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WARFARE SPECIALTY SKILL 38. SEA, MANSHIP f 1 ; f
«ANSHIP
MTRiBUTION
EVALUATION
53 FIRST REPORl
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By Rear Admiral W. J. Holland, Jr. U.S. Navy (Retired)
Regardless of the format or the process,
when the best judgments of individual
commanders are harnessed to skillful
___________ n_p—~ i r
and attentive preparation, fitness
reports are indispensable tools.
ft DATE FORWARDED | I
/PERS 1611/1 (REV. 7-84) S/N 0106-LF-016-1102
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1992-331-6
ondemnation of the old fitness report format and / execution is widespread and rancorous. Suggestions for change range from mandating the social scientist’s statistically well-balanced bell-shaped curve to abandoning formal reports altogether. Abandoning the fitness report procedure, however attractive in Dr. W. Edwards Deming’s ideal corporation, would leave a management vacuum in a large and diverse organization such as the Navy, where regular movement of leaders is the norm. Suggestions for oversight by “little old bureaucrats in tennis shoes” founder on the issues of the quality of such oversight and where responsibility lies in managing the Navy’s most precious resource, its officers.1
Changes being developed promise to make the process simpler and more accurate, but they will not make writing fitness reports easier or change the nature of a personnel reporting system inherent in a hierarchical organization.2 Regardless of the outcome of the present efforts, the details of the new instructions, or the new formats, the most important aspects of fitness reports will remain unchanged. Chief among these is the role of the commanding officer.
Whatever the new form or mechanics, individual commanding officers will remain central to the process. No one is better positioned to make judgments about the merits of individual officers than their commanding officer. Bureaucratic instructions, detailers, selection boards, and similar oversight mechanisms function only to validate that judgment, to try to prevent injustice, and to compare the abilities of a number of officers who appear to be equally capable of increased rank or responsibility.
The size and methodology of the form, the formal process rules, and the detailed instructions from the Bureau of Personnel can shape the end products, but individual commanding officers will continue to form the judgments, make the statements, create the record, and document the service reputation of each officer. When that task is done conscientiously and well, officers are assigned to duties that they execute well, those of greater merit are advanced, the institution prospers internally, and its reputation and those of its individual officers are enhanced. These, then, are the characteristics that measure the worth of the system.
The quality of fitness reports depends largely on the skill of their author as an observer, judge, and writer. Mistakes are costly: the instructions can never be explicit enough to make the preparation of a good report easy or rote. It is important, then, not only to follow the Bureau’s instructions, but also to give preparation of reports the attention it deserves. Commanding officers are teaching as well as reporting; an officer’s first lesson on how to write fitness reports occurs when he reads his own. In his development of officers and in identifying those with promise through their fitness reports, an individual commanding officer has a longer-lasting influence on the Navy than in any other aspect of his command tour and probably in his entire career.
Misunderstanding about fitness reports, their use, and their content arises when we fail to recognize that such reports have multiple audiences—the subject of the report, those associated with future assignments, and selection boards. Each audience has a different view of the
Proceedings / June 1995
report and uses it in a different way for a different purpose. Although all of these users and uses are interrelated, authors of good fitness reports recognize each audience, its purpose, and the methods it uses to view and use the report.
To the officers reported on—the first audience—the report documents a year or so of their labors. Since the bulk of officers of the U.S. Navy are very able persons, the results of these labors are effective and useful. In turn, the document recording these labors is bound to be laudatory if it is just. To give it any other flavor is a terrible injustice to the individual who sees such reports as a reflection of his personal worth to the Navy. The demoralization that takes place in an individual when his good efforts go unrecognized and unrewarded while his deficiencies are highlighted is terribly destructive and almost impossible to overcome.
In this regard, it is important for both the writer and the officer reported on to recognize that the report always will be seen by its subject. Even if not mandated by the fitness report instructions—as has been the case for officers below the grade of commander since Admiral Elmo Zumwalt’s reforms—reports always have been available for review. The Freedom of Information Act mandates general availability of the government’s personnel records, including fitness reports, to the individual concerned.
This means that the report is and should be written knowing that the person who is being reported on will read it and, moreover, will use it as an evaluation of his or her worth. To do justice to this end, the report should document abilities, activities, and accomplishments. It is not a mechanism to counsel. If counseling is needed, it should be done, perhaps in conjunction with a fitness report review, but using the fitness report itself to accomplish counseling demonizes a process that should promote recognition.
