- Well, good morning. What a great Army day. Sir, thank you for being here. I know your time's valuable. So, I'll get moving through this quickly. Of course, this is a military forum on Army Talent Management in 2028. You heard the secretary on Monday. You heard the chief yesterday. People are the Army. People are a priority. The number one priority. And you'll hear more
about that this morning. This is one of 10 IOW
forums over these three days as we try to educate not only the public, but also the military at large. This particular panel is
so important to our Army. My name's George Cohen. Did 30 years in the Army. I've got five kids in the military. This is a labor of love for me. I couldn't think of a
better forum to be in than talent management. We can't do this alone. Your membership with AUSA
is vitally important. Those of you that have and that currently are an AUSA member, we'd like to recognize you. So, please stand so we can
give you a round of applause. Thank you. (applause) Thank you. Thank you very much. For those of you that are
not, we would love for you. There's a quid pro quo here. For those of you, booth 307 on the floor. You can sign up down there. Or you can go to the AUSA website. So, we would really appreciate
strength in numbers. So, thank you very much. Again, dynamite panel. And I'm gonna turn it
over to General Seamands. Sir, over to you. - George, thank you very much. Thanks for your 30 years of service. Being a soldier for life. And the things that we're going
to talk about this morning are gonna impact your five
children in the service. So, thanks for the great introduction. Good morning, everyone. Thank for coming to the
contemporary military forum Army Talent Management in 2028. For those of you who are out of town, I'd like to welcome you to Washington, DC. Home of the National League champions. Soon to be World Series champions. (applause) Sir, I think the Nats have been listening, because winning matters. (laughter) Talent management is so critical
to our priority of people for a number of reasons. I would submit to you
that talent management gives every one of our soldiers the ability to be the best
version of themselves. It also allows our
units to build readiness as we get the right
people in the right job at the right time. Recognizing their talents. We have a terrific lineup
of panelists this morning. We're gonna be talking about a very relevant, important
topic of talent management and how the Army manages its people. My name is Tom Seamands. And I have the honor
of serving as your G-1. And I'll be the moderator
for this morning's panel. I'd like to start by showing
a video on the necessity. Why we need talent management in the Army. And, following the video, the 40th chief of staff of
the Army, General McConville, will provide some opening
comments for the forum. Let's go to the video, please. - [Narrator] The foundation
of the Army's ability to dominate and lead combat depends on our skills when we
try to manage the best talent. It gives a decisive advantage
over future adversaries. Talent management encompasses acquiring, developing,
employing, and retaining the Army's greatest asset, its people, to enhance readiness by
maximizing human potential. The Army is moving out
rapidly in four areas. First, the Army Talent Alignment Process matches officers to assignments. This process empowers
commanders and individuals to play a more active role
in the assignment process. Second, we are building
a culture of assessments. Talent assessments provide a common lens through which you identify
an officer's knowledge, skills, and behaviors. Assessments provide the
Army with better information for development, assignment, promotion, and selection decisions. Third, we are developing options that enable officers to have
flexible career paths. Last, we are significantly modernizing the way we promote and select officers. Great organizations have the ability to make predictions about the future and enact the necessary
changes before they're needed. Applying a soldier's talents
where they're needed most gives the Army the agility
to meet the challenges of 21st century warfare. The Army Talent Management Approach will maximize the potential of
the Army's greatest strength, its people. - Ladies and gentlemen, the
40th chief of staff of the Army, General McConville. - Hey, thanks, Tom. (applause) Thanks for letting me crash this panel. I wasn't supposed to speak today. But, if you haven't heard me talk about talent management and people, I just want to get a chance
to open this panel up. Then, I'll get up to stage
and get to these experts. But people are the number one
priority for me in the Army. Number one priority. And that's why we need
to manage their talent. And it's extremely important. And it's a philosophical
approach to how we run the Army. We equip people. We don't man equipment. Think about that. We equip our soldiers. We don't man. It's all about the soldier. Number one priority. And so, when it comes
to talent management, in the future, we're
going to have to compete for young men and women's talent. And that's what this is all about. We are in a Information Age. So, we cannot be in an
Industrial Age Army. And so, some of the things
we're putting in place are gonna recognize our
soldiers are our surveyance. Their talents. Acknowledge skills and behaviors. And even preferences. And a lot of people in the Army, when we start talking about preferences, they get a little excited. Especially some of the older folks. Like, if the Army wanted
you to do something, we would have given it to you. But I believe that, if we
know where people want to go and what they want to do and we get them into those positions, we will have a much better Army. And we will. Because winning matters. And don't forget that, either. Winning does matter. And so, the programs we put in place are gonna take some time. This is gonna change culture. I learned a lot about this
when I was a recovering G-1. (laughter) I didn't know anything
about the personnel system. I knew nothing about the personnel system. I came out of division command and I started looking at our processes. And what our great personnel
management were doing is they were doing the best
they could with that they had. The system they had in place. And they did extremely, extremely well. But I learned along the way that, first of all, that we had three
different personnel systems. Think about that. We're a total force. But we have a personnel
system for the regular Army, a personnel system for the National Guard, and a personnel system for the Reserve. So, if you think about it, it's kind of like during the Civil War where we had different gauge railroads. So, when you went from state to state, what would happen is you'd
get to the state border. You would take all the cargo. You would unload it. You'd break it loose. And you'd put it onto the other train and you'd move out. Very inefficient and very ineffective. That is what happens to our Reserve and Guard soldiers right now. How many Guard and
Reserve we have out there? Is that true? Pay gets messed up. Personnel, right? So, we want everyone on the same system. Okay, and so, we're doing that with the integrated personnel pay system. The second thing I learned. I learned this when I was
a one star in Afghanistan. I learned that we basically
manage our soldiers by two variables. You're a captain of infantry. You're a sergeant of engineers. And what I found out was. I was in Afghanistan. A guy named Milley and McConville. We're two one stars in the
101st Airborne Division. You might of heard of
that other guy, right? And we were given the mission to go ahead and surge in Afghanistan and build out all the
forward operating bases. And I had some great Guard
and Reserve units there. And so, I asked them. Because we were in the Industrial Age. Maybe the Agricultural Age. To fill out an Excel spreadsheet
on what their talents were. What they did in real life. And I found out I had a supply sergeant that ran an engineering design firm and was an engineering designer. That sergeant is the one that designed all the bases in
Afghanistan for the surge. That sergeant. I learned I had a major that worked for the Texas Highway Department. And that major helped us build highways. And, if you notice, I'm from Boston. Sox aren't in. We're kind of hurting about that. But I'm from Boston. And we don't have a whole
lot of farms in Boston. We have pictures of farms. But we don't have a whole lot of farms. And when I found out I had some great professional
farmers from Nebraska and Iowa. And they set up these agricultural business development teams. My takeaway was we had
this incredible talent in the Army that I couldn't see. Because it was almost masked
by the MOS and the grade. And I go, "We gotta find that." That's why we're going to acknowledge skills, behavior, and preferences. 'Cause we want to manage
people by about 25 variables. So, you can tell us what your talents are. And then we can match
them up with the job. And we think we get that matched up, that's gonna change things. We think we need to assess and we need to compete for our soldiers', non-commissioned officers',
and officers', talents. We need to compete for the best. Let's not find out who shows up. And I've read a lot on talent management, bleeding talent, and everything else. And people talked about 50%
of the captains are leaving. Okay, well, 50% of the
captains have to leave. That's just by physics. Because we. But here's the deal. Who's staying? And how do we compete for those captains with the most talent? And we have to compete for them. Let's not just see who shows up. Let's compete for them. Only about 30% of officers
need to stay 20 years. Only 15% of enlisted soldiers
need to stay 20 years. That's all we have space for. But let's compete for their talents. Let's go for the best. Let's go for the diversity that represents the diversity
of the United States. And let's go after those
folks and do it early on. The other thing I see coming up that we're gonna be talking about is, just from where I sit, is I look at battalion commanders and sergeant majors as one of the most consequential jobs in the United States Army. And so, we're gonna implement a battalion commanders assessment program that's gonna fundamentally transform the way we pick battalion commanders. Some people are gonna like it. Some people are not gonna like it. You're gonna compete for those positions. You go through a process where you'll be screened by a board. And they'll take a look
at your past performance. And you'll get so much
percentage for that. And then you'll come to Fort
Knox and you'll try out. A five day assessment. And some people go, "Well, wait a minute. What about all this stuff? This is hard." This is whatever it is. Well, I look at it and see. Right now, we spend more time and money on picking an enlisted soldier
in the Ranger battalion than we do picking battalion commanders. So, we're gonna change that. And what's gonna change is. Right now, we look at an officer's record for about two and a half minutes to pick battalion commanders. If someone slipped on a block or someone didn't have a profile, they may not have the opportunity that they deserve based on their talents. So, they have a chance to compete. So, as we take a look, in the future, we're gonna become an
Information Age Army. And it's not gonna be necessarily linear. It's not gonna be industrial. And all these type of things
that are coming in place are gonna allow us to be and retain being the greatest army on Earth. So, I'm gonna turn it over to the folks that actually work on these things. Again, for me, people first. Winning matters. We remain Army strong. Thank you. (applause) - Thank you, sir. You can tell from the turnout today that talent management matters. And there's a lot of
interest and focus on it. If you Google the words talent management, you'll get 690 million hits. So, to put it a different way, if you were to spend a minute
on each one of those websites, it would take you 41 billion
minutes, 28 million days. But we don't have time for that. Fortunately, we have a great panel that's gonna distill all that down into what it means for the Army to attract and retain the talent in 2028. We'll first hear from our panelists. And then proceed into a
