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Officer positions

  • Thread starter Thread starter scouthern
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Coming from a Reserve Regiment with a critical shortage of qualified junior officers, I can attest to this.  We ran an Officer Selection Board (which I had the honour of sitting on) and it was difficult to be able to say "No.  Not this guy."  The reason is simple - the commitment breaks some people (even students), and then there are injuries and failures to content with.  What we did ask every candidate was something along the lines of "If we decided that we didn't think you were ready to be an officer and instead offered you a position as an NCM, would you accept?", to see if they were really committed to the idea.  A few of the folks we looked at had former service in the ranks though, and that should serve them well.  On top of them though I know that the RSM was looking at some of the Corporals who he viewed as having good officer potential with a view to discussing their futures, too.  There are some who I think would make excellent officers.

I'm not positive, but I am reasonably sure that there are some Reserve units that make a point of not hiring DEOs - individuals who apply as officers are enrolled first as NCMs, get qualified, and then are commissioned from the ranks after a term of service as a private soldier.  If I could do it all again I would have gone this route, I think - but when I applied, they saw "university student" and I got steered toward the officer side of the house pretty quickly.  I just didn't know any better.

George Wallace said:
That was being perpetuated in many of Canada's Reserve Units into the 1970's.  I think today, many are simply accepting any officer prospect who is attending university at face value, with little or no selection process.   I am amazed at the feeling of entitlement many young people have today, expecting to be accepted as an officer (Reserve) simply because they are in their first year of university.   Reserve Units can still carry on these methods of selection.  It is a much harder thing for the Regular Force Units to do, simply due to the width and breadth of this land, not really being "Regional or County" Regiments.
 
There are also Reserve units that would never accept into their officers' messes anyone who previously darkened the doro of their Jrs mess.

The challenge at attracting and retaining junior officers is significant; it may even be time t oslightly expand the structures to permit more Jr officers in the Reserves, who can then be more readily poached by the Regular Force.  This would also help mitigate against the "Last Man Standing" scenario in too many units' succession plans.

There does have to be a note of caution, as emptying the Jrs and WO/Sgts Messes to fill the Officers' mess just moves the problem.
 
dapaterson said:
There are also Reserve units that would never accept into their officers' messes anyone who previously darkened the doro of their Jrs mess.

Ah yes!  The "Social Regiments".  Throwbacks to the 1800's.  Many of those regiments also didn't hold much credibility outside of their own Lines. 
 
CSA 105 said:
Unfortunately, seems like a lot of those units tend to wear black hats.   :(

I have found it varies from the more urban/metropolitan Units to the more rural/smaller centers.  Even with two units within the metropolitan areas, one will find one unit more "Social" than another unit of the same Branch, who may be more for the "hands on-lets get dirty and play soldier" type of unit.  You can see examples of this in Halifax, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Edmonton, Victoria and Vancouver.
 
Infanteer said:
I've been critical of this as well - for some reason, our Army has a PO Check mentality when it comes to training.... simple tick-in-the-box form or crappy multiple choice exam and can be taught in a generic, 45 minute powerpoint presentation.

 
It's too close to Christmas to get into a rant about the introduction of performance oriented training with performance objectives, standards cells, tons and tons of paper and all the rest back in the heady early post-integration days. All this was supposed to streamline training, to eliminate needless theory in favour of actually being able to do things and to save a hockey sock full of resources. It didn't.
 
dapaterson said:
There are also Reserve units that would never accept into their officers' messes anyone who previously darkened the doro of their Jrs mess.

The challenge at attracting and retaining junior officers is significant; it may even be time t oslightly expand the structures to permit more Jr officers in the Reserves, who can then be more readily poached by the Regular Force.  This would also help mitigate against the "Last Man Standing" scenario in too many units' succession plans.

There does have to be a note of caution, as emptying the Jrs and WO/Sgts Messes to fill the Officers' mess just moves the problem.

I dont have any experience with how the regular force handles these things but on the reserve side I unfortunately have too much!  I have been a part of 3 different reserve army units in my time and ALL of them were exceptionally poor on this "previously darkened" aspect. 

We had a number of guys, myself included who would try to CFR from the ranks and it just would not happen.  Maybe for a Sgt or higher but even they had to jump through hoops and in many cases not succeed.

I remember in my first unit, there were 3 of us applying, we were all Bombadiers at the time, all of us had maybe 5 years under our belts.  There was only 3 positions available.  They all went to civvies walking in off the street.  My second unit was very much the same way.  My third unit seemed to only take new officers if those officers were already officers from elsewhere who decided to transfer in.  Everyone who tried to CFR from the ranks had gotten shot down.  At this point I was extremely frustrated and started looking towards the Navy.  It was like day and night by comparison.  NAVRES actually has a very well defined process for CFR's and it is an extremely routine process for them.  They are constantly canvasing the ranks trying to identify possible officers and it is encouraged.  I remember on the army side of things being shunned by my peers for wanting to CFR..  At any rate, all too annoying CFR route was finally a success for me, but I have several friends still trying to do this on the army side and getting nowhere with it.
 
ltmaverick25 said:
I remember in my first unit, there were 3 of us applying,

One does not "apply" for CFR.

we were all Bombadiers at the time,

You must be thinking of another commisioning program. For CFR, Corporals need not "apply".


