Promotion and PRF Information

[Danny Noonin]

My CC has not questioned how I go about disciplining certain individuals. In fact, my course of action has always been backed by the shirt and CC. I'm doing something right, but I don't have time to go over every scenario with you. Lead how you lead and let me do things my way. I would rather listen to Liquids advice in this forum about PRFs rather than you questioning me when you don't know me and you don't work for me.

Slick for fucks sake cut it out. I've never seen a captain so self righteously drop tales if his supervisory prowess like you do. How many posts now have you casually thrown in the fact that you're a supervisor? Enough SOS stories and enough talk of your own "leadership" techniques. Aren't you a shop chief? Get over yourself.

[Fifty-six & Two]

Slick for ######s sake cut it out. I've never seen a captain so self righteously drop tales if his supervisory prowess like you do. How many posts now have you casually thrown in the fact that you're a supervisor? Enough SOS stories and enough talk of your own "leadership" techniques. Aren't you a shop chief? Get over yourself.

[tunes]

My CC has not questioned how I go about disciplining certain individuals. In fact, my course of action has always been backed by the shirt and CC. I'm doing something right, but I don't have time to go over every scenario with you. Lead how you lead and let me do things my way. I would rather listen to Liquids advice in this forum about PRFs rather than you questioning me when you don't know me and you don't work for me.

Edited September 1, 2013 by tunes

[Liquid]

If you are reviewing records during a promotion board (or a practice one at SOS) and you read about the arrest of an officer, it usually means it was written on a referral OPR that checked "Does Not Meet Standards". Most of the time, you will not be promoted at your next board with a referral OPR. There is a difference between one mistake and one referral OPR. Some LTs can recover, but it is rare that a Capt or Maj will get promoted with a referral OPR.

If you want to "mentor" your officers about an arrest and keep it from hurting their career (bar fight, public urination, etc), don't put it in their permanent record. Sometimes a good old fashioned ass chewing is more effective in the long run than paperwork.

Beating up Slick isn't entertaining or informative. Cheap shots are easy and stale.

Thread re-reail: So what are your thoughts on the stratification pendulum? Have we gone so far overboard that we need HAF guidance about how to strat like the Es have? "#1 Blue-eyed, left-handed EWO in my flight during October" is a little ridiculous. How do we fix over-reliance on strats during promotion boards and DTs?

Heard single digit across the entire AF.

During the last DT, each board received one candidate nominee. The rest of the seats went to selects. HAF plans to keep the number of candidates that go to school very low to take care of the selects in a fiscally constrained DE world. I think sending candidates to IDE/SDE is a very good thing because it makes sure the promotion boards aren't the only ones who pick school designees. DTs and senior raters have a better idea of who should go to school.

That Michael Jackson avatar freaks me the f*ck out

[Danny Noonin]

Beating up Slick isn't entertaining or informative.

Disagree. It should be informative--to Slick, if he lets it be.

Slick has good intentions but he has misplaced confidence in his own limited experience level. He has chosen to over represent his own leadership while condescendingly lecturing those with vastly more experience than he has. On this forum, that type of behavior is met with a correction. Just as it would be in any squadron. He doesn't get a pass because he's on the Internet.

He has over 60 posts in this thread but has asked only a handful of actual questions. Given that he's never written a PRF or met a promotion board before in his life, I find it more than a bit curious that he has such supreme confidence in his understanding of how things work that he can condescend about anything to anyone on this particular topic. So a little mentoring is appropriate.

[Liquid]

Disagree. It should be informative--to Slick, if he lets it be.

Slick has good intentions but he has misplaced confidence in his own limited experience level. He has chosen to over represent his own leadership while condescendingly lecturing those with vastly more experience than he has. On this forum, that type of behavior is met with a correction. Just as it would be in any squadron. He doesn't get a pass because he's on the Internet.

He has over 60 posts in this thread but has asked only a handful of actual questions. Given that he's never written a PRF or met a promotion board before in his life, I find it more than a bit curious that he has such supreme confidence in his understanding of how things work that he can condescend about anything to anyone on this particular topic. So a little mentoring is appropriate.

Good point, mentoring is good. But it is not entertaining to watch.

In OPRs and Decs, there is a big difference between OEF and Afghanistan. If a board was advised to "value time served in Afghanistan", it may have been useful to have your record reflect the fact you served in Afghanistan. It is amazing how frequently we don't just say in plain language what the hell was actually accomplished. Too many acronyms and too much OPSEC paranoia in our official records.