question and answer portion. Can you put up the slide with the panel and the place to text? There we go. This is the panel. But, more importantly. Not more importantly, I guess. But, in the bottom right hand corner, when we open up for questions and answers, you can text the word
armytalent, one word, to 21000, 2-1-0-0-0. And you'll receive a welcome message. Following the message, you
can submit any question and we'll bring the question up front. So, without further delay, I'd like to introduce our panelists. To my right, your left,
Major General JP McGee, who leads the Army's
talent management efforts as a director of the Army
Talent Management Task Force. He will discuss organizational reform and cultural change to
adapt to the future. Hooah. (applause) Next to JP is Doctor Lenny Wong, the research professor
of military strategy at the US Army War College. And he'll discuss organization reform, cultural change to adapt to the future. Hooah, Lenny, thanks for coming. (applause) Next is Major General Joe Callaway. The commanding general of
Human Resources Command. He will provide a look
into how we're implementing change and talent management
in the Human Resources Command. (applause) Next is Sergeant Major Wardell Jefferson. My sergeant major. The sergeant major for the G-1. He'll help us better understand
enlisted talent management. Hooah. (applause) And completing the panel
is Miss Charlene Thomas. Who is the chief human resources officer for the United Parcel Service, UPS. UPS is a company that has become an employer of rewards,
opportunities, achievement and an employer of choice. The company's nationally recognized human resources initiatives
focus on the idea of keeping the reputation of being the best package delivery
company in the business. She has unique perspective
on industry best practices for human resources and
UPS's innovative approach to managing its global workforce. Now we'll walk down the panel and provide five to eight minutes each to talk about your areas of expertise. JP? - Well, good morning, everybody. Thank you for attending. I'd like to first start out
talking about our approach and how we view 2028 and what that looks like
for talent management. I'm gonna talk about how some of the initiatives we're doing today drive us to that future. I'd like to end it with a scenario to sort of have you start to have a vision of how we can bring this all together and what this means for the warfighting capabilities of the Army. So, you'll hear the chief talk about it. We talk a lot about this transition from Industrial Era
practices to Information Age. But what that actually really means is you've got to understand
the underpinning and the logic of each of those approaches. So, the Industrial Age was great until we had something
a little bit better. But that really went with
these sort of principles. It says an institution, organization, needs to bring people in. Needs to get them to a minimum acceptable level of competency. And then, effectively, you can employ them across the entire enterprise. Because they're all sort of
good enough and the same. So, infantry captains are
the same across the board. And you can apply them. If there's any sort of uniqueness, it's done on the margins and on the wings and it doesn't really
apply to the mass majority. It was the best approach that we had if we weren't enabled by
information technology and we didn't know a lot about our people. 'Cause we couldn't process
all that information. It's encapsulated with the
two key legislative documents that still run the way that
we manage our officer corps. The 1947 Officer Personnel Act and the 1980 Defense Officer
Personnel Management Act. Which has been significantly
changed just last year with the 2019 NDA. But, if you take an
Information Age approach, you say something different. You say you bring people
into your organization. You start to find out
what is unique about them. What we call talents. That unique combination
of knowledge, skills, behaviors, and preferences. And, yes, preference is really important in terms of how we manage our people. And then you take that knowledge
to develop the individuals and then employ them most effectively to contribute to the mission
of your organization. You can do that today,
because you have to be enabled by new information technology that lets you take large cohorts of people. Say, for the active duty
officer who has 90,000 people. And be able to manage them uniquely. And what you'll see is a collective lift. Not just with the top 5%. But across the entire organization. As people are developed
in a more unique fashion and then employed in a way where they can actually contribute in the maximum fashion
towards the mission. It's a movement from
performance management to talent management as
we start moving forward. It's a movement that focuses
on longer term readiness in terms of the retention
of the right talents that we need to have in
the future to succeed instead of worrying about
short term readiness, which is really focused on making sure you've got a slot filled. It's about moving from
a data-poor environment where you don't have much information about your officer corps to having a data-rich environment where you can make much better decisions. Not just for the individual. But, institutionally, we know each other and we're data driven. And we're using that data that we collect over time to drive decisions from the individual to the institution. It's where these things like knowledge, skills,
behaviors, and preferences, what we define as a
talent, come into play. It's about moving from an old information technology
systems that we have right now to an investment in a future
information technology system that can handle all of this and then also provides us
a predictive capability so we can start modeling and simulating and seeing what the
decisions that we make today how that impacts our future. It's a movement from rigid career paths where everybody has to stay
on a fairly standardized model to flexible career paths. And it's also discussing
and trying to get after a better alignment of the
management organization and processes to make sure that we maintain the strategic direction for our people across the Army. Some of the initiatives. I won't go into a great deal of detail. But I'll just talk broadly how they start moving us in that direction as an Army as we start building momentum and change. So, one of the first things
we're gonna talk about is the Army Talent Alignment Process. Which is the new way in
which we assign officers across the active component. So, what that gives us now
is increased transparency for all the jobs that are available. We get a tremendous
amount of knowledge boost in terms of the information that we have about each officer as they
self-describe themselves on the backside of the ORB. And, as an Army, we start
getting this information about what is unique about a
position and an individual. And we start seeing, over
time, what those trends are. What are the knowledge,
skills, and behaviors of really successful battalion officers? What is sort of unique
about a particular job that allows us. That we need to look for. And you start having a queryable database. And we're gonna be able
to use that information. The chief already mentioned the Battalion Commander
Assessment Program. But, really, that's a bold step forward in terms of starting to add assessments, which are these objective
measurements of people, into the whole management. As opposed to solely a subjective
evaluation that we are. Not that that's always gonna
be central and important. But it's not the only thing
that's gonna determine how we develop, employ our people. We talk about bringing in
through direct commissioning officers into the Army. So they can take the skills
and strength of our nation in many of these fields and apply it to our
warfighting mission as an Army. So, as we go into this very uncertain and complex future
operational environment, we have the strength of the nation contributing to our mission. We talked about being able to
opt out of promotion boards as a first step to being able to opt into promotion boards
as a measure to establish more flexibility, more
ownership for an officer of how they manage their career. We're moving forward with
this idea of brevet promotion. So, we can recognize those
who are uniquely talented and elevate them into a position and then they get promoted as soon as they're
picked for that position. 770 slots, from colonel
to captain, given to us. And we talked about having
merit-based promotion lists in terms of how we execute and sequence our promotion lists. As opposed to referring
back to just date of rank. So, in 2028, which is the focus of this, what does that all look like? We created an illustrative scenario. And I'll tell you what I think this potentially could
look like for the Army as we face a future challenge. So, in 2028, a geopolitical crisis erupts that demands a proportional
and tailored response from the Army. Leveraging big data
through AI-enabled systems, advanced predictive analytics now allow Army senior leaders to select
a targeted force structure tailored for this region. Army data and system engineers
directly commission the Army, because their specialized
civilian expertise runs thousands of simulations
on potential plans to pick the best approach for the crisis. Crowdsourcing through
Army academic networks comprised of thousands of part-time civilian PhDs in unique fields help shape policy recommendations for senior leaders and
strategic decision makers. Simultaneously, people
operations specialists immediately assess the KSBs of tens of thousands of soldiers in IPSSA to fill a joint task force
with critical abilities in UAV swarm management,
disaster relief response, tailored regional languages,
and advanced power generation led by officers groomed through succession planning for
key leadership position. This JTF harnesses the
talents of officers, non-commissioned officers, and civilian from the Guard, Reserve,
and active components. And we receive world class
material deployment support as a consequence. If this scenario sounds complex, it's because the future of
warfare will be characterized by dynamic change,
unavoidable uncertainty, and increasingly ambiguus scenarios. So, there you go. That is my shot to make
personnel management sound exciting and sexy. (laughter) - Lenny. - It's a great day for Army
talent management reform. I mean, when you look at things, what more could you ask for? The Congress signaled its attitude when it said it's time to modernize the 38 year old officer personnel system. Department of Defense signaled it's gonna provide reinforcing fires in the National Defense Strategy when they said it's time
for a broad revision of talent management
in the armed services. Secretary of defense, when he
was the secretary of the Army, said talent management is
his number one priority. Secretary of the Army backs it 100%. The chief of staff of
the Army was a former G-1 and is a big advocate
for talent management. Casey Rodinski, one of the early champions
of talent management, is now the ASA and MNRA. Army Talent Management Task Force has been reinvigorated and capably led. What more could you ask? The conditions have been set. Never has there been a
time with greater potential for major transformational change in the officer career management system in the Army than today. So, what could possibly hinder this historic and profound occasion? Well, the answer is,
unfortunately, the Army culture. The Army culture consists of those discrete things that
influence decision making that quietly affect our behavior that we never speak about. Those norms and beliefs. And, unfortunately, it's the Army culture that will drag its feet
when Army transformation in talent management is attempted. Well, probably the first
cultural line of defense that we'll see approaching
talent management is the. Well, actually, for that matter, it's always the first line of defense for any transformational change. And that is the perspective
of if it's not broken, why bother fixing it? And what that causes is it causes us to ask senior leaders to acknowledge that the system that chose them for success, that selected them as
exemplars of success, that placed in their hands the stewardship of the profession, that system is somehow flawed
and needs to be overhauled. So, it's perfectly