At the same time, the reader must understand that the author knew when the report was written that its subject would see it. The report, like an obituary, is a most favorable review—not a “warts and all” picture of abilities and performance.
The second audience for these reports is comprised of those involved with assignment of officers. Two processes are involved: placement of the right officer in a particular billet and using the right billets to develop the potential of particular officers. Detailers may try to satisfy the personal desires of individual officers, but such efforts are a sideline, not their main function. In their primary task, fitness reports help identify and sell the right officers into the assignments best suited to their own skills and the country’s needs.
Many assignments are nominative and/or selective; certainly all the best ones are. Officers nominated to many important posts usually are identified by their service reputation but must be “sold” using the descriptive words from their fitness reports. In joint assignments and on major staffs, this bargaining includes competing with officers of other services, as well as other warfare specialties. High grades and glib generalities are not adequate bargaining material. Fitness report comments must have some meat.
These considerations do not apply just to the top few “water walkers.” More and more assignments require nominations and approval as a matter of routine—probably all joint ones. Many of these assignments can be filled competently by officers whose potential for command or flag rank is low. Identification of individual talents is crucial to making placements in such cases. Commanding officers should know individuals well enough to suggest abilities that are useful in assignments outside the immediate scope of the Warfare specialty, and these should be made a matter of record. The commanding officer and individual reported on have no idea when such information will be useful.
In assigning even the very finest officers to tasks of great responsibility, detailers need facts to support those assignments. But such information is equally important in those cases where the detailer must “paint this turkey gold and sell it as an eagle.” Fitness reports have to give clues as to what officers can do well, so that those in the assignment business can make the best placements, and then must provide enough ammunition to sell the officer in such assignments. In more than one case, the right placement has created the opportunity for a turkey to become an eagle.
The final audiences for fitness reports are the selection boards for promotion, augmentation, early retirement, etc. Here the grades and comments in individual reports are less important than the pattern of a career; selection boards focus on an officer’s service as a whole, not on a particular report. Fitness reports are used as documents of assignments more than for their individual evaluations. Comments in reports give the board member briefing the record solid data on which to base his summary, but in the board’s review process, an individual’s duty stations, primary job assignments, length °f tours, and continuity of performance are more important.
A l^en preparing fitness reports, authors should recognize that selection boards * 1/1/ actually pick the smaller of the number to select or not to select. Flag boards
V V select 30 out of 300 or more eligible and qualified officers. Here, fitness reports are simply the opening ante in a high-stakes game. Anyone with less than a superlative sustained record of performance is quickly eliminated: leaving 250 plus. Selecting 30 from such a group is a matter of the needs of the service, the Secretary of the Navy’s instructions to the board, and the membership of the board. Service reputation, present assignment, and potential for useful service as a flag officer all mean more than fitness report data.
In all other promotion boards, where the majority of those considered will be selected, the actual process will identify those who ought not to be promoted or assigned (the smaller number). Here, the focus of the board is not on success but on failure, and the potential damage from “realistic” fitness reports is great. Faults discussed in fitness reports almost certainly will be highlighted and become the subject of further scrutiny and discussion. To be just, the author must want such an outcome when he comments on an officer’s shortcomings in his report.
Selection boards other than flag boards are really oversight devices to validate the actions of individual commanding officers. If the fitness reports justify promotion, retention, or augmentation, the board will select. If reports consistently identify the officer as of limited potential, selection is unlikely. However, even when reports are clear, in every selection process there is a group of some size—neither water walkers nor misfits—where the board must compare the records of individuals to try to sort out the margin between those to be selected and those who will be passed over. It is in this body especially that individual commanding officers are the determinants. By making the judgment on whether the individual should be promoted, and then expressing that judgment clearly in his or her report, the commanding officer exercises the responsibility demanded by his office and which no other person in the naval service can perform.
To execute the commanding officer’s mission and provide the appropriate information for each audience, the authors of fitness reports must understand some of the rules. The old implementing instructions were too long and too legalistic; their successors) probably will be the same. Nevertheless, there are some sections that authors would do well to review before each set of reports is begun.
Format counts here, as it does in any digitally processed and displayed information. Reports are recorded in automated information systems and then summarized for use in a variety of displays. These displays are projected onto screens. The reasons for information bit size and language standards are not always self-evident; following the instructions is important to ensure that the display reflects the desired information. For example, the computer output for primary assignments is limited to six characters—the most important six need to be listed first in the description on the report form. For an officer who has served as safety and then operations officer during a reporting period, the characters “OPS” should be the first three, otherwise they will be eliminated from the display by “SAFETY.” Authors who do not follow the guidance can unwittingly penalize their subjects during review because information helpful to their cases may not appear on the display.