[tac airlifter]

How do we fix over-reliance on strats during promotion boards and DTs?

how about boards grouped by like AFSCs for 0-4 & 0-5? That way, at least the board would have a clue what the actual bullets and acronyms mean and a chance at discriminating intelligently without over reliance on stratification.

During the last DT, each board received one candidate nominee. The rest of the seats went to selects. HAF plans to keep the number of candidates that go to school very low to take care of the selects in a fiscally constrained DE world. I think sending candidates to IDE/SDE is a very good thing because it makes sure the promotion boards aren't the only ones who pick school designees. DTs and senior raters have a better idea of who should go to school.

Then HAF has neutered the DT and taken away the only carrot many senior rafters have. Is there a glass ceiling for non-selects now or do you foresee command positions populated by non residence guys/gals?

[Danny Noonin]

Thread re-reail: So what are your thoughts on the stratification pendulum? Have we gone so far overboard that we need HAF guidance about how to strat like the Es have? "#1 Blue-eyed, left-handed EWO in my flight during October" is a little ridiculous. How do we fix over-reliance on strats during promotion boards and DTs?

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.

Edited September 1, 2013 by Danny Noonin

[Fifty-six & Two]

During the last DT, each board received one candidate nominee. The rest of the seats went to selects. HAF plans to keep the number of candidates that go to school very low to take care of the selects in a fiscally constrained DE world. I think sending candidates to IDE/SDE is a very good thing because it makes sure the promotion boards aren't the only ones who pick school designees. DTs and senior raters have a better idea of who should go to school.

But yet the quotas for the 2012 and the 2013 IDE boards changed by one. The number is very close to 500 when looking at the PSDMs. Was that number later reduced after the PSDM dropped? Are the number of selects in the 2001-2003 year groups that much larger and so now they are the ONLY ones who have it made to Lt Col? For example, the promotion rate this year to O-5 was just under 75% for LAF. The promotion rate for those attending DE is 99% and now the pool has been narrowed to those who performed the first six to seven years of a twenty year career.

I agree with you that the promotion boards shouldn't have that much pull in who gets to go to school as I don't think it is an accurate representation when the DEDB meets 2-5 years later. Unfortunately, this doesn't help those currently caught in this mess.

Edited September 1, 2013 by Fifty-six & Two

[Danny Noonin]

It is amazing how frequently we don't just say in plain language what the hell was actually accomplished. Too many acronyms and too much OPSEC paranoia in our official records.

Another problem with the form. One line bullets that must fill the space to within 2-3 characters force all kinds of absurd abbreviations and acronyms to try and get max info into minimum space. Paragraph format for key areas would allow plain English, full explanations of key accomplishments. Some folks have done really good things that are quite frankly impossible to communicate adequately in one line.

[Warrior]

Ok I'll repost it. Currently at SOS, briefed by the AU/CC 3 star... he gave us a preview and told us it's coming. The whole system is changing, not simply a masking of whatever, but from my memory:

1) SOS being shortened to 5 weeks because of the 100% requirement

2) SOS Correspondence eligibility potentially moving until after in residence criteria has passed (have heard this one for a while)

3) Promotion boards will require a certain amount of credits instead of mandatory PME completion. PME in res will fulfill required credits for that perspective board, however if you got a Masters in say, International Security Studies, and a PME class is International Security, you will get PME credit hours for taking that Masters class

4) He said a lot of the senior leaders think the AAD should be masked until the O-6 board, however gave no indication on how Gen Welsh thought about that or what direction they were going, but hinted at changes for it.

That's all I can remember right now...

I was in the last class before they lengthened (sta) SOS to 8 weeks. They said the same stuff then...at least your points 1, 2 and 4. Not arguing with you, just saying the color and vintage of the koolaid at maxwell never changes.

Do they still have the gallon jugs of beer at the shopette?

[Jaded]

Since we're only using 4 lines on an OPR anyway, why not reduce an OPR to 4 lines? No need to do a PRF at the 8 year point since your entire record would be 32 lines total.

If this idea gets implemented, one of my lines would include "100,000 man hours saved."

[Azimuth]

Have we gone so far overboard that we need HAF guidance about how to strat like the Es have?

The funny part is that E's don't need a strat to get promoted if the overall record is good enough. Plenty of Chiefs walking around they may have only been strated once in their career and were promoted over the person who was strated multiple times and couldn't pick up a stripe.