rational for senior leaders to say to themselves it makes no sense to go chasing a corporate fad and risk damaging the system that, while it's not perfect, is good enough. So, this aspect of Army culture encourages uniformed leaders
to patiently wait out those civilian zealots. Hoping that, despite all the
high expectations of reform, only nonthreatening initiatives, like longer maternity leave,
expanded childcare hours, and more mothers rooms, will result. Another factor that will
impede talent management reform is the Army's egalitarian nature. The Army prides itself on being a service that leaves no one left behind. That treats everyone the same regardless of individual differences. So, it's egalitarianism
that pushes back hard against offering opportunities to high potential individuals while denying those opportunities to those with lesser talent. So, it was in egalitarianism that, in 2004, said let's send
all majors to resident ILE instead of just the top 50%. It as egalitarianism in the
FY '07 captains exodus crisis that said let's offer a
retention bonus to all captains regardless of their record of performance and future potential. And it will be egalitarianism that goes against talent reform when the initiative will
highlight a talent shortfall in a particular branch,
a source of commission, a subgroup, or a subpopulation. Another odd aspect of the Army's culture that will push back against
talent reform is loyalty. Army senior leaders are exceptionally loyal to their subordinates. Especially those with
whom they have served and sacrificed alongside
in 18 years of war. There's a well-intentioned and totally understandable concern that altering the paths of success
for these young warriors midstream in their career is essentially pulling the rug from out under them. That potent cultural norm of loyalty encourages the belief
that maybe it's better to err in a way that honors their service. Even if it ultimately inhibits the effectiveness of
talent management reform. And the fourth aspect of army culture that will impede talent management reform, which is very popular across
the entire Army, is skepticism. I specialize in this. (laughter) It's just part of the Army culture. Especially when personnel
issues are concerned. We've all heard the promises. We've all watched to see if
the walk matches the talk. We've heard the promises. And that's what the forces heard. They've heard the promises that a command in a training unit is on par with a command in a tactical unit. You've heard the promises that a tour as a midteam advisor
is career enhancing. The force is skeptical. And so, when promotion results, when selection results
finally match up to promises of talent management reform, then the force will believe it. But, until then, they remain
skeptical and cynical. Finally, the Army rests on a foundation that extols the preeminence
of the warfighter. From lessons learned in precommissioning, where order of merit is largely determined by PT results and platoon
patrolling scores, to general officers bragging that they never served a day in the Pentagon, the warfighter is extolled and emulated. And this key component of the Army culture is often intimidating. But it's often underestimated in realizing how much it pushes back against reform. But unless the preeminence of
the warfighter is preserved, the force will always be skeptical. And they will look askance at any talent management initiatives that try to put the right person in the right place at the right time. So, how does talent management reform succeed in the Army without these foot-dragging effects of Army culture? Well, it begins with reform
being embraced, owned, and promoted by uniformed senior leaders. The mantle of transformation that, right now, rests on the shoulders
of its civilian appointees has to be shifted onto the shoulders of uniformed senior leaders. There has to be open discussion about how the world's greatest army shouldn't put people into positions by making a phone call to an
assignment officer at HRC. We have to really confront the fact that is the best army in the
world assessing its people by spending two and a half minutes glancing at a photo and ORB and looking for code words in OERs? We have to have those hard discussions. And we have to ask ourselves is it time? Because transformation is best executed when it comes from within. Uniformed senior leaders
have to be convinced and they have to convince themselves that change is not only necessary,
but feasible and desired. On the other hand, talent
reformers have to recognize the uniqueness of Army culture that makes the Army what it is. The Army's primary function
is to fight the nation's wars. Is to fight and win the nation's wars. So, it is only logical to retain the essence of the warfighter culture. The 1997 OPMS XXI study recognized this and created the operations career field, which made career paths,
albeit too narrow career paths, for warfighters. So, today, talent management advocates have to face the fact
that the force of tomorrow will still have to be run by warfighters who have not forgotten who soldiers are and what the nation demands of them. But, by the same token,
if warfighters are gonna assume the bulk of the
leadership positions, senior leadership positions, in the Army, they cannot object. Matter of fact, they should desire to be sent off to graduate
school and fellowships and non-muddy boot broadening assignments. And they can't redefine broadening to include becoming an OC at the CTCs. Part of talent management reform is not only making sure we
have the best warfighters, but also that we have leaders
that can lead this enterprise. Finally, in order to address the distrust that the force has of all
talent management reform, it's imperative that reform
be transparent as possible. We need to know why AIM Two. No, we won't get into that. Simulations should be run to project short-term and long-term implications. Pilot tests should be run across the Army so we can adjust initiatives. And, if we spot a talent
shortfall in a particular branch, a particular source of
commission, a particular subgroup, then we shouldn't discard the initiative, but we should go to look and see why is there a talent shortfall and work to correct that instead of just throwing out every initiative. In rolling out talent management
initiatives and reform, the force must be convinced
that the policies, while not necessarily
treating everyone the same, that they're reasonable. That they're fair. And that they're in the best interests of the nation, the Army, and the soldier. So, in my short remarks today, I'm not trying to come up with any new directions we should
go or any new initiatives. My point is just that, as an Army, we have a history of ignoring culture. And, today, the stage has been set. The key actors are in position to bring about a radical
transformation in the Army. We should not squander
this rare opportunity by failing to recognize and adjust to the pervasiveness of Army culture. Thanks. - [Tom] Thanks, Lenny. I appreciate it. Joe. - Good morning, everybody. I appreciate the. It's an honor to be here. And I appreciate the chance to talk to you a little bit about this. So, Doctor Wong mentioned
distrust and skepticism. So, here I am, the HRC commander. And I'm frankly. I'm frankly a little concerned that we've got the father of
Green Pages in the front row, the father of OPMS XXI in the second row, and our British colleagues
in the front row on my left. And I'm somehow the only guy with this mystery bag in front of him. Which I'm a little bit afraid to touch. I'm thinking someone's eventually
gonna light this on fire and ask me to put it out. (laughter) Anyway, so, the People Strategy was signed by the secretary of the chief and the sergeant major of
the Army late last week. Who has read that strategy? All right, so we have a couple. Well, guess what? Thanks, sir. - [Man] I read it. - Chief read it. So, you guys need to get on it. But I think the People Strategy is actually an excellent backdrop for this conversation today, because it talks about the
strategic threat environment. And that strategic threat environment has China and Russia
investing considerably in both the technology and equipment to reduce our advantage and to close the gap of the advantage that we've had for as long as any of us have been in the Army. And so, our people are our
largest strategic asset. And that's where we've got to invest if we're gonna keep our advantage. Period. I mean, that is just what it is. Again, you guys, whether
you're a brigade commander or a young captain or a major, you're the people that
are gonna embrace this. And you're the people that
are gonna make it happen. Because equipment doesn't
learn and innovate. Equipment doesn't think
and lead through ambiguity. Equipment doesn't change a culture from internal to an organization and set up a culture of trust and judgment to build cohesive teams. It also doesn't exercise judgment. That's you guys. That's us. And so, we have got to
evolve to maximize the talent that is resident in the
folks sitting in this room and everywhere else across
all components and over time. And so, it's a pretty exciting
time to be the HRC commander, because I'm the guy that's going to. Or our team. Not me. But our team is gonna
execute a lot of the things that JP talked about earlier. So, let's talk just
about a couple of those. So, 30 or 40 years. How long have we had the
same promotion system and the same way that we select officers for battalion command? It's been the same since
I've been in the Army. I think since General
Seamand's been in the Army. That's only a couple years longer. (laughter) I don't want to age my boss out here. But merit-based promotions. We've gone from taking the person who gets promoted first simply because they've been around the longest to now we're gonna promote
the person first who, actually, a board judged
had the most talent and had performed the best. BCAP, the chief talked about BCAP. We're gonna do the same
on the officer side in terms of not OML-based promotions. And I'll let Sergeant Major Jefferson. He'll talk a little bit here about what we're gonna do on the enlisted side. We've also done direct commissioning. General Hersey's here. For our cyber force. So, we've got these authorities. And now, for the first time, we've got the authority
given to us by Congress to assess people directly into a rank up to the rank of colonel now. Is that gonna happen very frequently? No, but there may be
unique, one off situations where we do that. But, certainly, with skills
like our cyber force, you're gonna have to bring people in at the grade of captain or so to get the right skill set that you need to execute those sort of missions. And then, so, for the first time, we've talked about opt out. So, the February. Anybody gonna be eligible for the lieutenant colonels board
that will meet in February? Not a single person. - A couple over there. - We got one. All right, congratulations. You're gonna be the first
person in recorded history to have the opportunity to opt
out of that promotion board. And why is that important? Again, it gets back to
people having the opportunity to pursue their passions
and do what they care about. So, you may have a unique situation where an officer would like to be an infantry battalion
and brigade commander, but would also like to go develop a skill or get a PhD in data analytics at MIT and they want to fit
that into their timeline. So, you will have those
sorts of opportunities that you haven't had in the past in here. And, although assignment
information module. Again, we're changing the
way we manage assignments and the way we manage officers. So, again, to the chief's point that everybody is not an interchangeable part. And so, that opened, AIM opened on Friday. And, today, we have, as of this morning, 5900 officers have put in preferences out of the 14,000 that are moving. And, among those 5900 officers
who have input preferences, we've got 152,000 individual preferences about where they say they want to go. Why is that? On the opposite side of that, units are gonna have the opportunity to influence who comes to their formation for the first time. Are they gonna control it 100%? No, of course not. And so, I get the question all the time. What about readiness? How are we gonna ensure
