Is the centralized promotion system doing more harm than good?

The problem with the old Promotion system is that it was forecasting strengths two years out and basing promotions off that. In the old system once you were selected you were guaranteed to be promoted sometime within the next two years. If the Army has a reduction in authorized personnel, MTOE changes, or a year like COVID or a recession like 2008 where people are pulling retirement packets, then you end up over strength for that grade/MOS. When that happens, it may be a year, or several years, before another person is promoted into that rank from that MOS. There are quite a few MOS's in the Army that only promote 1-5 Senior NCOs a year. Stagnant promotions are bad for the Army, morale, and the Soldiers.

With the new system the Army just promotes enough to fill the shortage each month, the same way as E4/E5 promotions currently do. This results in a more steady stream of promotions instead of the waves of feast and famine that last for years.

The other improvement is the OML. In the previous years you received a sequence number but that was based on seniority of BASD and TIG. You had no idea where you stood among your peers, if you were a standout or just barely made the cut.

I also agree with the move to make SFC pin on requirement four years TIG. Three years TIG as a SSG isn't enough time to develop to a Senior NCO and 7 in 7 does not create a well rounded or developed NCO, no matter how high speed they are.

I think the only drawback, that isn't really a big drawback is that if you aren't in the top 25% of your peers you don't really know if you are getting pinned that year. But, even then, HRC publishes the numbers for projected fills each quarter, so you know if you are likely to be selected soon or not.

I'd say the centralized promotion system has its pros and cons, overall I'd say the system was strongly positive and the implementation mostly positive.

One of the major pros is that everyone in the zone gets a chance to be considered on a mostly equal basis. There are minor cons to the "zone" itself in that obviously some soldiers are ready for promotion sooner or later than others, while the zone treats everyone as an average. The concept of the 'Secondary Zone' is supposed to offer consideration for those who are ready sooner than average, but it really doesn't do anything to identify those people, it just gives everyone a chance to be looked at 'early'.

Most of the cons that I see in the centralized promotion system are related to how selections actually occur. Unless things have quietly changed since my days, the notion of a centralized promotion board reviewing records of soldiers in the zone is largely fiction. There are simply too many records for a board to review, so the records are divided among the board members for review -- perhaps 'screening' is a better term. There is definitely an element of 'Luck of the draw' in terms of who happens to get your record to review.

No matter what guidance the board gets, the reality is always going to be that each member has different ideas about what is important. If I hand you a pile of records for people you've never met, serving in an MOS you've never done, how are you going to quickly decide which ones are worth a closer look and which ones to toss aside? That's the challenge board members face.

A related con in the centralized system is how much it depends on how well your raters have been at writing efficiency reports. We have changed the rating format several times, trying to stamp out "inflation" by forcing raters to have mostly average soldiers, but are most soldiers really average? Army-wide, obviously yes, but at the unit level, often not! At a service school where almost all the NCOs are either Instructors or Subject Matter Experts with no subordinates, but training hundreds of students for a short time each year, do you really think they are mostly 'average' compared to their peers in a unit? How about soldiers assigned to The Old Guard -- are most of them 'average' in military bearing?

Look at your own last few reports. How many bullet points include an acronym or special term that is unique to your CMF -- how well do you suppose it will be recognized by some random board member who has never worked in or with your MOS?

To ensure fairness, the centralized promotion system ensures you will be evaluated by people who have no idea who you are or what you do based mostly on what they think they understand of what other people said about you.

I think the centralized system takes the "good ol' boy" component out of it, meaning I like that guy so we're going to help him/her. Make sure you have all the requirements like TIG, good PT, good NCOERs and push for leadership opportunities for growth...maybe sprinkle some education in there and you will get promoted. Promotion in the military isn't a secret but it is to those who probably should be promoted.