Royal Navy is Re-thinking how it Promotes its People, so Should we

you get what you reward

Promotion and selection are zero-sum games. For every bad leader given the nod, a better leader is left on the cutting room floor.

No system is perfect, there will always be bad selections and the correct selections. The key is if your system is very good at making the good selections, and minimizes the odds of bad selections.

If you are unhappy with the results of the system you have, then you should change it.

Systems in a rut generally trend towards increasing error, as they have lost the ability to self-correct as circumstances and requirements demand. A little positive disruption, if you have the right disruptive agent, will make a system better.

A gentle way to disrupt a system is to make a little change that impacts mostly those who are content with and feel entitled to the fruits of the existing system.

It was a good move to adjust things at the U.S. Naval Academy when Lieutenant General Michael J. Borgschulte, USMC, was appointed Superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy. He is the first Marine to hold that position.

That is but a shadow of what happened over at the mother country. Their equivalent of the Chief of Naval Operations is the First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff.

In May of this year, General Sir Gwyn Jenkins, Royal Marines, was appointed to the job. He is the first Royal Marine to hold that position as well.

This raised eyebrows, and that is good. Both USNA and the Royal Navy have not had a good run of things as of late—and breaking the wheel of entitlement and expectations by giving the honor to their respective Marines as opposed to another Admiral sets a tone, and provides an opportunity for review, change, and hopefully improvement.

Let’s look at what is happening across the pond. General Jenkins has had some very interesting things to say about a topic we visit on a regular basis here: the how, why, and who we select for promotion.

Anyone who tells you we only select the best, brightest, and most qualified is either delusional, self-serving, or unaware. We all can tell stories of exceptional officers we served with who were passed over while others clearly inferior were promoted. Or as company or field grade officers, they simply took an off-ramp early to the civilian sector, as they saw nothing higher in the military they wanted to jump through the various hoops to get to.

Incentives and disincentives matter. We promote people who best respond to, and reflect the incentives and disincentives of, the system we have in place for career advancement. From the rigid Millington Diktat that still has changed little since I was a Midshipman, to what personalities thrive under other personalities and get the nod. Everyone is one FITREP, a boss who does not like where you went to high school, or an ill-timed PCS cycle—regardless of their objective fitness—from being off-track and career unrecoverable.

The system is what it does, and you shall know it from its fruits. When you look at the last quarter century, are you sure we have the best system?

I’m still waiting for someone senior enough on our side of the pond to start that conversation, but General Jenkins has made the point clear he’s up to experiment. What he is saying sounds solid.

Via Forces News:

At the First Sea Lord’s conference in Portsmouth Guildhall, General Sir Gwyn Jenkins cast doubt on how the Royal Navy promotes its leaders.

“I have a real issue with the way that we assess our needs at the moment,” he told the audience.

“I think we are very subjective in our leadership assessment tools. It’s very top down. How your superior feels about the way you present yourself largely dictates how you get reported upon.”

Gen Sir Gwyn believes this can lead to the wrong people being promoted.

“[This] makes us very vulnerable to promoting toxic leaders, if we’re not careful, who, by their nature, are very persuasive up even while they’re damaging below.”

The First Sea Lord announced that several trials have been running with the goal of identifying different ways to assess leadership, as well as collecting data to prove these individuals are top-notch leaders.

…

“We’ve already got a couple of really powerful vignettes on the negative side, where we’ve identified leaders who are, again, getting really good reports, [but] appear to be having quite corrosive effect on their people.

“That’s a really interesting insight. And on the flip side, [there are] people who aren’t getting the outstanding reports but appear to be creating exceptional team environments.”

...

The First Sea Lord believes these are the people who deliver rather than those who organise.

The largest barrier to improving, modernizing, or in any way changing how we evaluate is that you need a senior leaders secure enough to admit, “Yes, I rose to the top in our present system, but I’m not sure this is the best system to produce the cadre of senior leaders our service and our nation deserve.”

I don’t think anyone would push back.

It would be a nice statement of institutional humility…something we are in dire need of.