that we maintain readiness and still do this? Are we gonna walk away
from our responsibility to develop leaders who can lead
combat formations in combat? No, we are still gonna meet readiness requirements regardless, because we don't have a choice. We have to do that. So, moving forward. And I'm sure we'll have
plenty of questions about AIM. So, I won't beat the AIM thing to death. And look forward to your questions on AIM. We also have to develop
laws and policies that allow greater permeability
between service components. And maybe not only just
service components. But how about between
our civilian workforce and a military career? Something that we really haven't had. It's just way too difficult to do it under the current system. So, we have to develop. We are sort of at the nascent end of this. And we have to develop the analytics and the data needed to do
this a little bit better. So, predictive assessments,
diagnostic assessments. Again, you can read this. We just don't have those tools right now. So, we need all these things. Why? You need that to enable
talent management, obviously. We've got to acquire the right soldiers. We've got to develop the
right soldiers effectively. Employ the right soldiers. And then we've got to
retain, to the chief's point. Every organization loses talent. And there's no getting around that. But we do have to find a way that we keep the best 80% or
90% of the top 20 or 25% or whatever that turns out to be. And that's our charter as far
as moving forward with this. So, our tool to do that, a
tool of the future, is IPSSA. And I think the timing of IPSSA, in line of effort three
fielding in December '21, actually mixed nicely
with where we're going in terms of JP and his team
developing the assessments we sort of need. Figuring out longer term
what sort of data analytics we require to do that. And so, we'll move
forward in doing all that. So, IPSSA's coming. I'm sure there's probably
IPSSA related questions on this, as well. So, but the goal, ultimately,
is that we've got to evolve the way we assign officers. The way we assign our enlisted force. And evolve our assignment
officers into talent managers. So, our talent managers are
not just calling you up. Maybe they did when I was growing up. And said, "Hey, you have
the choice of one or two." And that's evolved over time to "Hey, we looked at your file and you have the choice
of one through seven based on what we see in your file." To not an assignment
officer, but a talent manager who can say, "Hey, I
know you went into AIM. Here's my advice. Here's what I know about you." And not just manage your next assignment. But manage you five, six, seven years out. 10 years out. And manage your assignments over time so that you've got some
sort of predictive path. Maybe you want to be an
infantry officer initially. But your talent manager at HRC says, "Hey, you actually, based on
the assessments in the system, you may be one of the people that we want to VTIP early to
become a cyber officer." To become an ORSA or
whatever the case may be. You don't have to wait until year eight to pursue your passion like you do now. So, again, we've got to evolve. And then, over time,
the HRC talent manager should be linked with
the colonel's management assignment officer or talent manager. Should be linked with GOMO. So that we've got, across time and space, the ability to see the force. But, again, it's a nascent capability now. We're developing the data
we have that we need, actually, to make those
decisions over time. So, getting there will
require improved analytics. So, we look forward to
your questions on AIM. Honored to be here in talent management. And, again, look forward
to your questions. Sergeant major. - [Tom] Thanks, Joe. I think the bag's okay to touch. So, if you want to. (laughter) We'll see. - [Joe] After the questions, sir. - [Tom] Sergeant major, over to you. - Hooah, good morning. I hope everybody's been paying attention and listening to what everybody said. And, if that's the
case, all you have to do is take what they said, replace
officer with NCO or soldier and my job is done here. Hooah. (laughter) So, basically, on a serious note, this is a very important topic. We talk about it very often. A lot of us don't truly understand what talent management
is or what it truly means to the readiness of our force. So, it's imperative that we continue to have these discussions and we look at ways to improve the way we manage our soldiers. We have a very talented force. And there's a lot of information that is out there about our soldiers and our workforce, in
general, that we don't know. And we can't see. And the personnel systems
that we have today. So, as we evolve and we
continue to implement IPSSA and field it throughout our total force, and that includes the Reserves
and National Guardsmen, it's gonna give us the opportunity to get that type of
information from soldiers that we would otherwise not know. The other way that we get that is having open dialogue with our soldiers. In the panel yesterday with
the sergeant major of the Army, we talked about doing
face to face discussions with our soldiers. That's kind of a lost art right now. We have relied on text messaging, emails, and things like that. And we don't truly talk to our soldiers. So, if you don't have a
face to face discussion with your soldiers, you're not gonna be able
to get that information. And they're not gonna open up
and share information with you that you would not know. So, that is one of the things that we are really trying to focus on with our mid-grade NCOs
in developing them. So, there's a lot of initiatives that are going on formally right now. Yes, we are working on
officer talent management, because that is what
we are doing formally. They're running a test. But the thing is, the beauty of it, is that the enlisted force, the majority of our stuff
is covered by policy. And it's easier to
change policy than laws. So, in conjunction with what General McGee and his team are doing, the sergeant major of the Army and his senior enlisted council are working on ways to improve the way we manage our enlisted force. And then the major change
that we made recently was the NCO Evaluation Board. As General Callaway talked about, we went away from promoting
individuals based on seniority and now promoting them
based on their merit. And that is crucial. Because, often, we promote people. But are we really
promoting the right people? Just because they're senior does not mean they have more experience
and they have better skills and things like that
to bring to the table. So, what we're doing is basically
looking at those records and reviewing them and truly diving in and trying to ensure that
we promote the right person to lead our formations. Some of the initiatives
that we're looking at that we talked about
was the mid-level NCOs, staff sergeants primarily. One of the things that the
sergeant major of the Army has us looking at right now is how can we better
develop our staff sergeants. And my own opinion. I always thought the
officers did it right. But, then again, we gotta
look at the inventory. So, the inventory on the enlisted side, on the active component. You have about 400,000 enlisted soldiers. When you look at HRC, the
Human Resources Command, those assignment managers, on average, they manage about 2500
individuals by themselves. So, it's kind of hard to get to that level of talent management with
the personnel systems that we have today. So, with the implementation of IPSSA, it's gonna assist that. As well as some hard work that has been done at HRC over
the past couple years in developing a Manner of Performance tool and things like that for
our enlisted soldiers. And being given authority to receive data from the centralized promotion boards that can pretty much tell them where individuals place
amongst their peers if they were not selected for that board. So, all these things are gonna assist us with better managing our soldiers. Now, the staff sergeants. Right now, especially
within FORSCOM units, you have a sergeant promotable that gets promoted to staff sergeant. And that individual leaves your formation almost immediately. Going off to be a drill
sergeant or recruiter. So, what we're trying
to look at is possibly, once that individual gets
promoted to staff sergeant, we stabilize them in your formation and allow you to get them in those key and developmental
experienced jobs so that, when they go off to be a
drill sergeant or recruiter, they've already met
their core competencies within their career management field. This will assist with better
developing those NCOs. We do it with our captains right now. They stay a captain for a
pretty long period of time. But, during that time, they're
getting developed so that, when they go out and they
have to lead soldiers, they're prepared to do that. Right now, our staff sergeants. Not all of them. But a majority of them
are not ready to do that. So, we have to do a better
job at preparing them. The other thing that we did,
as far as assessing soldiers, we developed the Occupational
Fitness Assessment Test. And that, right there. I mean, physical assessment test. And that, right there, is testing those individuals'
physical abilities to perform the duties that they need to do within the job that they
want to sign up for. So, that's gonna assist. The other thing that we're looking at is an NCO Special Assignment Battery Test. What that's gonna do is that's gonna test individuals' abilities and see
where they're better served. Whether, maybe in the future,
they become a drill sergeant. Or, based off of their test
results or their assessment, they need to go be a recruiter. 'Cause, right now, we're
doing some deep dives and screening to select individuals to go out and do these special duties. But is the current way that
we're doing it the right way? Is that the most effective way? We don't know. So, we have to find ways to do this. The other thing is developing our KSBs. Knowledge, skills, and behaviors. We have to. Individuals, as soldiers, we
have to seek self-development. You have to go out and you have to improve
your skills every day. Whether that be on the
job, it's in the classroom, or whatever it may be. And a mentor. Mentor is very key to
what we do these days. So, you have to look
at all those elements. The other thing is, when we're doing that, we're looking at the organizations to provide us what KSBs
are required by them for individuals to come
perform those duties within their organizations. On the officer side, they have the enlisted
marketplace under AIM Two. And they're matching
individuals to organizations based off KSBs. In the future, we're looking to do that for the enlisted force, as well. HRC has used ASK, the
Assignment Satisfaction Key, for years. But they are currently, right now, working on ways to improve that and they're running a pilot
with 19 deltas and 19 kilos to have an enlisted marketplace. As we continue to evolve, that's gonna open up to more
CMFs throughout this pilot. And, hopefully, by 2021,
it'll be open up to all CMFs. So, there's a lot of
positive stuff going on. The other thing is KD stabilization is being piloted right now, as well. So, a lot of your formations
out there right now are currently going
through a KD stabilization. When they're leaving, staff sergeants, NCOs in your formations, long enough for them to get KD qualified. And it's 36 months right now. But, if you come on a patch start for deployment or whatever, there's a possibility you may be able to retain those individuals longer. But, at the end of the
day, we have to remember. We have to have a well-rounded soldiers and we have to feed our
trainer formation, as well. Because, as we're assessing soldiers. USAREC is assessing a lot of soldiers. We have to have great NCOs to go out and train those individuals and bring them into our
formations, as well. So, I know I talked about a lot. We can go on forever talking about this. But I'm gonna pass it over. But I look forward to your questions. And I hope that we can have a healthy discussion this morning. Thank you. - [Tom] Thanks, sergeant major. Miss Thomas, thanks for coming in. - Well, first I'd like
to thank all enlisted, active and retired, for
the opportunity to be here. It is not I take it lightly being here in the presence of the Army. That you provide the protection for us to be able to do our jobs. So, I'd like to thank