 
CDN Aviator said:
One does not "apply" for CFR.

You must be thinking of another commisioning program. For CFR, Corporals need not "apply".

I guess im not following.  CFR is the term that was always used by the units I was in.  What exactly would it have been called then?  Either way I gues the results were the same.  Im glad I finally made it past all that BS, but, I still feel for everyone else stuck trying to go through it.
 
IIRC CFR is used for Sgt's and above.. Exceptional MCpl's may be considered.
 
From here:

Commissioning Programs

There are three basic in-service commissioning programs. Each one has a different purpose and different eligibility requirements. Depending on where you are in your career, it is likely that only one or two of the programs will apply to you. Below are brief descriptions of the different programs.



The Commissioning From the Ranks Plan (CFRP)

For members who have achieved the rank of MCpl or above. One of the goals of this program is to transfer the knowledge gained at the SrNCO level and move it to the Officer Corps. For that reason, members are commissioned in the Officer MOC which is most closely aligned with their current NCM MOC. (i.e. a 031 Inf Sgt would be commissioned as a 23 Inf Officer.)
 
ltmaverick25 said:
I think the PO check in the box mentality stems from a number of other things that were or maybe are still wrong with our army.  I think the idea of our PO check system is to ensure a standardized, fair assessment of all candidates regardless of who they are, or where they took their course.  In my opinion the PO check system is the army's way of eliminating the subjective evaluation from staff and instructors.  In a perfect world this would not be the case, but I have taught on several courses, some recently where it was evident that a subjective approach would have unfairly failed a candidate.

How many times have we all heard a fellow DS staff member say "I want to fail this guy but I cant".  (I have been guilty of this too).  In a good number of cases the sentiment is justified and well grounded, but in a number of cases it is not.

Overall I agree that the example of the British system relayed to us certainly sounds amazing in many ways and I hope we can get to that type of training as well.  In so doing there would need to be some method of balancing out the "fairness" and check and balance system we have in place now with alot of what is posted above.

Yes, balancin the two is a good idea. We shouldn't bash our system too much. If anything, one of the problems I saw with the British system was that it was too much the 'other way'. Phase III certainly prepared me for Pl Comd role from a technical point of view. I was most impressed, however, by the differences in the way I was treated as a junior officer in each system. This article from Gen Kirby, posted by me earlier, captures the essence of the difference from my point of view:

http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/58250/post-536427.html#msg536427
 
daftandbarmy said:
Yes, balancin the two is a good idea. We shouldn't bash our system too much. If anything, one of the problems I saw with the British system was that it was too much the 'other way'. Phase III certainly prepared me for Pl Comd role from a technical point of view. I was most impressed, however, by the differences in the way I was treated as a junior officer in each system. This article from Gen Kirby, posted by me earlier, captures the essence of the difference from my point of view:

http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/58250/post-536427.html#msg536427

Excellent read, I just tossed a quote from David Bercuson up into that thread explaining his thoughts on careerism.
 
Now that's what I'm talkin' 'bout....


Allow employees to act courageously

http://working.canada.com/victoria/resources/story.html?id=89d866a2-de94-4750-a691-9d2cbcac5001

Take courage, everyone. The economy is teetering, no one knows what the future holds, yet we've got to manage better than ever before in order to right this foundering ship.
From the U.S., we're getting the message that Obama has courage, and he will surely need it.Here at home, we need courage, too, in order to stay competitive in business and keep our economy afloat.

But how do we, in the business model, reward courage?
How do we make sure that courageous behaviour in the workplace is rewarded rather than punished?
How do we create a climate in which making mistakes doesn't mean you're discredited and sidelined?

