Talent Management: Army Green Pages Pilot Study and Individual Choice in the Assignments Process

2015-01-01T04:27:05-05:00

The Army ran a pilot program (http://talent.army.mil/papers/GP_Pilot_Report.pdf) from 2010 to 2012, with a final report titled "Army Green Pages Proof-of-Concept Pilot Report: Using Regulated Market Mechanisms to Manage Officer Talent." The “big” idea behind Green Pages was that certain aspects of the Army’s internal labor market (particularly assignments) provide the right incentive for commanders to list their talent requirements (the demand) and for officers to list their unique talents (the supply). In short, an electronic talent market could be created via an inexpensive, web-based environment. The base conclusion was that "an online assignment market provides officers with ample incentive to enter granular and accurate talent data, which can subsequently improve Army talent management. The construct of the market, however, requires adherence to economic principles and careful regulation to achieve desired outcomes."

Many of you (in the Army, at least) have probably recently received numerous annoying emails about the “Integrated Personnel and Pay System-Army” (IPPS-A) and the requirement to log-in and validate data in IPPS-A. It seems that IPPS-A, in part, is designed to include an online talent management module scheduled for release sometime mid-decade.

John Paul Mintz walks us through the common myths behind the logic of a centralized assignments process (https://medium.com/the-bridge/personal-choice-in-officer-assignments-ededecc3c521); granted, it is about the Air Force, but his argument applies to all the Services.

And, of course, Tim Kane in "Bleeding Talent" discusses the numerous issues with the current centralized assignment and officer talent management process (http://www.amazon.com/Bleeding-Talent-Military-Mismanages-Revolution/dp/ [login to see] )

Talent management is something in which I'm quite interested. I was a participant in Tim Kane's study on which "Bleeding Talent" is based. And (I suppose like the majority of you), I've been given assignments that I didn't want and didn't have any agency/choice in determining. In fact, for my last two assignment cycles (current and future), my final assignment was not one in which I had expressed preference.

I have a series of questions:

1) Is a centralized, "needs of the Army" based assignment and talent management system better than one in which officer preference matters? Or would a system in which officer preference (or supply/demand) drove the process (ie, where officers could apply for jobs and accept/reject job offers) produce better results?

2) Is it foolish for the Army to disregard officer preference for assignments? For example, in my last assignment cycle, only 63% of officers in the cycle received an assignment on their assignment preference list. Using Mintz' argument, if the Army has such a high level of trust and confidence in its officers to execute their duties, why does the Army not have the same high level of trust and confidence in its officers to choose their own assignments?

3) Is the up-or-out system logical or doomed in an era of constrained budgets? Mintz' figures that it takes $30 million to make a senior O-4 pilot; I've not found studies on how much it costs to make a senior Army major, so I'll give it a shot (for your typical FAO, at least): $400,000 for pre-commission training; another $250,000 for initial entry training; pre-command and associated training estimated at $100,000; pre-field grade and associated training at $100,000; initial FAO training (language, in-region training) at $250,000; graduate school and associated costs at $150,000; pay and benefits for 15 years estimated at $2,250,000.....let’s call it $3.5 million (again, just an estimate). With promotion rates to O-5 back to the historical norm of around 60%, does it make sense for the Army annually to throw away senior majors that it spent $3.5 million to train and develop? There are somewhere around 17,000 Army majors, or about 2,500 per year group. About 1,000 majors per year group won’t get promoted to LTC. Annually, the Army loses $3,500,000,000 based on up-or-out for majors. (If someone has better data/numbers, I’d be happy to see them). Regardless of the accuracy of my numbers, the point is that up-or-out is not a sound officer management policy in times of severely constrained budgets. Is it time to go to a system like those in existence in many countries where initial entry and promotions are frozen? Does it make sense to continue to commission the same amount of new officers, spend millions on developing them, and then get rid of them through up-or-out in the era of severely constrained budgets? Is it time for a sea-change in officer management?

4) Will IPPS-A actually include a module for online talent and assignment management by mid-decade? If so, has the Army embarked on a massive education campaign to inform the force of this fundamental change (have I missed this education effort?)?

(Note I’ve based this post on officer preference and talent management, as I’m most familiar with that; the same questions apply to NCO and enlisted preference and talent management).

Response by CPT Aaron Kletzing made Jan 5 at 2015 9:44 PM

2015-01-05T21:44:42-05:00

MAJ Private RallyPoint Member you raise some excellent points in this thread, so thanks for that upfront. As far as your Point #4, I am personally not optimistic that the Army (can't speak for other branches) will move away from a centralized system like the one that presently exists, which often disregards what an Officer may want for his/her next assignment. I bet if we got 10 Officers together in a room, we could come up with 100 stories from within our extended networks of Officers whose "wish lists" ended up being a pipe dream. I don't presume to have the answers myself, and I don't presume that the solution here is easy or that the Army's brightest leaders aren't working on this issue...but with all that said, I just don't see it changing systematically.

Rather, I see individual Officers leveraging networking to get their choice assignment as the most likely outcome. We see it all the time now, as an Officer who knows how to network ends up getting a by-name request to join a unit, etc. I just think leveraging one's network in the Army is so fundamentally important for career fulfillment. We've had great examples on RallyPoint of members using the platform to network and get the assignments they want, not just in the Army but in other branches as well.