you all for your service. And, on behalf of my CEO, Dave Abney, I thank you for the privilege to speak with you this morning. I do want to give you a little
bit of background on UPS and kind of really talk about the shared culture that UPS has, which is very similar with the Army. As well as the armed forces. First, UPS is a 112 year old organization. I know the Army is much older. But I do think, for some in the room, it can kind of set the platform for, really, where we are as an organization and how it aligns to where the Army wants to go with talent management. I must thank Major McGee
for inviting me to be here. I happened to meet him on a
JCOC experience this summer. I was truly engaged by
what the Army was doing. I was letting him know. Wow, this is so familiar. Even though I'm not at work,
I feel like I'm at work. I also would like to acknowledge two of my coworkers that are with me. I have both a retiree, Ray Thompson, here from the US Army. As well as my HR
coordinator, Stefan Harris, is here to not only support, but also to take back some best practices. But we'd like to share
where we are on our journey and really encourage you with some of the same kind of struggles we are having with our organization when it comes to talent management. Yes, we are in a war
for talent management. Yes, people are everyone's
most valuable asset. You will see that now people coming have a lot of demands
coming right in the door. They want top pay. They want immediate flexibilities. And they want to be able to know where they're gonna be two,
three, five years from now with your organization. So, our organization has taken a look at, really, where we want to be. And, in 2017, we started
on our organizational and enterprise transformation. And, currently, our HR function
is in a transformation. And why did we do it? We're doing it for talent acquisition, talent management, and talent retention. All the familiar things that
you're talking about today. And, really, what we needed to do and what organizations want to do is they want to reduce all of the manual, mundane activities that keep
us from developing our people. So, we are actually outsourcing
some of our activities that are not providing
our HR professionals the ability to be consultants,
to be strategists, to really talk about how
do we evaluate people? How do we take advantage of using either partnerships or engagements to advance our people
throughout our organization and make sure they are
engaged, they are inspired, and they want to work. So, I want to just kind of partner on something that you all are mentioning as far as your people first. We just adopted a new strategy which starts with customer first. We then go with people
led and innovation driven. And innovation of an outsourced
and a new operating platform through our HR transformation
is gonna enable us to have strategic analytic tools that our HR professionals
will be using in 2021 to really advise our leaders. What you all have different battalions. We actually have divisions and districts to which we deliver our services that we will now enable them to identify who do they want to go after based on what geography
talent is available, what kind of rewards are they looking for, and then what kind of
experiences can we provide in our organization that
will mirror their aspirations to make sure we're
attracting the right people at the right time and giving
them the right rewards and incentives to stay with us. We also are taking advantage of really leveraging our culture. We serve in over 220 countries
and territories worldwide and we have over 481,000 people. So, we're very similar in
size and scope to the US Army. As well as some of the other armed forces. We are taking advantage of the fact that we did a culture survey just recently to make sure that our people
that are actively with us, do they understand how
we serve our customers? And, if they don't, what
do we have to do different to make sure they can do that? And then we're taking
opportunities to say, "Look, do they feel led?" Because we really need
to feel and understand where we're missing their needs. And then we have to make
sure we're providing the innovative tools that they need to succeed and achieve on their job. So, we have just completed
our culture survey. We are now using those analytical data, as well as the feedback. We will be sharing with
all of our global leaders. And we will use our leadership framework, which is really the behaviors
that we want leaders to have, to really use, as an ongoing basis, the things that they're gonna need to do to improve the work environment, meet the needs of our people, exceed the expectations of our customers, and make sure that we're
using technology solutions to differentiate ourself
from our competition when it comes to providing services. So, we are using that cultural survey as a way to make sure that our people have a dynamic way of
communicating what they need and, more importantly, we can then respond and then give them what
they need on a mobile basis. So, we will be able to give
that to them through an app. So, their leaders will be able to do that in formal meetings. As well as they can do that individually. And we want to make sure that, when they take advantage of this, that we have now a record. So, we know what they worked on. We can see how they're working on it. And we can share it across the globe. 'Cause one of the things you realize is, when you are in a large organization, you may have units that
are functioning very well. But the transparency to
know if it's working here, it can easily work somewhere else. So, we're taking that
app and that knowledge and we're using that to
share across the enterprise so that, hey, if I'm having
a problem with an area and someone else has that same
problem but has solved it, I don't have to continue to
not have work performance or have apathy. I can definitely get to that answer. A couple questions were posed to me that I'd like to tackle here. Just to talk about what we want to do to differentiate
ourselves with our people. We know that this generation of folks are really into our communities. And we're really seeing
what the moral and emotional attachment is to the brand. And I think the Army, with
the brand that you have, people want to be attached to your brand. So, we first want people to know how philanthropic we are. We gave over $115 million last
year across our organization. And we did over 25 million in charities. We also want our people to
serve their communities. Because, again, we want our employees to come from the communities
to which we are serving in. Because we want people to think that jobs, economic stability, and inclusion means they can participate in UPS anywhere throughout the globe. So, we have given. Actually, our goal for 2020 is to have 20 million volunteer hours from all of our UPSers in our history. So, we've asked each of our people to give about two hours per month in order to achieve that goal. Another area that I
think is very important is to make sure that we give people an opportunity to advance. We talked about how do we
do succession planning? We definitely take an opportunity with all of our full-time
management folks. We have a talent management system to which we allow them annually to receive a career
assessment with their manager. So, they sit down once a year and talk about where they want to go. We then craft out with them what it would take to map that out. And we also then make sure
that, in their current role, they understand what type of performance they need to achieve. Then, also, what other additional roles they would need to have in order to achieve
their career aspiration. And, in some cases, if
the performance is equal, then we then put them in the
talent management system. And then our talent management HR team will then sit down with
the larger division and/or larger district
and talk about individuals who are interested. And then make sure, between education, experience, and opportunity, we are providing opportunities
for our folks to do so. We want to continue to do
this in a more enhanced way as we transform, because we recognize there is subjectivity in anything you do. But we want to be able to use
our new HR management system to have a transparent way to
let everyone self-identify. (chime) Is that telling me time's up? (laughter) It could be. - [Tom] No, you can go ahead. You're good. - But I just wanted to, just
in the interest of time, just to talk about the
fact that that is really. Our career development system is really one area that our folks really enjoy. Because not only do they
get to raise their hand, but we also get an opportunity
to see who is interested. And, as you know, certain
jobs everybody wants to do. And then there's certain jobs everybody doesn't want to do. So, what we do is we try to
take an opportunity to show, for those undesirable jobs, there's two incentive tracks. Obviously, we need to know, when we have a financially
challenged area, we incentivize with a pay incentive. Sometimes, we have a cost of
living and a housing allowance. Especially when we get to international and expat assignments. To make sure that they can
maintain their family lifestyle. As well as being incentivized to do that. But we also then show them people who've gone to some of the
places that are not so desirable who have successfully transitioned into different opportunities and levels of responsibilities
or promotions, if you will, who came through there. Unlike the Army, UPS doesn't have a specific tenure for your tour. So, we generally. We love the fact that
you have a definite time that you have for different assignments. But we do like the fact that we take that opportunity to take something that may not be a positive and give them a very clean understanding of the people that have
gone through that assignment or have had that work experience who have gone on for greater opportunity. As well as, in those areas, we try to incentivize those folks by telling them that they absolutely have the capacity to do more. And we want to change that branding. We want to change that idea
external to that environment. If folks don't want to go there, we want to make sure that
the people that are there feel proud about what they do and that they are not only
attached to the community, but we are also doing things to elevate and bring up the morale so that that area does become high performing and an area that's sought
out from other employees to be rotated through there. The last thing I'll talk about is coaching and using job share. We have a long history and relationship with the US Army in making sure that we have folks that are leaving their commissioned office
assignments and retiring. That, if they would like to transition, that UPS has a lot of affinity. The way we're structured,
how organized, our methods, our uniforms, both air, as
well as our driver uniforms. As well as senior leadership positions. We've found a great affinity. In fact, two of my peers
on our senior leadership. Our general counsel is a
judge advocate graduate. As well as a Marine that are on our senior leaders at UPS. So, we have a long history of relationship with the military. And we definitely know
that military experience is well, well appreciated
in the civilian world and recognized. And I'd just like to thank the opportunity to speak to you today. And look forward to any
questions that you might have. - Thanks, Charlene. I will tell you that, last year, Congress gave us the authority to bring in people as senior officers. Not as brand new second lieutenants. So, if you're interested. (laughter) We know people. - I had to. So, one disclaimer. My boss did you say, "You're
not joining the Army, are you?" (laughter) - I think the answer
to that question's yes. (laughter) - So, you're saying maybe. (laughter) - Well, thank you, Charlene
and the rest of the panel. Not only did they have an impressive array of things to put out, we also stayed on timeline. So, thank you very much. I'd like to just draw your attention again to the bottom right hand corner. As we move into the
question and answer session, if you'd text the word
armytalent, one word, to 21000, 2-1-0-0-0, that will come in to
