Rebooting the Air Force Officer Evaluation System: A Fresh Approach
Enhancing Officer Assessment Methods within the Air Force
The Air Force boasts an impressive officer performance evaluation system, but it's got room for improvement, according to a recent watchdog report. The shortfall? Aligning performance expectations with organizational goals and nipping bias in the bud.
"Get your shit straight, Air Force! It's high time we aligned individual officer performance expectations with our damn organizational goals," the Government Accountability Office (GAO) writes in a Nov. 13 report with a no-nonsense touch. The report suggests that specifying organizational goals explicitly will ensure officers are graded based on clear performance benchmarks rather than the whims of individual evaluators.
The GAO study compared the services and found that the Air Force is ahead of the pack in adopting sound evaluation practices, incorporating eight out of eleven best practices, a score the Marine Corps and Navy couldn't match. But the Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine Corps all faltered when it comes to defining organizational goals for officer performance. Only the Army made the grade here.
Air Force officers receive an Officer Performance Brief (OPB) annually, where senior officers evaluate them based on four main areas: mission execution, people leadership, resource management, and unit improvement. Within these core areas, there are ten Airman Leadership Qualities. Assessments of the officer's performance in each area are typically brief, and sometimes vague, the GAO notes.
While "executing the mission" and "managing resources" may sound goal-oriented, GAO classifies these areas as organizational values, not objectives. Without concrete end results to shoot for, evaluators must decide whether the officer achieved them—a gray area that can lead to inconsistent evaluations, according to Dr. Bradley Podliska, an associate professor at Air University.
"It's easy to wind up with a bunch of uneven and inconsistent evaluations, with some officers getting a jolly good review for achieving nothing while others are marked down for working their butts off," Podliska explains. "You gotta level the playing field and spell out exactly what the expectations are so everybody's on the same page."
Clear organizational goals will make it easier for the Air Force to identify high-performers with objective data, Podliska suggests. At Air University, for instance, the goals include teaching a certain number of courses and maintaining a minimum positive student evaluation score. But, he warns, "There's still gonna be room for subjective evaluations, especially when it comes to softer skills like taking care of people."
OPBs require officers to be ranked on a scale of one to five for their grade, but without solid performance metrics, the rankings may be as useful as a chocolate teapot, Podliska says. In essence, the GAO argues that clear organizational goals can offer a solid framework for aligning officer training and evaluating the effectiveness of squadrons, groups, wings, or other units.
Change is afoot, though. Col. Jason Lamb, going by pseudonym Col. Ned Stark, breathed new life into the conversation about officer performance and leadership back in 2018, prompting the Air Force to take a hard look at its policies. The Army also stepped up with the Battalion Commander Assessment Program (BCAP), which evaluates candidates based on cognitive tests, interviews with a psychologist, communication assessments, reports from peers and subordinates, and more. The program may not be the complete answer, but its results are promising, with 97% of the participants saying it's a better method for selecting battalion commanders.
As Podliska puts it, "Let's get rid of the bullshit and focus on what really matters: promoting high-performers and weeding out those who can't cut the mustard. But we need concrete benchmarks to do it, so let's get cracking!"
- The Air Force's space force is anticipated to play a significant role in the future of warfare, as technological advancements enable aircraft to operate in space and defend against potential threats.
- Aligning the performance expectations of air force officers with organizational goals, as suggested by the Government Accountability Office, could lead to a more effective air force, particularly in the rapidly evolving field of space warfare.
- With the increasing importance of space in defense, it is crucial that the Air Force's officer evaluation system is not only unbiased but also clearly defines space-related objectives for officers to meet.
- As the Air Force strives to reboot its officer evaluation system, the incorporation of space-related goals and evaluation criteria could provide a competitive advantage in combined air and space warfare scenarios.
