready in the middle part of that zone. And some people might be late bloomers, that’s part of the question was there. And develop towards the end of that zone. And people would be considered through that entire process so that we’re picking those folks who are developing at the right pace and developing the right way and looking at that whole thing. So that gets rid of, for us, potential of having to look at year groups, and having to look at below the zone, in the zone, and above the zone. And a way that we can really manage in a new way. So that’s exciting for us. The pace at which we change those things, though. I just caution from my seat, we have to be careful, right? We have to be careful as we make a transition that we don’t break a lot of glass when we’re making those transitions. So as we’re doing this and putting these programs in place, we’re trying to be pretty careful about how we transition, when we transition. And making sure where we’re not leaving anybody behind in that process.
Okay, next question. Is the Air Force considering psychological profiling for commander candidates or senior leaders to get after the toxic leadership problem.
I’ll go on this one. So we’re doing a lot of things. And you heard General Goldfein during the Town Hall session really commit to our discussion about how do we identify and make sure we’re working on toxic leaders. Let me tell you what we’re doing. I don’t think we’re doing psychological profiles as a part of that discussion. But let me tell you what we are doing. So General Cotton is sitting over here. And down at Air University, they have a leadership development course that we put in place in the last year. Now these guys did a great job standing it up. It is a leadership development course that is for folks who we think are going to at some point in time, be competitive for, and become squadron commanders. And it is a gap that we saw on our development. And it is mostly focused on the soft skills that those folks are gonna need. The interpersonal skills they’re gonna need to lead effectively. Knowing themselves, their emotion quotient if you will. Making sure that that’s maximized. Giving them the skillsets they need to effectively lead and be inspirational leaders, as you heard the chief said, as opposed to toxic leaders. So we put that in place. The new OPR system that we talked about. When we talk about that leading people category, this is what we’re thinking and where we’re going on this discussion. Before I evaluate the person who I’m gonna put my, you know, discussion on how they’re leading people. Before I do that, part of our thought process and our creation is, that that person needs to get sort of 360 feedback from them before they evaluate that person. Not in the, not necessary in a formal tool. It could be an informal way. But if I’m gonna be. If I’m a group commander and I’m gonna evaluate a squadron commander. Before I evaluate how they’re leading people, I need to talk to their fellow squadron commanders, I need to talk to some of their subordinates. I need to make sure I have some information that gives me a comfortable sense that what I see in terms of how that person presents themselves to me as the leader, is accurate in terms of how their leading people. That’s part of the process and what we want to get after in here. So those are things that we’re doing to try and make sure we go. But I’m gonna touch on one thing more before I turn over to Jason. You heard Jason mention, we can’t be afraid of documenting something. We have a culture in our Air Force, that I think all you guys would admit, especially on the officer side. Way more so on the officer side. That we don’t wanna document things for fear that it’s going to derail somebody and be a career-ender. And certainly if you’re the only one doing that, you should sort of feel like. If I’m gonna hold my airmen accountable for something, and nobody else is doing that, I’m gonna impact them. We’ve gotta get ourselves to a place where we’re comfortable in making sure the feedback happens and that we can capture those things. And then have a framework. And we think we’ve done this pretty well and the instruction we give to the board. To let the board look at those things and decide. Is this indicative of a character flaw? Or is this a mistake? How long has happened since that person failed their PT test? Where do you go in that discussion? How do you make sure that all the factors, time, recovery, what you’ve done since then, are all considered? So that we can all comfortably make sure that we are capturing those things. And for those people who have, truly have, character flaws, and we’ve given them the feedback, and they haven’t fixed it. They’re probably not gonna progress as leaders in our United States Air Force. For those people who have, there should be a path for them to continue and go forward, and that’s what we’re working on.
Sir, yeah. I know I threw out that psychological testing in one of my articles, so. And I don’t necessarily think that it’s, that’s a horrible idea. And it’s from what I understanding, The Army Human Capital Innovation folks have been looking at you know, at the idea a little bit. I think we can get to the solution what we are looking for if we have other mechanisms in place. The 360 feedback information going to the rater, the additional rater, and actually having that data available. The climate assessments, right? Not necessarily directly on the performance report, but feeding back to the rater and the additional rater. And that there’s that data to help. To help the rater and additional rater make their evaluations at the individual provided in a proper context. But also, if they get it wrong over time, we can go back and look at what happened. And actually hold that rater accountable for getting it wrong. And if that happens wrong too often, then maybe we don’t need them necessarily in a senior rater capacity, if that makes sense. So I think the most important element there, is that the voice of those being led has been captured and heard. However we can do that. Because we all know, we all, we all experienced that. We have leaders that we would follow to hell and back, no questions asked. And then we have those that we intentionally avoid, and will leave the Air Force before we ever work for them again. How does that get captured? Because right now, it’s not. And so I’m optimistic about the new system, and those mechanisms, because those are the things that we’re trying to get after.
