How important are KD jobs?

MAJ Private RallyPoint Member — Sun, 03 Aug 2014 21:21:30 -0400

I'd love to see the general community's view on this, and please allow me to explain why...

I spent some time the past few months reviewing stats from the most recent Army Officer promotions boards (CPT/MAJ/LTC), both Active and Reserve, and noticed some interesting trends. I've passed my theory on those trends around with several others, and they all seem to think I'm on to something.

So, here's my theory: Key Development (KD) Jobs are not important for promotions below COL, except maybe the KD job of Command. Instead, KD jobs are oriented toward preventing you from failing once you have already made the promotion. In short, KD jobs help prevent falling prey to the Peter Principle* at the next rank.

In my review, the trend I noticed was that Command was the only consistent KD job that seemed to make a difference in likelihood of promotion. I already accounted for Derog and Military Education, the main promotion killers. Time after time, I saw the people who spent time making sure their file was spotless make it, often with few or even no KD jobs, and sometimes even no deployments either. At the same time, I saw people with solid awards (BSM w/"V" in one case), Ranger and other schools, and a slew of KD jobs get passed over. The main consistency was that those passed over didn't spend much time finessing their file, but just expected it to "speak for itself."

So I came to the idea that the board can't intuit KD jobs, but they can tell who worked on the presentation of their board file. If that's the case, the reason KD jobs might still matter is because it prepares you with the skills you'll need to not fall on your face in the next rank. Of course, there are other ways people can learn skills, and the jobs available in your career may have been limited beyond your ability to change, so KD jobs can't be used to rule people out for promotions (this is especially true in the Reserve, where your civilian job very well may require skills above your military grade already).

So then why the emphasis on KD jobs? Multiple reasons. For one, just because there may be other ways for you to gain the skills doesn't mean that everyone will follow them. Pushing Soldiers to get KD jobs increases the chance of more Soldiers developing the skills to succeed. For two, the original intent behind KD jobs may well have been as a promotion weeding-out method, and it just changed since then. For three, telling people that they need a KD job for promotion, rather than that it's actually beneficial after the promotion, gets people to compete and ultimately strive to shape their career while also giving commanders discretion in weeding out candidates they otherwise wouldn't have.

Anyway, I'd love to hear whether other people have come to similar conclusions. Personally, I think that if my hunch is even half-right, it's worth pursuing KD jobs as a personal development thing; promotions are just a perk.

* The Peter Principle says that within any sufficiently large hierarchical bureaucracy, people will get promoted until they reach their "level of incompetence." That is, they get promoted on past performance in their old rank rather than potential performance in the new rank, and will continue to do so until they reach a rank where they are simply no longer qualified and top out. Officially, the military tries to pretend the Peter Principle doesn't apply; unofficially, I think we've all known a handful of people who were fine in their prior rank, but simply shouldn't have been promoted.

Response by CPT Private RallyPoint Member made Aug 3 at 2014 9:53 PM

CPT Private RallyPoint Member — Sun, 03 Aug 2014 21:53:47 -0400

Sir, I have come to a completely opposite conclusion. You can take a look at my work here: https://www.rallypoint.com/answers/officer-separation-board-osb-statistics-what-do-you-think-we-all-can-learn-from-this

In this link, I am looking at career survival and not promotion, but there are commonalities. Also, I am only referring to Active Duty. Promotion Boards in the Guard work differently and at least in TX, are pretty independent of what the thought process is federally (outside of the basic regs on TIG and TIS).

Many Officers that you feel may have have tons of KD time, may not look that way to the board. You need to look at your ORB and make sure that the titles typed in there have the right words in them. You can change what it says - a lot of people don't know that. It needs to be worded exactly as it appears in DA PAM 600-3. If it doesn't say that FIX IT. The board isn't psychic and won't guess. It is possible that some of the people you think had no KD time managed to massage the wording of their positions to be a closer match. Why this is not better policed/controlled I don't know.

Also keep in mind, sir, that we don't get to see how the sausage gets made. We don't know what the one person has that the other person didn't. An advanced degree, boutique language skill, or just membership in an underpopulated branch or FA might all come into play. I work with an LTC on my civilian job that has not had a KD assignment since CPT. He got his PhD in Comp Sci, then taught at West Point, and now works in a lab. The Army doesn't care about the lack of KD time for him because his potential lies along a different path than a future BN or BDE CMD. I assess, sir, that if you are planning to follow a traditional military officer career path, KD will be the only route.

For myself, I am not that interested in the traditional path. I am constantly being warned that if I don't do x, y, z I won't be competitive for BN CMD. Fine. I know that sounds crazy and people are constantly trying to hand me the baton, but I enjoy being a strategist. My current NG job is at DIV and my civilian job is echelons above Corps. I don't enjoy the leave forms, safety briefings, constant CYA, and endless inventories. But I guess I will eventually have to play ball.

Officer Separation Board (OSB) Statistics: What do you think we all can learn from this? |...

This 31 slide deck breaks down which FAs/Branches had the most cuts. It talks about the selection criteria. It appears that the majority of officers either had derogatory events or never got higher than "Center of Mass" (COM) evaluations. What are your thoughts? [edit: My assessment (FWIW) is now in the comments] https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B87O4lCzt8ZDTFdlaWRoT0t0ajQ/preview?pli=1 I also want to link this discussion posted by [~263202:MAJ...

Response by COL Private RallyPoint Member made Jan 18 at 2018 7:38 AM

COL Private RallyPoint Member — Thu, 18 Jan 2018 07:38:32 -0500

This is an old post, but was redirected here from another discussion. One thing you can't determine from looking at board statistics is OER performance. They talk about it, but don't break it down into KD time and non-KD time. OER performance matters in any position and is the biggest factor in promotion. KD jobs are necessary in order to move on to the next KD job in general. There are few exceptions. No one wants an S3 or an XO who hasn't been a Company/Troop/Battery Commander and there is no chance of making Battalion Command without KD time as a major. If you are unconcerned with command and leadership and are content with being a staff officer and retiring as a major (and there's NOTHING wrong with that), then yeah...maybe KD jobs don't matter. If you want to be a commander, they matter...a lot.

Response by Amn Private RallyPoint Member made Dec 28 at 2021 6:19 AM

Amn Private RallyPoint Member — Tue, 28 Dec 2021 06:19:31 -0500

It is very knowledgeable, thank you.
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Response by LTC Eugene Chu made Aug 31 at 2022 9:54 PM

LTC Eugene Chu — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 21:54:45 -0400

Belated response based on personal experience...

Active duty: They are essential and not having a KD position may mean pass over at promotion board
Reserves: They are helpful, but not essential. For drilling TPU, completion of NCO or officer education is more important.

I once knew an infantry Captain in reserves who had CCC, but no company command. He and I were worried about promotion, but he got his Major's leaf. For myself, I did not have a KD OER as a MAJ until after my board met, but got promoted to LTC since I completed ILE.