Grades are perhaps the most misunderstood feature of personnel reports. There may be a bell-shaped curve for officers of the Navy, but officers are not assigned or distributed among commands in accordance with such a curve. No command contains a dispersion representative of the whole Navy. Recruiting, selecting, and assigning processes influence the makeup of the wardrooms and shape the curve for each command: the standards for physical fitness in a SEAL detachment are considerably different from those at a Supply Center; compassion is an attribute more likely to be found in Family Service Centers than in the Recruit Training Command; eye-hand coordination is higher in an F-14 squadron where it makes a difference than in a tender wardroom where it doesn’t. Nonuniformity is the rule, not the exception.
With such dispersion, grades cannot provide accurate comparative information, only clues. Service reputation carries the most weight in assignment and selection. If a candidate is known to someone on a selection board, fitness reports confirm that reputation. For the majority of lower-grade selection boards, such firsthand information is unlikely, and those boards must look for subtle items. Appreciation of these subtleties is important for authors of reports and their subjects.
Past experience demonstrates that straight-line grades become routine a few marking periods after an instruction or format is changed. In such an environment, a few traits out of the line don’t make a difference, but one that is consistently low or marked down by several seniors is suspect. An officer who has such grades and who desires to progress should make every effort to determine and change the behavior that is their cause. In such cases, it is not untoward to bring these changes to the attention of one’s superiors, in order to influence them to document the improvement.
Isolated low grades will be the subject of further scrutiny by selection boards. When a candidate has 20 As and 2 Bs on his summary record, the questions will focus on the Bs. Trailers should not be assigned unless warranted. Those who assign Bs and Cs because “no one’s perfect” damage their candidates. A positive trend is good, but top grades are better. Officers should not be given low grades so that later marks can be raised.
Given such a highly capable group of people as the officers of the U.S. Navy, grades can never distinguish the very finest. They do however identify those less than the best. Authors of fitness reports should recognize this phenomenon when they write reports—choosing to identify traits or characteristics that are less than the best is a mechanism, not to improve performance, but to mark an officer who probably will not be able to serve as a commander or a captain. Patterns of grades stand out; one set of poor grades will never cripple an officer, but a consistently low grade in some area may limit promotion and assignment potential. The more senior the officer, the more significant out-of-line grades will be.
In the case of officers whose potential is limited or whose performance has been weak, grades and comments need not be damagingly definitive—boards do not require precise definitions to identify the weak, the lame, or the lazy. Authors who take the time and cultivate the skill can write reports that satisfy the first audience while identifying for the second and third audiences officers whose potential may be limited. Low grades across the board are evidence of mental, moral, or physical defects. Comments should identify the problems associated with such marks.
The old form—and probably future ones—provided two additional sections to help identify those who should be selected for assignments of greater responsibility and higher rank. Performance trend identified three choices. The last, “Declining,” has a self-evident meaning and impact. The second, “Consistent,” is nowhere near "Improving.” “Consistent” is NOT a good grade. It marks the individual as someone with limited potential. Only when the officer in question has not responded to identified opportunities to grow is such a mark warranted.
Because of the inevitable problems with grade creep and the lack of selectivity in ranking in select groups, Recommendations for Accelerated Promotion (RAPs) have become another mechanism to allow commanding officers to state their belief in the potential of the officer. This recommendation ought not be taken too literally, however, because the numbers of selections below the zone are minuscule compared to the numbers eligible. This block provides another indicator of potential; captains who believe an officer should be promoted to captain can consider a RAP appropriate.
Ranking is the commanding officer’s hardest task, but it cannot be delegated or shirked. ‘‘Ties are not permitted” under the present instruction and presumably will not be permitted in the future. In every group, then, someone will have to be last. Being last is never good, even with straight-A grades and top-1% categorization. Comments help ameliorate this ranking somewhat and should be used where warranted:
“LCDR Geheckenfeckus is ranked 2 out of 2 because he is compared with the executive officer, an officer four years his senior, screened for command. His performance
is superb and in a ranking with those of his own seniority would clearly be placed
with the best.”