the operations section over to your right hand side. They'll formulate the questions and get them up to us in the panel. As those questions start coming in, I'd like to begin by
asking General Callaway. You talked about AIM. Are there any lessons learned as we've rolled out AIM a couple times? I believe this is the
first AIM ATAP process where we've brought in the
entire Army officer corps for the transitioning window. Any lessons learned
from HRC's perspective? Anything the units could benefit from or the officers who are
competing in the marketplace? - Yes. (laughter) Sir, thanks for the question. So, you know, we were supposed to open on the first of October. So, as the director of OPMD, when we first executed this
with the Leavenworth class, it was about 800 people. And so, hey, it worked fine. It was great. And then, incrementally, we've increased the number of people that are involved in that. So, as I said earlier, this cycle, it's 14,000 people
moving at the same time. And then what complicates
that even further is, now, we're operating under
a fairly strict rule set that says, "Hey, if an
officer and a unit are a match in terms of their preference and choice, you're gonna honor that." So, what I didn't fully realize. Because, as the CG, you don't
actually have to do the work. So, you just get to look and say, "Hey, looks like that's working fine." But there's a lot of really
smart, dedicated people. And I spent a little time with them in the last few weeks. So, we had a little technical challenge. And the technical challenge
was that all these assignments, they carry with them a rule set. And the most complex of
those were the aviators and our AMEDD folks. And, just as an example,
I think the business rules or the rules for how you
assign those populations literally would go from here
to the back of the room. To make sure that you
don't have a podiatrist as the chief of neurology. To make sure that you don't
have a Blackhawk pilot flying an Apache kind of thing. So, that you have a
qualified IP being an IP and those sorts of things. So, all those rules actually have to be coded into a computer
to make the system work. So, again, our goal was
let's make sure that, first of all, officers can. So, on the first of October, we opened it. Just to make sure that units and officers could update their data. What we wanted to make sure is that you've actually got good
data to make decisions on. So, for instance, we had about 1200
company command positions that were coded as
requirements that we validated. Well, we know for a fact that there weren't 1200 people
going directly into command out of their assignment. They're gonna get in a
queue somewhere in a BCT to get into company command. So, we wanted to make
sure, for transparency, that we worked back with units. And FORSCOM did a lot of work with this. As did the other commands. To make sure that the
assignment position information was accurate. And then, on the flip side of that, make sure officers had
a little bit more time to go in and update their KSBs and unique things on the
back of their resumes. So, the goal was let's make
sure we have best information. So, from one to 11 October, we did that. On 11 October, let's
make sure that officers have the ability to preference. So, I'm sure we're over 6,000
now that is now working. Our AMEDD folks were the
last folks to come up. They came up yesterday. So, now they can go into the system. And then, today, we
should have the unit-side up and operating. So, again, it is very complicated code. We're gonna continue to work it. We'll have glitches. But, again, this is the
first big iteration. And we're gonna improve over time. So, sir, hopefully, that
answers the question. If there's other questions
about that, please. - Joe, I can just add one thing. So, sort of paid political advertising. Foot stomping here. If you're an individual in this process, make sure you preference deep. Don't put five preferences. Go as deep as you actually want to. If you're a unit who
actually gets to look at the different candidates for a move, make sure you preference deep, as well. That's the way this whole system and the AIM Two process
will actually work. If you choose to go shallow, then you're gonna have no data by which to make an assignment decision. Whether you're a unit or an individual. And so, whenever I'm talking about this, I'm trying to emphasize
that, within this process, both individuals and units who now have complete transparency, need to deeply prefer how
they're listing these people out. And that's a very different thing. It's not about your top five. It's really about your top
100 that you would want. If you're an individual, about
where you may want to go. And then you'll get
much better satisfaction through this whole process. - Thanks, JP and Joe. JP, while you got the mic, let me ask you the next question. You talked about moving to
a data-rich environment. What kind of data or new data are you bringing to the system? How will you use it? And do you have any concerns? - So, I think I'll sort of
hit the back side of this. I mean, as we bring in
all this information, we still gotta follow all
the rules and regulations for how we bring in information. And that's not going to change. I think, over time, as we start
developing this information, we need to be really mindful
of how we secure this data. Because this could be
potentially used by an adversary. And so, that's an additional piece on this as we start looking at
how we collect this data. But I'll use an example that I think most of the Army is familiar with in terms of this movement
from data poor to data rich and how it can make us
better both operationally and then maybe not have as
much of the frustrations people would have. So, over the last couple of years, we have made a decision to stand up the security force assistance brigades. And we've said that we need to have high quality officers go into that. If we run the system in
a data-poor environment, which we sort of are doing right now, what we did is we said, "Okay, look, we want to have only high quality
officers going into that." And the measurement tool that we used was the Manner of Performance. Basically, how they've done
in the last couple jobs. So, let's just take captains. We had to take a whole bunch of captains from the combat arms. And so, what we said is, "Let's find the top 10 or 20% of infantry captains who have been really, really
good at company command and let's make them advisors." So, my brigade in the 101st transitioned from being IBCT to an SFAB in order to do the mission in Afghanistan. And I can guarantee you that I had phenomenal company commanders who would be lousy advisors. And I had great advisors who would not be very good company commanders. They really are a different skill set. First off, if you're only
looking along one variable, which is their Manner of Performance, then you're always gonna
be in a constrained market. And you're always gonna be constrained, 'cause you only have one variable. So, what does that look like in the future when we want to stand up a security force assistance brigade? Well, what it looks like
is we may want to say, "Okay, let's find those
qualities we want to have with an advisor." Okay, so, we may want to have someone who has a degree of
cross-cultural fluency. We can measure that. We may want to have
someone who has a degree of cognitive flexibility. Yet another thing that we can measure. We may want to find some people who, on the backside of their self-professed knowledge, skills, and behaviors, says that they're interested
in international travel and they spend their free time and money going to foreign lands and
sort of exploring those. 'Cause what better indication of where your true interests lie than how you spend your free
time and your own money? And, if we had used those, let's just say, instead of saying top 10% performers, you would want to find top 50% performers. 'Cause you still want to have a strong Manner of Performance. But you also found all
these different variables. What you would have had is probably people who would be better advisors. And you would have been able to take those company commanders who would be really good in that track and allow them to go do other jobs instead
of go be advisors, as well. So, when you can start managing
your officer corps like that in a data-rich environment, you make better decisions
that actually leads you to higher levels of
operational effectiveness. And then better talent alignment
over time of the officer. So, they're actually doing rewarding work that keeps them motivated
being the officer. And so, you can see how
this builds upon itself. And it's a big gain across the Army. - Hooah, thanks, JP. We're starting to get some
questions over the texting. If you didn't bring your phone with you or you still have a flipphone, (laughter) there are three by five
cards on all the chairs. You can just take your
cards over to the side. They'll bring it in. Appreciate the answer, JP. Next question's for Charlene. Miss Thomas, the Army, just like UPS, has a large footprint
across the international, global perspective. Within the Army, I suspect within UPS, there are some places
that are more desirable than other places to be assigned. You mentioned a housing allowance
and a financial incentive. Is UPS doing anything
other than those two things to incentivize? How do you attract
people or encourage them to go to places that
may not be as popular? - So, we do many of. The incentivizing does take
in the form of rewards. But we also do that as
far as career pathing. So, we want to let them know the why. So, you're going to this assignment why. We're not leaving you there forever. It's really the experiential as to what we want them
to learn from there. Kind of give them a framework of how long we would
expect them to be there. And to make sure, once they leave there, that there's an opportunity
for them to advance or to move into an area
of interest so that they would want to take the assignment on is probably the priority
that we like to make of that. - Hooah, thank you very much. Lenny, you talked about
the egalitarian culture. You listed a number of things we needed. That causes the culture and
things to maybe get after. Can you give us, if you were
running this and in charge, what would be your top two or three things you would do first in
order to change the culture and set the momentum? - As far as setting the
culture for egalitarianism, I think there's two imperatives that our institution faces. And that's the functional imperative. That is are we here to fight
the nation's wars or not? But there's also a social imperative. And that is do we need
to be representative of the society we serve? And those two imperatives compete. And I think senior leaders have to take an initiative and
say "Which one is it? Is it the functional imperative or is it the social imperative?" Because they compete. And we can't pretend they don't compete. And so, if we say 84% of this population cannot pass that assessment,
well what are we gonna do? Do you want to say the
functional imperative is subordinated in this case? Do we want to take the risk? Or did you really believe in that functional imperative to start with and now we have to address the root cause? Why can't 84% of this
population pass that assessment? Well, let's address that. Or should we throw out
the entire initiative? Or another solution is just lie about it and just give up fake results. And then we'll all just brief it well. So, that's one area. The other thing, as far
as being egalitarian, is I think, believe it or not, Army people are very nice to each other. And so, we hate giving bad feedback. We love to. When we find an OER for
somebody who's lousy, we write it as if they're good. But we coat it that they're lousy. Because none of us want
to tell another person that they're lousy. And we're asking a system
to separate people out. And we, as people, have to be able to tell someone else "You're not the best. I know everyone up to this
age that you've lived to have told you that you're the best. But you're not. We still love you. But we're not gonna give
you that assignment." And I think that's the problem. We've lied to people because it hurts us to tell someone else you're not the best. I am. No. (laughter) So, that's two things. That's what I would do. Is we have to train our