[BuddhaSixFour]

In OPRs and Decs, there is a big difference between OEF and Afghanistan. If a board was advised to "value time served in Afghanistan", it may have been useful to have your record reflect the fact you served in Afghanistan. It is amazing how frequently we don't just say in plain language what the hell was actually accomplished. Too many acronyms and too much OPSEC paranoia in our official records.

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...

Edited September 1, 2013 by BuddhaSixFour

[pcola]

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.

This is one of the most obvious, yet somehow completely revolutionary, ideas I've seen/heard. If the AF had to meet a real bottom line (not the kind that comes "up front" in a lame ass email,) then we'd have an IT department that would've been all over this years ago. Instead, we have no means of making this a reality, so...back to business as usual. Hundreds of man-hours spent per each and every completely inadequate and utterly archaic performance report "form."

[Recut]

My CC does not believe in the one mistake Air Force mentality and neither do I. I told someone who showed up with a blemish that I didn't want to know what happened. New base, equates to a brand new start in my eyes. Additionally, I told the individual you have to show leadership you have moved beyond whatever happened and continue to strive as an officer and leader. If you become a "toxic" individual after your ordeal and unreliable, you can expect leadership to maintain a negative mindset about you.

I had to tell someone months ago that SOS may not be in their future. When supervisors annotate something in an OPR and a board or the OG/CC sees those remarks it's an easy kill for not going in residence. I told the individual you have to be "seen" and "heard" in this squadron and exceed the standard in the CC's viewpoint so he goes to bat for you.

At SOS, my class did a mock PRF. One of the groups grading the PRF did not see a person had been arrested twice so they scored his package pretty high. I pointed out their error. I had a reservist ask how long I'm going to hold the arrests against the officer? I could only respond that the other officers have been doing what's right and deserve to be promoted. I could understand if he got arrested once, but twice is my limitation. Now look at how much trouble you can get into while in the Army and still get promoted. I'm an Army brat and I've seen it first hand. Different services...different personnel.

You are a shitty "leader." Great motivation telling someone they might not go to SOS when pretty much everyone goes........doucher. That person probably cares even less about SOS after your "awesome" feedback. I'd argue most solid dudes could give 10 less shits about SOS...a borderline dude might give 20 less shits....nice work.

You did a mock PRF!? WOW! I think everyone does that there....I remember doing that years back. Now you're the expert?! You suck, go cut yourself.

Edit to add: You are what's wrong with the AF.

Edited September 1, 2013 by Recut

[Fuzz]

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.

For those of you familiar with Navy/Marine pilot training, this is what I've been told they do with their students score since they don't have set classes that train with set flights, but just an assigned instructor or two. Your scores from each instructor get weighted based on the instructors avg. score, so Lt X who's instructor is a Santa Claus goes up against Lt Y who's instructor is a hardass and never saw an "E" on his write-up get to compete on the same level.

*Note: this was three years ago and what I was told by other marine and navy students in my flight.

[albertschu]

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...

Why are there not more people that get this?

It constantly shocks me that we are 12+% into the 21st Century and we still have a typewriter mindset on 99.69% of what we do--even when we have "digitized" it in the form of a PDF or FormFlow.

[disgruntledemployee]

.......

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.

So what you are saying is that e-mail/word doc I sent to my rater with lots of plain English words describing what I did and the results can be cut/paste/edits into an OPR???? And that the rater doesn't need to spent countless hours OPRsmithing the shit out of everything to shoe horn it into the form??? And that execs/sr raters don't have to spend even more hours figuring out what the hell each item means, filling up white space (or not), making more acronyms, losing even more meaning with each edit, etc???

Are you a witch? Proceed direct to the first big blue koolaid post and drink until you pee blue. Don't forget to TIM.

Out

[BuddhaSixFour]

Why are there not more people that get this?

It constantly shocks me that we are 12+% into the 21st Century and we still have a typewriter mindset on 99.69% of what we do--even when we have "digitized" it in the form of a PDF or FormFlow.

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.

[jazzdude]

Do they still have the gallon jugs of beer at the shopette?

No more gallon jugs. surprisingly, the town has been cleaned up a bit, especially right off base

[Toro]

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.

That's exactly how the Navy does their FITREPs (OPRs). Seems to work pretty well for them.

[BuddhaSixFour]

That's exactly how the Navy does their FITREPs (OPRs). Seems to work pretty well for them.

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.

Edited September 1, 2013 by BuddhaSixFour

[Swizzle]

But that leaves no room for the "everyone gets a medal" mentality...

[Helo Kitty]

That's exactly how the Navy does their FITREPs (OPRs). Seems to work pretty well for them.

Army just switched over to something similar as well for their OERs.