An officer serving in a billet that should be held by the leader of the group will be hurt severely by a ranking that does not reflect that he or she leads the pack. Some comment should be made in these situations. A junior can receive a big boost by a ranking that indicates he is performing as well as or better than his seniors.
A “kiss goodbye” upon detachment is easy to spot when earlier reports have not been ns good. On the other hand, absence of such a “kiss” on a detachment report is notable. It shows that the rater did not make a strong recommendation when it was easy to do so and sends a clear message about the author’s opinion of an officer’s potential, regardless of the comments or other grades.
The old instructions about comments were unusually lucid and useful. No one should prepare comments who has not read these brief and direct admonitions. How to
Ranking is the commanding officer’s hardest task, but it cannot be delegated or shirked. “Ties are not permitted” under the present instruction and presumably will not be permitted in the future.
handle poor performers is clear in the old instruction and presumably will be in future ones. Authors are warned not to use fitness report comments “as a substitute for appropriate corrective action or UCMJ proceedings.”3
Reports suggest that the new format will have smaller comment blocks. This responds to criticisms of the way the last form was used, but it may be useful to recall that the predecessor to that form also had a very small space for comments and reportedly was abandoned because it left little room for factual documentation. Regardless of the space allowed, a very brief statement in the comments block implies a lack of interest on the senior’s part or a lack of positive performance to discuss, e.g., “This ensign’s seniority exceeds his ability.” A substantive report indicates full command support of the officer and a real effort to recognize excellent performance.
If the author wants the officer reported on to be promoted or assigned to the best tasks, the first paragraph of the comments section should be written to get the attention of the reviewer and should make strong, clear-cut evaluations and recommendations. A glowing, enthusiastic written endorsement marks an individual of merit and promise as no other method can.
For an officer who has been passed over, where the commanding officer believes that action was a serious mistake, the subsequent report must describe the officer’s performance in the most glowing terms with the highest marks possible if the officer is to have a chance in subsequent promotion boards. The comments should note the officer’s sustained superior performance, despite his failure to select (his failure to select will not be a mystery). A recommendation for accelerated promotion in this case is a statement of the commanding officer’s endorsement and not an absurd literal recommendation.
Recommendations should be as specific and unequivocal as possible. “Increased responsibility” or “positions leading to command” are soft. Officers should be recommended for “engineer,” “executive officer,” “commanding officer” as soon as the reporting officer can see his way clear to do so. But ten years ago, most naval aviators were being recommended for command of a squadron on their second tour; such recommendations are ridiculous and can destroy the validity of the rest of the report.
Failure to recommend an officer for assignments to which he normally would progress is very serious. This is even more significant if the same senior previously recommended the officer for duties of increased responsibilities. Words such as “will eventually be suitable with more seasoning” do not soften the impact. No matter what else the report may say, failure to recommend promotion is deadly.
tness reports are important feedback. They provide psychic income first and then
telp the officer evaluate his prospects for a successful naval career. When reports
dentify particular capabilities and potential, they allow detailers to identify appropriate assignments to develop these talents and to justify those assignments. Only last does the report justify an officer’s promotion, selection for command, or retirement.
“Realistic” grades can easily end a career prematurely. This is not an invariable rule: selection boards contain people who know many of the writers and discount commanding officers known for arbitrary or unusual standards. This author’s record contains a report in which he was categorized with four other lieutenants as “a typically effective naval officer,” a category in the middle of the form, usually a death knell. Three of the five officers so ranked in this group eventually became flag officers.
Large organizations can accommodate a wide dispersion of talent only by entrusting their managers to make judgments based on their components, the corporate culture, and their own experience. The long-time norms of the naval service suggest that integrity, persistence, and intelligence are highly valued traits. While these are easy to identify, other traits that are more subtle and diverse also are vital to a good officer corps. When the best judgments of individual commanders are harnessed to skillful and attentive preparation, fitness reports are indispensable in building and maintaining a corporate identity coherent with these values: format or the mechanics of the process are secondary.
'Capt. John L. Byron, USN, “What Men or Gods Are These?” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, December 1992, pp. 28-32. :John Burlage, “Fitreps, evals face overhaul,” Navy Times, 21 November 1994.
Wavy Officer Fitness Report Manual, BuPersInst 1611.17, end. (1), pp. 2-27.
Admiral Holland served 13 years in commands or other assignments where he was required to submit fitness reports. These submissions stand 11 7/8 inches and weigh 21 pounds (a relatively small tree).