Leaderboard

We need to give up the metaphor of a "form", as though in the modern digital era character counts and "two-pages" mean anything. We use acronyms and incomprehensible language for two reasons: 1) Once upon a time someone had to write performance reports on a typewriter. 2) When you force bad communication, it becomes really easy to hide bullshit. Those are both really bad reasons to recreate OPRs in some wonky document viewer program rather than using the flexibility electronic records should provide. Not sure what a bullet means? Click the expand button to see a plain english description. Not sure about an acronym? Mouse over. Had a kick ass year? Write 20 bullets. No so much? Put down a good 5. One line not enough? Add an explanatory paragraph. PRF time? Click your best 10, then let your boss revise the list, on up to your senior rater. You're a board member and you want to see an officer's strats? Click "Show Strats". Want to see if a senior rater is speeding? View all of their submitted strats for this year group. Tired of printing out records for promotion boards? Here's an iPad. All of that becomes easy if we just get away from the idea that OPRs are a sheet of paper and instead think of them as information. For my next rant, TAFs, METARs, and NOTAMs written as though we were still paying to send them via teletype...

It seems like Obama is trying to appear better than his predecessor by "asking Congress", and I've heard others say "at least he's going to Congress", but he (and many Americans) forget that Iraq was approved by Congress overwhelmingly, to include a vote "For" by Mr Kerry.

Screw that noise. Even in a coalition, it doesn't directly serve our nation's interest. We don't need to get involved. They hate us over there, and would only tolerate us long enough to benefit from our bombs and money. Then, back to hating Americans as usual... Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

What is this I don't even

I have seen this done several times, and am in the process right now (less than 18 mo. ADSC left, and I refuse to sign a 2 yr. ADSC). It was held up for a few days, but I have informed the UTM, CC, and Base Training Manager of the reg, and all have concurred that I do not have to sign. I don't have orders yet though.......

Today John Kerry stated: President Obama made a "Courageous Decision" to seek congressional approval on Syria. I think the President deserves a medal for this specific demonstration of courage in front of all Americans and the rest of the world. I can visualize the awards ceremony now. I imagine it will look something like when the Wizard of Oz presented the Cowardly Lion his Courage Medal and it will definitely complement his Nobel Peace Prize. Sorry no video clip of ceremony.

In my case, CC never knew. I called the MPF, referred them to the reg, and they concurred and apologized for the mistake. The form went away and nobody asked again.

F-it dude, let's go bowling...

I want to see a system where 3's require no comment. 2 or 4 requires a justifying comment from the rater. 1 or 5 requires a comment from the senior rater. Add in Noonin's normalization process, and I think you have a tough to game system. It would need to address the "stellar unit" where you do actually have a cluster of top performers where a rater really should be giving a lot of 4's and 5's. You do that by not just looking at the rater's average (though that would weight the heaviest), but also the senior rater, wing, and MAJCOM averages. Call it 40% rater, 30% senior rater, 20% wing and 10% MAJCOM for a starting guess. If you really want to get fancy, you compare a rater's feedback to the future performance of the ratee. Raters with a good track-record for their judgement could get extra weight. Rater's who give 5's to guys who later flame out get dinged.

Lots of people get it. They're just Captains. There isn't a single person, anywhere in the Air Force at all, over the rank of O-4 who could be described as having "grown up" in the age of the personal computer, and you don't get a solid group of them until you go down to O-3. The ages and year groups just don't work out. That isn't to say there aren't some tech-savvy early adopters O-5 or above, but in my experience, not many. Senior leadership might recognize the importance of this whole internet thing, and, to their credit, work hard to figure it out, but that doesn't mean they get it just yet. We'll get there, but we're still a decade and a half out from having the first O-7 born post-1980.

HAF already put their fingers in the strat pie a couple years ago with the A1 guidance memo that worked its way into the reg in Jan (emphasis on peer group labeling, etc). But that was semi worthless. Strats have gotten out of hand because everyone believes the only way to say someone is a good dude is through a strat, when we both know there are useful strats (#x/x CGOs in sqdn) and there are worthless strats that seem forced (#x/3 wingmen in my flight). Not every strat is the same obviously, but to the masses in the cheap seats who only hear "must have strat to be good" they take that too far and create the BS ones because they don't know any better. The root cause is the OPR form itself. It is not an evaluation. It is a list of things you did followed by a push line. And the push line is an art where it should be a science. Since, minus the push lines, the "list of things you did" OPR makes it difficult to sort the 30th percentile from the 70th percentile we have found ourselves in the over-reliance on square filling to sort the lists. Which very few would agree is the right way to do business. The evaluation form should emphasize actual evaluation...subjective assessments on job performance, leadership qualities, communication skills, etc. maybe a small section on "stuff you did" but a focus on actual evaluation. I know subjective assessments scare people because they might not be "fair", but quite frankly its what we have now just in a different format. And there really is no way to evaluate some of the things that are truly important (leadership qualities) against truly objective criteria. Each officer should also get graded on major subject areas with a numerical grade. To avoid the EPR everyone gets a 5 debacle, those grades should be tied to a unit commander (or div chief, etc) and entered into a database. Upon meeting a board, those scores get compared to that commanders career long "grade point average" and presented to the board along with that average. If you got 4s but his average was a 3.5, you did okay. If you got 4s but his average is 4.8, then you are below average. If everyone gets a five, then that cc screwed his true top performers. Built in stratification, difficult to BS the system, no more challenge determining the 30% from the 60%, much less need to resort to square filling to rack n'stack. But that's too different, so we'll keep doing the same old thing and just complain about how inadequate it is.

Thanks PCola. Our Group Execs mislead me then... always better to just know the regs. We had several O-5 R.O.A.D. types that were persuaded out of upgrade in order to not push an ADSC passed 20yrs. Hmmm the mission was significantly less awesome than briefed

If only there had been an engineer to stop this from happening.

Just because he's old doesn't mean he can't smell what the rock is cooking.