leaders to tell people, kindly, that they're not the best. And the other is we have to
ask what's better at this time. The functional imperative
on this initiative or the social imperative? - [Tom] Lenny, thanks
for those thoughtful, candid, honest remarks. (laughter) I think lying's bad, though. (laughter) Sergeant major, as you look at the NCO corps in the year 2028, what do we need to do to make sure that we capitalize on their talent better? - Okay, I think, first and foremost, sir, is we have to prepare our
leaders for the future. And I think we're taking
steps to do that right now by the training and the assessments that we're doing right now. Some things that have
also been incorporated. Yesterday, during the Eisenhower Luncheon, the sergeant major of the Army presented the first 11 expert
soldier badges to soldiers. That's one of the initiatives that was designed to prepare our
soldiers to lead the future. So, what it basically is
is they receive training at their organizations
on basic soldier skills. Skill level one tasks. And it assists them in
becoming better leaders. After that training that they receive in their organizations, they are tested just like the EIB. But they are tested on this. And then, if they pass this test, then they receive that badge. And it's not a badge that
everyone will receive. So, you you have to. It's looking. It's seeking for excellence. So, individuals must prepare
themselves to do that. The other thing is empowering our NCOs. We have to continue to look at ways of empowering our NCOs and allow them to do their jobs and train their
subordinates to prepare them to fight our nation's war
and lead us into the future. The other things. One of the other things we're looking at is leader time training. Which is formally known as
sergeants time training. Bringing that back in and
actually block off time and have that as sacred time so that individuals can train and better prepare their soldiers to go forward. When we went into war,
we lost a lot of that. And, believe it or not,
that's when the degradation of our leadership skills started to fall. So, we have to get back to the basics. We always say basics. But some of us don't
know what the basics are. So, we have to get back
to actually training our leaders and our junior soldiers in order to do that. The assessments that we're doing. Talking about assessing soldiers and ensure that we're
getting the right soldiers. USAREC has done a great
job with assessing soldiers and bringing them into the formations. But they're also implementing tools and ways to better improve that. One of the things is TAP. It's an assessment called Tailored Adaptive Personality Assessment. And what that does is
that evaluates soldiers on their ability to serve. It assists with attrition weights. Because it'll tell you if that individual even has the ability to continue to serve or even serve in the Army. So, there's a lot of
things that are being done to look at not only just soldiers that are in the Army right now, but recruits that we're
bringing in the Army, as well. Thanks, sir. - [Tom] Sergeant major, while
you got the mic warmed up, we got a question from the audience. Will sergeant majors be allowed to serve beyond their current
retention control points if they're selected for
brigade level command sergeant major positions
in upcoming boards? - A day doesn't go by that
I get that question, sir. So, yes. With the NCO evaluation board, we're looking at ways to kind of do away with the retention control points. So, what we're gonna do. This evaluation board. It's no longer a promotion board. So, when we assess your
records at these boards, we're looking at you for
schools, assignments, broadening opportunities,
as well as retention. So, if you're an individual. Like, say, for instance, right now, sergeant majors can
only serve till 30 years unless they're in a nominative program. And then they currently go to 35 years. Depending upon what
level they're working at. If you are one of those individuals that fall in that category and the board assesses your record and they said that you're fully qualified to continue to serve or you have potential to go
do greater things in the Army, regardless of what your
retention control point is, you can continue to serve. There's gonna be some
stipulations on that, though. If your CMF is healthy and
there's other individuals that can continue to grow and replace you and serve in those positions, we're not gonna allow
individuals to stay there. Because then we're gonna get back to what we're trying to get away from. Stagnation. Because, in the past,
that's what was happening. We had senior non-commissioned officers staying in the Army. And that was preventing
the junior NCOs to go up. So, we were losing a lot of talent. Because those individuals
were getting out of the Army because they see no room for growth. So, the short answer is yes. But there will be some
stipulations applied. - [Tom] Just for our great
NCOs across the formations, what's the best way for
them to keep informed on the changes and how we're doing? Is there a website? Is there a place they
can go to get answer? - So, you always have the
Human Resources Command. Their website. There's a lot of stuff there. But what we are really using right now is the Army Career Tracker. There's a lot of information
that's being placed on the Army Career Tracker
to keep our enlisted force, as well. I'll just say our force
in general informed. But then your leadership. There's things that have been pushed out. The S1NET. All these things we are putting out. It's out there. But we have to get out
there and we get it. And then, for the leaders in the room, back to what I talked about earlier. Face to face discussion. Most senior leaders are well informed. And they know what's going on in the Army. But, when you go down a couple layers and talk to the soldiers, the soldiers have no idea what's going on. So, that communications
stops at a certain point. We have to continue to push
that communication down to the most junior soldiers. Because all these changes and things that are going on in our Army
affects them and their families. Thanks, sir. - [Tom] Hooah, next
question for Miss Thomas. How did UPS build employee trust in the mentoring and coaching
system that you described? - Trust is really one of our
core values in our policy. And we make sure that all the conversations we
have are confidential. We know that, many times, when we sit down and have discussions with employees about advancement, about work appraisals,
that we are trusting that we are building the individual. We definitely know that we are looking to enhance that person's esteem. Make sure that they can be not only confident, but competent. And then we want to give
them the fair opportunity to advance and/or at least
qualify in their current role so they can be successful. So, I think building trust
is an ongoing situation. And it really starts with the individual direct manager. But it also starts with
the individual, as well, to make sure that, to
be trusted means that you also have to have the
ability to trust your boss and be trusted of your boss. So, we want to make sure that's a reciprocal relationship, as well. So, that individual knows that all things said in confidence
are meant to be held that way. - [Tom] Charlene, thank you very much. For JP, how can we continue to ensure that commanders select a diverse
workforce within AIM Two? And are we worried at all about nepotism? - So, there really are three. When you start talking about AIM Two. And this is probably a good one for General Callaway and I both to answer. But, when we talk about AIM Two, what we've really done is
we've fundamentally moved down to the brigade commander level the ability for the brigade commander to hire their own teams. In coordination with
their division commander. Now, colonels have that hiring
authority to bring that in. With that comes a tremendous
amount of responsibility. And, frankly, a lot more
visibility on how we do that. And so, I think there are three things that we need to make
sure that are managed. And we've actually built in
a check at the end of this to make sure it's being done responsibly. So, the first one that frequently comes up is performance distribution. So, geographically unfavorable
locations are disadvantaged. So, you don't have. I mean, let's be honest. Fort Polk is sometimes hard
to get people to go there. And that's not a surprise
to anybody in the Army. But there are probably a lot of people who really want to go to Fort Polk if they're given a better
chance to go there. But one of the things we're gonna do is we're gonna make a check to make sure there are no locations
for this new process that have been significantly disadvantaged in terms of performance distribution. In comparison to the way we
do with the normal system. The next concern that
comes up frequently is is there a concern about nepotism? And I would say yes, there
is a concern about nepotism. But I would also begin
it with this question. Under the current system, how
in the world would you know whether anybody is actually just hiring the people that he or she has always hired his entire career? There is no built in check. But, with this new system, that now becomes a little
bit more data rich, we're trying to find a way to make sure you're not just hiring people who have always worked with you. It's a little but more
difficult like that. But I think we would all agree there is a piece of that that's okay and is sort of expected. And then there's a piece of it which is unhealthy for the Army. And trying to sort of
manage that is really hard. So, within this marketplace, there's always two approaches we have. Now, are we gonna regulate this in terms of how we do this? Or are we gonna illuminate it? And, specifically with
the idea of nepotism, what we've said is we want
to illuminate that first to see if there is an issue or not. And, if there is a significant issue, then we probably have to
establish some regulations. I think, going in, though, we're gonna trust commanders to exercise this responsibility effectively. And the final one is this
whole issue of diversity. So, you don't just hire people who look a certain way
or act a certain way. And diversity is in
all sorts of different. Maybe not just from a certain unit and then all the other
ways we looked at it. With this new system, we're gonna have a much more robust way to be able to identify that. And we're gonna be able to see where the commanders are
actually meeting Army guidelines, following the letter of the laws we've outlined in the X order,
and how they're doing that. And that's gonna be an
interesting discussion as we start seeing the choices that are made by commanders. But I think, at the core
of what we have done as we have decentralized some of this, is that we're trusting
brigade level commanders to exercise this
responsibility effectively. And, if they don't, they'll be notified and held accountable for it. And I think there will be a very uncomfortable conversation to have. - [Tom] Joe, anything you want to add? - I think actually he answered. They killed me. I think JP answered it very well. The other thing I. Matter of fact, the gentleman
seated to your far right taught me a very valuable lesson. So, Callaway, growing
up, learned this lesson about the time he was a colonel. And so, he hired somebody that would eventually worked for me. And that somebody. Given I knew who the
people were in the pool, I said, "Hey, sir, I trust you. You pick who you think's the best." And then he picked the person. And I said, "Holy smokes. I never would have picked that person." Because I would have picked
somebody, at that time, that was more like me. That person turned out to be the most valuable member on my team. Guess what? It was because that person
was exactly not like Callaway. And they had all the skills that I didn't. They liked to do the things that I didn't. So, I would just. I knew that was an invaluable
lesson for anybody. And, hopefully, you'll learn
it a little younger than I did. But JP's question is right on. Or his comments are on target. We do this for the
battalion command slating. We go through that. And the brigade command slating. And go through that pretty thoroughly to make sure that we
are ensuring diversity across the force and