Okay, are we going to change the OPR system? New forum, new computer program.
So hopefully the answer is yes. The discussion I had and I described to you guys would lead to a new OPR forum. And hopefully an IT solution that would lend itself to being a lot easier for us. When I talk about simplicity and transparency is one of the tenants that we have to get to at a Talent Management system. Certainly one of the things that we have in mind is, how do we capture all the things we need to capture? But make it easier for our Force. We’re thinking about the sort of prototypes we’ve seen so far, sort of like a TurboTax forum where you pull down the pull down menu about leading people and executing missions. And you’re able to see those things and check where you need to. A lot less typing bullets and putting bullets in those discussions. A lot less discussion. No stratification, because the system’s gonna give you where you’re going with that. But our vision is definitely a new forum, online forum. That would, you print it only when you need to, but all done online. That sort of captures that and for it to be back boned and sort of underpinned by a new IT product that would do it. So not in the realm of a VPC and the things that we currently have, which certainly I struggle with and get mad at on a weekly basis when I’m trying to navigate my way through OPRs and those kind of things. But a more modern system. And the way I think about it, and when I’ve seen what we’ve looked at, and prototypes. It’s more like a TurboTax kind of format. You can work your way through the instructions and then having an end product for yourself.
The only thing that I would add there, is that there is nothing about our current system and the forums that we have that prevents us from doing all the things that we’ve been talking about. It’s our climate and our culture, and how we’ve chosen to do these things. Those of you who didn’t hear Chief Wright’s talk earlier about the difference between the conversation in CORONA, before I get in trouble here. Or the conversation amongst the chiefs. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be in the conversation with the chiefs. I think speaking to the matter of climate and culture, we have a climate and culture, especially amongst the officer core, that values curtesy over candor. And there’s no reason why we can’t be, you know. Professional and have our disagreements. But when we get the, when we place form above function, that’s never gonna end well. And it’s not gonna result in more ready and lethal force. So I’m in favor of anything that leads us down that road. But just know that no matter what new system comes out, how great it is, whatever. We still have the potential to screw it up. So that’s why I’ve written a lot of what I’ve written, is that I’m hoping we will choose and we will put the mechanisms in place to make it easier for people to do the right thing. And we reward the right things. But make no mistake. The first thing people will do when whatever new system comes out, is they’ll try and figure out a way to game it. And it’s just human nature, so. That’s the role of leaders. To hold the line, do what’s right, even when you’re incentivized differently.
Great. Stratifications come up in a number of these questions. Does stratification need an overall, the current systems seem vulnerable to bias, and likely to create hay ball effects. What can we do to help?
Yeah, so. I hope from our discussions already, and I know. I think I speak for Jason on this one, right? The answer is yes. The stratification system needs an overall. We started down on that path a little bit with the potential focus PRF and the guidance that was put out there, but I think to illustrate some of those points. If you sit on a promotion board or you sit on any kind of place where you’re valuing records, you’ll find out that our airmen are innovative. And our airmen are creative, right? So they can find lots of ways to give stratification that probably mean absolutely nothing. To my number one left-handed flight chief on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays. But this person is my number one left-handed flight chief on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We’ve seen all that stuff. We know that that exists in the system out there, all right. So the way we’re describing the new OPR system and the guidance that we put in place for the new potential focus PRFs starts to take us to a place where we can normalize that behavior. And we can get to a place where we truly can differentiate among folks. And again, with a way for us to normalize between a very hard grader and a very easy grader, so that an individual airman doesn’t get advantaged or disadvantaged in that discussion. So the answer is absolutely yes. And we’re down that path to try and get ourselves to a place where we can truly communicate and differentiate between performance of our airmen. We have lots of great performing airmen, but not everybody is the number one of 1000 people in the organization. And we need to know the difference between those folks, so that we’re making sure we’ve picked the right people for the right jobs.
