Infanteer said:
It's a form of Parkinson's Law. Work expands to fill the time available. Prior to any "cut", a critical eye needs to be turned to tasks. Are the tasks assigned actually essential, or have some/many become busy work because someone was around to do them? I have met people in HQs who are under utilized. There are cases in Ottawa where people are in late and out early for a variety of reasons - quite frankly the people that grind the real work out don't even notice they are gone.
Many positions were inflated from the start. A major likely did the job ten to twenty years ago, and did it just fine. You underestimate the capability of a Major or MWO.
I was told, by a source that I believe was both well informed and honest, that, back in the 1960s, when the
New CFHQ, later NDHQ was being designed, the question arose as to the rank to be assigned to a "director." It had already been decided that the general, civil service, levels of assistant deputy minister, director general, director, section head, manager, etc would be used in the new CFHQ, also, to promote easier cross pollination and when they cast about for military "directors" in Ottawa they found vey, very few ~ military officers were, generally, GSO1s or ACOSs or whatever.
But they did spot a few: Director of Artillery, Director of Infantry, Director of Signals and so on ... all the "professional heads" of their respective corps with responsibility for personnel, training, operations, equipment requirements and support ... the sorts of multi-functional jobs that a director general would do in the civil service.
Now, in the civil service a director was, and still is, the first "executive" level. (S)he is professionally expert in a specific field but, also, able to manage more than just the technical specifics; (s)he can manage people, budgets and so on related to her/his area of responsibility.
The
busy overwhelmed "new CFHQ" design team didn't stop to ask: what's the first level of "executive" in the military? If they had then they would have concluded that it was commander/lieutenant colonel/wing commander or even, for smaller ships and units, lieutenant commander/major/squadron leader. No one could possibly deny that a ship's captain, regimental commander or flying squadron commander is an "executive," and that commander/lieutenant colonel would have been the appropriate rank for most directors (with a few very small, specialist directorates being headed by lieutenant commanders/majors and a very, very few very large or highly 'political' ones needing a captain(N)/colonel). The team just agreed, almost thoughtlessly, I was told, that director = captain(N)/colonel, and that was that.
I assert that almost all captains(N) and colonels in staff jobs in almost all HQs could be and should be down-ranked to commander/lieutenant colonel and almost all directors general should be down-ranked from commodore/brigadier general to captain(N)/colonel. I believe that you would get a better staff system and rank pyramid.
Now thats bloat.
