Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
A:
We were always advising people of improvement things. It was a good feeling because
people were interesting. Oftentimes their discussion was whether to retire or not or to stay
competitive, or where they were competitive, to stay or not--so we were always in that kind
of a dialogue with people. Even though we knew those fifteen or twenty people that were
competitive, we'd want to go back and look at the selectee's file and say, "Why was it the
board selected this person rather than another one?"--for purposes of understanding.
We really couldn't make the files better, other than, as I mentioned before, correcting a
mistake that was obvious or didn't come out right or that sort of thing. A person had to make
his own file better by his performance, and that was in the officer efficiency reports.
Q:
Were there ever any studies done of that information in the Army that you know? I know
there have been historical studies done. In fact, it's interesting to look at the careers of
general officers, World War II commanders--but at the time nothing formal was done. The
people in the branch had this information in the field, but nothing formal in terms of studying
the characteristics of men promoted?
A:
I don't know of any formal kind of thing. We were all convinced--with the things that I
heard before--that number one is that performance counts. The officer establishes his mark
by performance.
Second was the job--what job you're in. There are no "have to's," but I think General Morris
put it right after he'd served on a brigadier general board. He said, "The thing we were all
looking for was how many times did the person have an opportunity to fail, but he didn't?"
as reflecting that a person had tough jobs. A lot of people might have good performance
records, but in jobs that were seen to be more mundane or routine, and hadn't had the tough
jobs where a person was really putting his ability on the line, and had had multiple
opportunities to fail in doing that, but carried the day and brought things about so there was
success.
That's why I think command has always been such an important factor. Some people say,
"Well, you've got to be a commander." Well, I don't know that you've got to be a
commander. Nevertheless, command positions, for the most part, are seen as an assignment
where a person has multiple opportunities to fail. If the record as written up in performance
reports shows that it was a tough job and he performed well and did these kinds of things,
then it would stand out.
Subsequent to all this, I sat on a brigadier general selection board and on a colonel selection
board--and I think "selection" comes out of a file. By "file" I mean not an individual officer
efficiency report, but when you read ten or twelve or twenty, there will be a common pattern
there of strength, of taking tough jobs, of doing things always at a notch above base
expectations--or not.
So, when people start to score out files, it almost comes off the page at you. When you do a
bunch of them, you can see certainly who definitely should not make it and who definitely
should make it.
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