After 3 months of analysis, the Navy Retention Study team has released the official results and analysis:
www.dodretention.org/results
Lots of compelling stuff in here...
www.dodretention.org/results
Lots of compelling stuff in here...
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Navy Retention Survey Results are LIVE!
- Thread starter ben4prez
- Start date
Very compelling, but I would argue, not at all surprising to anyone below the rank of O-6. The real test will be whether or not leadership actually does anything productive about it, since they are the ones who helped create the problem.
Not surprising is right. I don't see anything new or compelling here. I liked the bit about LCS. Other than that, I almost could have predicted the results, and I'm having a hard time figuring out if there's anything in there that's actionable at the CNO level.
I wasn't aware that CDR Snodgrass was the lead on this (or involved at all). Probably couldn't have picked a better guy for the job, so I at least feel good that all the bases were covered and the right questions asked.
I wasn't aware that CDR Snodgrass was the lead on this (or involved at all). Probably couldn't have picked a better guy for the job, so I at least feel good that all the bases were covered and the right questions asked.
Hulbert's paper is worth a read. The idea that we can only pick certain people to advance is understandable. But you owe the people who don't make the cut a cogent explanation of their shortcomings and an apples-to-apples comparison of their body of work. We don't do that. I've been thinking on similar lines to his for awhile, though I've been leaning to a slightly different timeline. To wit: You are promoted to JG when you either get to your fleet squadron (or make ACTC Level II or community equivalent, whichever is more feasible). You make LT when you are designated an ACTC Level III or community equivalent. Rank among JOs, though ever and always like virtue among whores, now will have more relevance. You are literally wearing your credibility on your shoulders, and you are getting paid commensurate to your competence as a tactical aviator. And I would also make the case that all ranks above should only come with service in a commensurate billet. Didn't make DH? Don't put on O-4. Don't screen for command? Don't put on O-5.
So you would have half of the guys who get a #1 ticket as a DH not make O-5? That would be great for retention.
"5,536 viable responses were submitted from an eligible pool of 323,681 Sailors (as of June 5, 2014), resulting in a ±1.3% margin of error."
I'm not sure if this statement is worded as strongly as it could have been to tell the story of how statistically significant the survey results were. To put this in perspective, when Gallup conducts polls leading up to a General Election, they sometimes poll as few as 1,000 respondents representing an eligible pool of 150 million people (voters) and end up with a +/- 3% margin of error. What I am trying to say is that if senior leaders try to downplay the results of this survey, they will do so at great peril because these 5,536 are speaking loud and clear.
I'm not sure if this statement is worded as strongly as it could have been to tell the story of how statistically significant the survey results were. To put this in perspective, when Gallup conducts polls leading up to a General Election, they sometimes poll as few as 1,000 respondents representing an eligible pool of 150 million people (voters) and end up with a +/- 3% margin of error. What I am trying to say is that if senior leaders try to downplay the results of this survey, they will do so at great peril because these 5,536 are speaking loud and clear.
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Hmm. I think I phrased that poorly. I didn't mean to claim that in this hypothetical system, DH and CO-level billets would be the only ones which merited the requisite ranks. Disconnect between brain and keyboard. But I do think there's merit in the idea that your rank is tied to the billet you're occupying.
Self-selected online surveys aren't as statistically valid as you may think.
http://survey.cvent.com/blog/market...e-problem-of-self-selection-in-online-surveys
http://survey.cvent.com/blog/market...e-problem-of-self-selection-in-online-surveys
The ACTC thing would work with aviators, but you couldn't apply that to any other community given they get to the fleet so much earlier and have different metrics.
That's the point. Make rank commensurate with a level of responsibility, not a timeline. Different communities would have to use different metrics. I can't speak to what the SWO or Nuke equivalent would be, but I'm just using aviation as a starting point. Either let some smart people sit down and come up with an equivalency table that says ACTC Level III equals SWO/Sub DH equals SEAL Platoon Commander or whatever. Or say "screw it" and let it all shake out as everyone presses past O-5 command. We do this already with flag officers and with the nukes spot-promoting people to O-4 as CHENG; it'd just be an extension of the concept.
Also, chew on this: the Army did something similar in WWI and WWII. There were two separate org charts: the regular Army and the "Army of the United States." That was the WWII term; they called it the "National Army" in WWI. The Army of the United States was composed of the peacetime Army and everyone who got drafted. This is how so many talented officers (Ike in particular, who was an O-5 when the balloon went up) were able to rocket up paygrades so quickly. They kept their permanent rank in the Regular Army, but were promoted far above this in the Army of the United States. That said, some of these guys who then fucked up hugely got sent back to the US to fly a desk . . . at their permanent US Army rank. Or they lost the theater rank at the end of the war, like the Wiki example about Patton, who was a Colonel in WWI and then was busted back to Captain at the end of the war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_of_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_Army#World_War_I
I'm completely spitballing here. But perhaps a system like this would allow us to give the "golden children" that chance at early promotion, the lack of which everyone seems to be claiming is hurting retention. Give people a probationary rank and see how they do. If they turn out to need more seasoning, perhaps they get it revoked, with one or two "strikes" before it's decided that they aren't up for the task, and then treat that similarly to a 2XFOS. Let people learn from failing if they're worth keeping around. CO ends up on the cover of Navy Times for banging the help? Congratulations on your retirement, LCDR. If they succeed, it becomes their permanent rank.