Courageous behaviour just won't happen in a workplace where managers spend their time reminding people of the consequences of failure rather that focusing on what happens when things go right, warns U.S. consultant Bill Treasurer.
How much effort will anyone make to solve a problem, he points out, when the boss says: "Whatever you do, don't screw up!" Or: "If you drop the ball on this, you're toast!"
Paying too much attention to what can go wrong effectively ends up filling workers with anxiety and undermines their confidence. So forget courage in that kind of environment.
To support courageous behaviour, Treasurer says, you've got to build safety nets for those individuals who are putting themselves on the line.
First, they've got to be given permission to be courageous, just as Treasurer was when at some point in his consultant career he was given the job of coaching upper management. These were people senior to him. He agonized so much over messing up that he went to his own boss at the management consulting company, Accenture, Hines Brannan, and confessed that the thought of coaching those senior people was too intimidating.
"Hines listened patiently," Treasurer writes in his new book, Courage Goes to Work. "Then, instead of telling me what a wuss I was being, he simply said, 'But Bill, you coach me.' "
What Treasurer received from this boss was permission to express his fears without embarrassment, which, in turn, allowed him to see that he could indeed meet the challenge. Imagine if his boss had been someone to whom he couldn't express those feelings.
"Permission enhances safety," writes Treasurer, who is founder and "chief encouragement officer" of Giant Leap Consulting, with clients like CNN, the Centres for Disease Control and EarthLink.
The manager who encourages people to express their true concerns can then concentrate on shifting their thinking to ways in which they can get the job done.
Second, companies must avoid seeing all mistakes as bad ones. Instead, they need to value what he calls "forward-falling" mistakes.
AT&T president David Scobey makes this point: "Mistakes are critically important to growth, not just individually but collectively as well. Growth is driven by innovation, and innovation often comes from making the right mistakes."
One of his clients, Treasurer writes, conducts monthly "lessons learned" breakfasts attended by the company's 100-plus project managers during which project mistakes are discussed by the team responsible for making the mistake. But the focus is not on punishment; rather it's on the lessons to be learned from the mistake and teaches the staff that "mistakes are a normal and necessary part of business - as long as the mistakes are put to good use by the company."
Third, company managers need to be very considerate how the staff perceives them as they "manage up" as well as "manage down."
Employees, Treasurer writes, are very sensitive to how their own managers respond to the boss's request and possibly ignore their own.
"Workers want to know that you're courageous enough to stick up for them and provide them with a safety net," he writes.
So, when a manager can show that she or he is as attentive to the needs of staff as to the boss's, they are, in turn, much more willing to respond to urgent requests with a sense of confidence and courage.

It's a simple demand, yet difficult: help workers feel safe and they will have increased commitment to carry out uncomfortable tasks - and even to make mistakes from which they can learn.

donnanebenzhl@videotron.ca
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2008

 
I think its also important to allow officers to "rock the boat" in order to get things sorted out.

One of the themes in Bercuson's book that I highlighted above was the military's new tendancy to adopt a beaurocratic managers approach.  Officers are posted to their respective billets for a couple of years at a time and usually, according to Bercuson are not in a position long enough to champion any long term change.  Most officers prefer not to rock the boat, instead electing to get their ticks in their PER box and move on without ever having made any significant "impact" in their posting but being rewarded with promotion none the less.  When the bullets start flying I would imagine you want someone at the helm who is not afraid of "rocking the boat".
 
ltmaverick25 said:
I think its also important to allow officers to "rock the boat" in order to get things sorted out.

One of the themes in Bercuson's book that I highlighted above was the military's new tendancy to adopt a beaurocratic managers approach.  Officers are posted to their respective billets for a couple of years at a time and usually, according to Bercuson are not in a position long enough to champion any long term change.  Most officers prefer not to rock the boat, instead electing to get their ticks in their PER box and move on without ever having made any significant "impact" in their posting but being rewarded with promotion none the less.  When the bullets start flying I would imagine you want someone at the helm who is not afraid of "rocking the boat".

While the bureaucrat bit is spot on, I haven't found the "don't rock the boat" thing much.  Maybe it's different between elements, or even units, but if you have a sound idea it's generally well received.  The problem, often times, is that your actual ability to bring about substantial change is more/less constrained by your rank and/or position. 

Example: a Pl Comd generally doesn't have much leeway to reinvent the wheel and, particularly if he's new, shouldn't.  The wheel, often times, is the way it is for a good reason.  Given the lack of experience that most junior officers have, the extremity of "mission command" required to really be able to bring about substantial, earth-shattering change isn't present.  That, and the resources available usually aren't substantial.

At the OC's level, there's far more wiggle room and I've watched quite substantial changes take place under new OC's.  Likewise with CO's.

Officers do move on too quickly many times - particularly in the infantry where a major shortage in senior officers has translated into a glut of subbies - thereby requiring fast and furious rotations to get everyone through the obligatory command roles.  That's where the NCOs are so important (and why it's so important for the officers at all levels to listen to them).  The NCOs serve as the corporate memory of the unit/sub-unit/sub-sub-unit.  If something doesn't work, they let the officers know (hopefully) and if the officers are half-intelligent, they listen, consult, decide, and act to make the appropriate changes. 

That being said, if many officers gave the appropriate amount of autonomy to their snr NCO's, the NCOs could make their own changes instead of having to wait for an officer to do it.  The token "do you mind if I do XXXXXX, sir" should really be all that's required.
 
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