That’s tough to top. The new system, if we do it right, stratifications go away. I’ll know that we’re on the right path when those things go away. And I hear a lot of my peers lament about it, because it’s the one thing we have. And I’ll tell you, sitting on a bunch of development teams and sitting in the, along with General Cotton and the whole competitive category, developmental category discussion. When we’re reviewing a ridiculous number of records. You’re going through those things, and remember, this wasn’t a statutory board. And statutory boards are different. About having to go through every line of every report in detail. The eyes gravitate to the strats. And it only takes one, okay? It only takes one bad fit with a rater who didn’t like you or didn’t, have a different style to completely change the path and trajectory of someone’s career. Just one. And it’s a subjective assessment really driven by one person if you think about it. So if it’s squadron commander providing a stratification, the group commander, chances are, not gonna give a number one to somebody who the squadron commander gave a number two to. And that’s assuming that group commander has ever met that person who got a stratification, right? Or on of. The other thing that I’ve seen, right? And it gets kind of ridiculous sometimes. Is you’ll see a great young captain, number three of 10 in their shop, doing their job. Three of 10 isn’t bad. Shoot, when you’re young and learning your job especially when you first show up, three of 10 is fine. Then they go to be a general officer exec, and suddenly they’re getting ridiculous stratifications like number one of 300, 400. I even saw one general officer gave a stratification, number one of 1500. To which I want to say, really sir? You met all 1500? How is? All of us are looking at that shaking our heads, wondering what are we supposed to do with this. Then that person gets on a super fast path. School, school, school. With the assumption, and I’ve heard this before, well, the person went to school, so we know they’re gonna be a great leader. And so it builds momentum, so. I think we need to get rid of stratifications, I don’t think we can do it right now, because we don’t have anything else to substitute in there. I’m looking forward to some more rules until we get that new system online. And so I really look forward to that day.
Okay, unfortunately this will be the last question. I’m sure General Kelly and Colonel Lamb will stick around. Thanks very much to Mike, for helping me with my limited IT skills. So last question, why do Air Force pilots hold more strategic leadership positions than other AFSCs, despite all signs pointing to next generation conflict being in the space and cyber domains.
And they’re asking to non flyers? Okay, fantastic. (laughs) You know. (laughs) Last time I checked, it’s the Air Force. But I don’t necessarily have a problem with that. In my own career field, right, intel. Intel is one of those career fields that has had folks with the universal management badge in charge of it before. And I’ll tell you, some of those folks were better leaders for ISR than some of the people who were traditional intel airmen. I’ll probably get stabbed after this, but. In my opinion it’s true. Leadership is leadership. I’m not concerned over it. What concerns me is that it’s kind of the assumption that it’s always going to be a pilot. I would prefer if it was a little more open ended about what is it we’re trying to do here and who’s the right leader. I think we’re totally capable of that. And I think we’re on a path towards that. But at level I’m really not judging. You know, I think. I think it’s kind of silly when we still talk about the number of flying hours a general officer has. That’s not really what we’re looking for anymore, my own personal opinion. But sir, I’m out of time. Over to you.
Thanks, Jason. So I think what we’re looking for, right? If you asked me, do I wanna pick somebody who’s a better leader or a better technician, I want the better leader. But the transformation that we’re trying to make in the Talent Management system is we look to the NDS and we look to what we need in the future. We need both, right? We’re gonna need places where we develop both. We don’t need to have those be mutually exclusive. You can develop great leaders and great technicians at the same time. Certainly when you get to the general officer level, the breath and depth that the chief talked about during his panel, becomes even more important, right? And we have to make sure the people we’re putting there are developed in the right ways, experienced, and exposed to the right things. And today’s warfare, and where we’re at for join, that has tended to be, and rightly so, has tended to be our rated folks who are in those positions because of the operational focus and the exposure and development we’ve been able to do. That may not always be the case as we go forward. But what we wanna be able to do is, we wanna be able to built both. We don’t want just great leaders or great technicians, we want people who have both skillsets that can go forward. This is a wrap up. I just want to. I wanna thank you guys for coming out. Again, we’ll stick around for a little bit and answer questions. And certainly any questions that came in, we’ll put back out in the side. I just want to emphasize for everybody that this is a really important time for us as a Force. You heard the chief talk about that. As we look forward to the National Defense Strategy, we’ve gotta get this Talent Management piece right. Because if we don’t have the airmen we need, and they’re not developed the right way, it doesn’t matter what we do in Force structure, it doesn’t matter what we do in our Force design, all those things that we talk about. We gotta get this piece right. And so, this is why we’ve been very collaborative, and this is why we’ve been very open to making sure we hear all the good ideas as we go forward. We’re gonna make some changes. And one thing I would just foot stamp you guys is if you ask me, “Hey BK, what are you 100% sure of?” I would say, “I’m 100% sure we don’t have it 100% right.” Okay. There’s no way for us to have it 100% right. So but, we’re airmen, right? We know how to be agile, we know how to be innovative. As we go forward, we can’t wait around to get it 100% perfect. So we’re gonna have to move forward, we’re gonna have to learn lessons, and make adjustments as we go, and evolve into making sure that we have the Talent Management system we need, and I look forward to doing that with all of you guys. Thanks. (applause) I get the last word right before you leave. First and foremost, on behalf of your Air Force Association leadership, Chairman Peters, thank you for being here. And it’s an honor, I can’t even hardly put into words, to look at all of you. I do know this. I do know this for sure. I’m looking at the most lethal combat force in the world. Every one of you. You are, and you lead that Force. And you are also the most credible deterrent capability for peace in this world. God bless you. May God continue to bless America, and it’s an honor to be on your wing. Have a great week. (applause) (uplifting orchestral music)