all of our formations. And now, with this system, we'll have the tools to kind of. Before we approve the slate,
do a same sort of assessment. Did we make the right decision in terms of talent at each
location and each unit and in terms of diversity at
each location and each unit. So, again, we will evolve
and learn and get better. But at least we have the metric in place to be able to take a look at it. - Joe, if I could just reinforce with an additional point, we actually have at least a
pilot that was done with this. It was called Green Pages
run by the Engineer Corps. And what they found is that, when they actually executed
that with that population, is that those people who were
giving the hiring authority sort of entered into this process thinking who they were gonna hire. But, when they saw the totality of the talent that was out there, they made significantly different choices, 'cause they weren't just limited to their personal experiences. They saw the entire inventory
of talent that was available. And they made really different choices than the choices they
thought they were going to as they came in. And I think that's now something that's not just within the Engineer Corps. But it's being expanded
across the entire Army. And I think it's gonna
be really interesting to see how this gets executed. - [Tom] If we could shift
a little bit to BCAP, JP, there's a lot of talk about BCAP. First, how do you avoid undermining the senior rater input through the OER? And, second, could you also
speak to how the program will be implemented and will
apply to brigade commanders? - Okay, so, I'll hit the last one first. We have not yet figured out how we're going to do this
for brigade commanders. That's work that is ongoing. And I think it's going to
take a little bit of time for us to figure that out. So, when we're looking at. So, I think that's a work
in progress right now. I think, obviously, the
things that we're looking at to select someone for a brigade commander will be a little bit different than what we're looking at
for a battalion commander. So, the chief talked about it. But the core of the Battalion
Commander Assessment Program is not a recognition that we
had a bad selection system. 'Cause I think we had a pretty good one. But the question was is
this the best possible way for the Army to pick someone to put in this critical position? And what we said is there's
probably a better way. And then we ran these
pilots down at Fort Benning. And it really confirmed
how our approach should be and then how much value
this potentially could have. And so, what will happen is 833 officers are about to get a notification that, between about the 15 of
January to the 5th of February, they need to report to Fort Knox where they're gonna
undergo a five day process that's gonna include physical assessment. They're gonna be required to take an APFT. They're gonna go through
some psychological screening to see whether they've got any issues that should be able to go
on to battalion command. And they're gonna take a writing. We're gonna take a writing sample and see how they communicate
themselves in the written form. They're gonna be evaluated
how they verbally communicate. And I think it's also important. And they're gonna go
through a panel process. There's gonna be a series of about five high ranking officers who are gonna go through a panel
process with those officers. And we're gonna take the
collection of all that. And we're gonna add in, as
the single largest factor, how they have actually performed based on the review of
the last promotion board. I'm sorry. I'm saying that not very clearly. How they performed in the centralized selection board process will be carried forward
and weighted heavily in terms of how we pick the next group. But we're bringing in and folding in a whole bunch of different pieces of data. And the simple premise is that better, relevant information about who to pick for battalion command is going to lead to better decisions about who we're gonna put in. And we think, through this and other pieces that I mentioned, we're also gonna fold in subordinate and peer feedback. We pick the subordinates. We pick the peers. To find out what type of leaders their peers and subordinates. All that information comes in and that's the totality of the assessment for who we're gonna put
in battalion command. And I think it's gonna
be really interesting. The information that we gather, the insights that we have,
and the choices that we make in terms of individuals
we put in this position of critical importance to the Army. - [Tom] Thank you very much. We have time for one last question. I'd like to ask Doctor Wong. Lenny, how do you see the
choice affecting our culture? So, for the first time ever, officers will have a
bigger say in their choice in terms of where they go. Units will have a bigger say in the choice of who comes to their units. How do you see that affecting the culture? - I think it's a good thing, because everyone enjoys the choice. What we have to careful of
are broken expectations. Because just because we have a choice doesn't mean you're gonna get it. And so, I think. To counter that, the process
has to be transparent. So, people have to see,
"Okay, I made this choice. It wasn't fulfilled. And this is why." And if they understand that, that will prevent conspiracy
theories from emerging from just the skepticism running amok. - [Tom] Hooah, thank you very much. I'd like to open it up to the
panel for any closing thoughts before we close out the session. Miss Thomas, anything you'd like to add? - [Charlene] Yeah, first
I humbly apologize to JP. Major general, I do apologize. - It's quite all right. (laughter) - No, I know there's a life of service. - If the talent management
system the Army worked, that's where I would have stayed. (laughter) - Absolutely not. The one point I'd like to bring
home is diversity inclusion. Really that trust and
engagement of employees. They have to feel that
their voice is heard. They have to know that
they are meaningfully to the organization. That's one thing that,
as we talk about talent, they have to know you truly care. And they really want to know
how they can be included. It's not just about having a
diverse person at the table. Is their voice heard? Are they respected? Do they feel valued? As anybody goes through
a transformation journey and tries to attain and attract people, making sure that they do have a platform where their voices can be
heard is absolutely critical for success of maintaining a
healthy and vibrant workforce. - Sergeant major. - Sir, I'd just like to
add on talent management. At the enterprise level,
we're developing a system to better do this. But we have to remember
that there's a few phases to talent management. It's the initial phase
where HRC identifies the right individual to go to the right place at the right time. But, as that individual
arrives to their duty location, then leadership has to take on the role of talent management, as well. And that is very important on
how to utilize that individual and how do you develop that individual when they're under your care. The other thing is the
individual themselves. They're gonna have a lot of opportunities to provide input as we
improve this process. And, a lot of times, soldiers
don't use their voice when they have an opportunity to provide their wants and needs, family situation, and things like that to
the assignment manager. So, just ensure that we coach and teach and we do that so, as the
system evolves over time, we can make it better. Thanks, I enjoyed the questions today. And I appreciate it. Thanks, sir. - Joe. - To reinforce the sergeant major's point, it's not just about mentoring those folks when they enter your formation. So, as the brigade commander,
the battalion commander, whoever you may be, your role in mentoring and reaching out to other senior leaders to advocate for people to talk about talents, to talk to your subordinates about, "Hey, here are your options." That kind of thing. Absolutely critical to
make this system work. So, again, if you've got feedback for those of you who are in
the AIM market and moving, if you've got feedback
about how we make it better, suggestions. Please engage. Whether you send a note directly to me. You do it via the AIM website. Whatever it is. We want your feedback. So, appreciate your patience this morning. And thanks for what you're doing. - Lenny. - Although a lot of
people don't believe it, I'm actually optimistic (laughter) about the way things are going. I just want to make sure that
senior leaders, especially, look beyond the talking points. - Thanks, JP. - Okay, well, first off, thanks
for being able to talk here. I mean, I do think it's
very interesting that Miss Thomas raised this thing that you hear when you talk
about with industry. And what they talk about is that they are in a war for talent. 'Cause they understand the outsized impact of people to the accomplishment
of their mission. And they don't call it competition. And they don't call it anything else. They call it a war. And we've got to understand
that within the Army. That our most talented are
gonna contribute the most and we need to start changing the ways we manage our people
so we can draw that out and make sure that we're
retaining and employing and developing the most talented so we can be successful in
future combat operations. And that's the next
piece I want to make is we talk about preferences
and people start to say, "Well, this is about
making everybody happy." No, this is about ensuring
that the Army wins future wars. This is about the development,
employment, and retention of war-winning talents to fight against near peer threats in the future. And you don't do that
with antiquated systems. And you don't do that with systems that grind off choice and don't
make people feel empowered by having some ownership of their own. And, when you start to look at what a future conflict looks like against a near peer threat, you talk about them having populations that are larger than ours. Formerly an advantage of ours. They look at having an economy
that is larger than ours. Once our advantage. They look at. We look at an adversary who's
closed the technological gap. And so, it's very, very
close to what we have. So, we need, as an Army, to
maximize the potential and power of our people so that, in a future war, we show up with the
right war-winning talents and then start conducting operations. And then win. And then, finally, I would
just like to say that everybody's who listening, 'cause there are a whole
lot of officers here, both listening across the
Internet and listening to this, is that everybody loves change. Until it impacts them. So, everybody's very eager to tell me how I need to change aspects of other. It's gonna impact other people. But they don't like it
when it impacts them. And so, what I ask you to
do is understand the change, embrace the change. Put out all your skepticism
in helpful comments in terms of making that better. But don't be someone who
is resistant to this. And make sure that you
are embracing the change. As it's gonna make our Army better and more ready to win future wars. Which really is at the core of everything that we're trying to do. Thank you. - Thanks, JP. On behalf of the secretary of
the Army, Secretary McCarthy, the chief of staff of the
Army, and General Ham, the president of AUSA, I'd like to thank our
panel for coming today for a rich and rewarding
discussion across the board. Hooah. (applause) I would also like to thank everybody who took time to be here today. Or on the monitors and stream it. We need your help. We got a lot of great
people thinking about this hard and complex subject. But we're not gonna get after it and we're not gonna get after it right unless we get help from across the board. We got a lot of great questions. Didn't get a chance to talk
about all the questions. But the questions will be answered and they'll be posted on talent.army.mil. And I encourage you,
if you have good ideas, if you have challenges, if
you have things you want the Talent Management
Task Force to think about, go there, contribute, be
part of the discussion. Don't react after things have happened. Contribute and influence and shape the way ahead across the board. So, thank you very much for coming. Thanks for all the great
questions and the discussion. Have a great day. Hooah.
