More Than the Generals

For the last few years before I retired from the Army, I was part of the very small team of people that consolidated the Army General Officer education program and then managed it. That required daily contact with the entire population of Army Generals; Active, Reserve, and National Guard.

I can tell you, with ZERO hesitation, the effort by Secretary Hegseth to reduce the number of General and Flag Officers is on target. There are plenty of positions and plenty of people wearing stars that need to go. I don’t think it will be as easy as just cutting 10% or 20%, especially when it comes to the National Guard, but I think it is very doable. The Department of Defense and the individual services may even find they can cut MORE than the directive from the SECDEF.

I do think, however, it is More Than the Generals that need to be reviewed and adjusted where needed. I think the entire Department of Defense needs a personnel management overhaul. Everything the SECDEF is talking about, even down to selections for the service academies, is about merit. Select on merit. Award on merit. Promote on merit.

While merit does play a part in some of the personnel management within the services, there are more restrictions than most people realize that preclude the top performers from rising quickly…. or even force some of those people out unnecessarily.

Since the directive from SECDEF, social media has shown plenty of comparisons from the WWII Army to now when it comes to the number of Generals, so I will use one of those as a comparative. James M. Gavin was promoted to Major in October of 1941. In August of 1942, he was promoted to Colonel at 35 years old. In August of 1944, he pinned on his second star and was put in command of the 82nd Airborne Division. He was 37 and was the youngest division commander in the Army.

There is a much longer and more detailed story behind those promotions, but he went from a Major to a Major General (five ranks) in three years. Why? The short answer is merit. He was simply the best at his job at the time. No one knew more about Paratroopers and the application of Airborne forces than he did.

In today’s military there is NO WAY IN HELL anyone would be promoted that quickly and given that much responsibility as Jumpin’ Jim Gavin had. Why? Because our HR processes won’t allow it. Period. Beyond Major, he hadn’t held enough “time in grade” to even be considered for promotion under our current promotion process. Gavin would still have been a Major by the end of the War, no matter how good he was. Merit be damned.

For context, Army officers who are promoted to Major “on time” are in about their 10th year of service. Then you spend about 6 years as a Major before you get promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. Add another 6 years or so before you get promoted to Colonel. Even the BEST officers out there can only shave one year off each of those timelines, merit be damned.

I know people will say “that was WWII” or “we were at war” or “the times were different”. Yeah… we spent 20 years at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. And you’re telling me out of that there wasn’t ONE SINGLE OFFICER of Gavin’s caliber that should have been promoted on a rapid pace like he was? I can name a handful I know personally that should have, but they weren’t… merit be damned.

Enlisted folks have some of the same restrictions, although their promotion system is very different. The superstars in the Noncommissioned Officer world tend to rise very fast in rank, pay, and responsibility…. however, their ceiling for rank comes to a screeching halt while officers continue to ascend in a rapidly shrinking pyramid. You can be a Sergeant Major (E-9) at less than 20 years and remain there until you retire at 30 years while gaining no greater rank but a LOT MORE responsibility. It’s crazy.

On the flipside, the military adopted the “up or out” mentality a long time ago. What does that mean? You need to continue to get promoted, whether you want to or not, or they military will force you out. There are even gates called “retention control points” that dictate the minimum rank you MUST hold based on the number of years you’ve been in, or they kick you out. Merit be damned.

The Army (and I think the Marines) also got rid of the ability to serve in a job as an enlisted person without also assuming a leadership role. I think the Air Force and Navy, who still rely on so many technical specialists, don’t have this type of forced leadership. Someone correct me if I am wrong.

Seriously, you can have the best tank driver, or the best machine gunner, or the best personnel clerk, or the best generator repair person who is perfectly happy doing THAT JOB and will do it for YEARS, but if they don’t want to be a leader, you have to get rid of them after a certain amount of time.

So, in the Army and Marines, even if you aren’t cut out to be a leader but you are the BEST at the technical skills of your job, they still expect you to lead and your promotion to the next rank is dependent upon your leadership ability. The Army used to have the Specialist rank structure for people exactly like this. No leadership requirement, only job proficiency, and you can stay in while performing at a high level.

We got rid of that too, for enlisted folks. Can you imagine a civilian company who finds the BEST programmer who wants zero management responsibility and then fires them no matter how good they are because they don’t want to be in a management role? No. No one does that. No one sacrifices top performers like that by forcing them into a role they don’t want.

But the military does it. Merit be damned.

Why? Why does the entire Department of Defense live under all these restrictions when it comes to personnel management?

Money is definitely part of it. Every single servicemember and every single billet has to be justified by rank and by job. Can’t have too many of this rank or can’t have too many of this specialty. Round pegs in round holes and all the numbers have to match.

Culture is also part of it. Across all services, there are clans and tribes and cliques, both officer and enlisted. If given the ability to select for promotion or elimination, leaders will take care of their own. It happens now, even with the restricted process that exist, as hard as we have tried to eliminate it. It could be much worse without the restrictions we have now.

Bureaucracy is the biggest contributor. Trying to manage all those people across all the services with all the jobs and all the promotions is much easier WITH the rigid restrictions than without. So, it makes life better and easier for the bean counters. You’re talking about managing a million people on active duty, against a budget, against a culture. There needs to be some structure.

So, what is the answer? SECDEF needs to put the same focus on the rest of the personnel systems as he has on cutting the Generals and Admirals. This is HARD WORK. I mean it, this would be some seriously long hours and days and weeks to review and overhaul it, but it is overdue. I think there needs to be more flexibility built in to reward based on merit but still have guardrails to prevent cronyism that sometimes runs rampant. I think there needs to be less focus on forcing leadership and more on high performance… leaders will come to the front, I can promise that much.

Regardless of anything, it is time to rip the personnel system apart and start from scratch. SECDEF is heading in the right direction, but it has to be More Than the Generals.