Conversely, the guy/girl who lat transfers isn't jammed up against an O-4 board in the middle of their first sea or shore tour. They just spend more time mucking around as an Ensign or JG, which is the experience level they've been operating at anyway, especially in their new community. As long as the system gives them a fair shake at O-4, you still weed out the weedoutable. And a string of NOBs in flight school matters little, because you're just an Ensign for as long as it takes to get winged.
The CO and XO have a more challenging and more stressful job than most of their peers who didn't screen and are on shore duty or staff, seems like a fair way to do it.
At the same time, there are plenty of very challenging and stressful jobs besides command. Why not "code" billets to reflect this. Sorry, can only come up with a SWO example... O-4s that: go to command a ship, CSG OPS, OPNAV Staff, or Attache in countries X, Y, or Z, are promoted to O-5. The O-5 billets become competitive and attract the strongest performers. People are rewarded for taking hard/important jobs. Also reduces dead weight in upper ranks.
Nittany made a good comparison to the "spot promote" jobs that SWO, Sub, and Spec War have; LTs who are doing much more important jobs than their peers get a silver bullet for O-4 to compensate them to some degree.
Sounds horrible...
The idea isn't that you get the keys to the kingdom; it's that you hold the rank for the job you do. This idea could, with a change in law/policy, supplant the statutory board, not provide more ways to game it.
Spekkio
He bowls overhand.
I may be a little off on my history, but aren't you guys talking about the way officer promotions used to work in the country's early days, with a more famous example being Patton who was pointed at and made general when they created the 2nd Armor division? The military was much smaller then with much less of a support structure for logistics, operations, intel, research, whatever. I'm not sure that maintaining strict requirements for operational billets for promotion would allow AD military to meet the needs of shoreside billets. I mean, while we're at it why don't we go back to the pre-Civil war law that you can only be promoted to Admiral if the country is engaged in a Naval war.
At the end of the day, we have a suggestion to delay promotion to O-2 or O-3 based on whatever community warfare qualifications you have, and then run the promotion timeline as normal after that. The thing is that that doesn't really fix anything for many other communities outside of aviation. Our initial training pipeline is fairly rigid, even a couple months delay for a plant being down for maintenance doesn't really affect anyone's career path.
From our small neck of the woods, the problem isn't getting people ready for O-4/O-5 boards because at both those boards a sub officer will have completed or nearly completed a DH at sea and XO at sea tour, respectively. Rather, it's making sub officers competitive for O-6/Major Command and beyond. We do so much independent ops that we are strategically dumb when it comes to what the rest of the Navy and military does. So, our career pipeline pretty much has bare-minimum sea tour timelines that allow officers to punch their career wickets, and as soon as we're comfortable with the billet we're in it's time to move onto shore tours where we can get squadron or joint experience post-DH and beyond ... all to stay competitive to continue into the 'second half of our careers' at around the 20 YCS mark.
It sounds like the heart of the issue is the extensive flight training pipeline that has aviators entering career billets well after others in their YG in other communities, paired with legislation that doesn't give aviation any way to manage their promotions differently from others. So the fix should revolve around allowing communities to manage their own promotions to meet their operational needs instead of overhauling the entire system into a spot-promotion process.
At the end of the day, we have a suggestion to delay promotion to O-2 or O-3 based on whatever community warfare qualifications you have, and then run the promotion timeline as normal after that. The thing is that that doesn't really fix anything for many other communities outside of aviation. Our initial training pipeline is fairly rigid, even a couple months delay for a plant being down for maintenance doesn't really affect anyone's career path.
From our small neck of the woods, the problem isn't getting people ready for O-4/O-5 boards because at both those boards a sub officer will have completed or nearly completed a DH at sea and XO at sea tour, respectively. Rather, it's making sub officers competitive for O-6/Major Command and beyond. We do so much independent ops that we are strategically dumb when it comes to what the rest of the Navy and military does. So, our career pipeline pretty much has bare-minimum sea tour timelines that allow officers to punch their career wickets, and as soon as we're comfortable with the billet we're in it's time to move onto shore tours where we can get squadron or joint experience post-DH and beyond ... all to stay competitive to continue into the 'second half of our careers' at around the 20 YCS mark.
It sounds like the heart of the issue is the extensive flight training pipeline that has aviators entering career billets well after others in their YG in other communities, paired with legislation that doesn't give aviation any way to manage their promotions differently from others. So the fix should revolve around allowing communities to manage their own promotions to meet their operational needs instead of overhauling the entire system into a spot-promotion process.
Wouldn't the more sensible solution be to have legislation that gives the military the ability to demote officers who do such things instead of completely overhauling the promotion system for it?