The Foreign Service Journal, February 2005

T he 2004 promotion lists were recently released. Although I was not eligible for promotion, I watched with pleasure as many out- standing officers and specialists received much-deserved recognition for excellent performance and evi- dence of potential. Sadly, as in past years, these employees’ achievements were largely discredited by the promo- tion of other, thoroughly ineffective officers and specialists. These individ- uals who miss deadlines, fail to com- plete assignments and lack communi- cation skills, yet still advance, prove the depressing fact that simply show- ing up or threatening to grieve will get you promoted in America’s Foreign Service. The 2004 promotion lists confirm that the system of evaluations and promotions is broken. This, in turn, causes and perpetuates a Foreign Service that is fractured, and undermines America’s foreign policy objectives. Cultural & Institutional Impediments The highly transitory Foreign Service lifestyle perpetuates a two-to- three-year time horizon in the minds of all it touches. All components of the State Department and other for- eign affairs agencies — Americans and Foreign Service Nationals, offi- cers and specialists, Foreign Service and Civil Service personnel — rely to some degree on the crutch that says, “I can ride out a bad __ for two years.” Depending on the circum- stances, this blank may be a boss, employee, support staff member, GSO, or any of a myriad of other indi- viduals filling roles crucial to our mis- sions. Bureaucracy, impenetrable regulations, and Americans’ growing litigiousness all pose real barriers to supervisors’, clients’, or subordinates’ willingness and/or ability to take action to get the underperforming either to perform or be removed. Except in the cases of the most tena- cious supervisors or feckless employ- ees, most of us give up in despair and pass the problem on to our successors or other posts. The paper trail generated by and about poor performers becomes steeped in code. In the case of an American subordinate, the rating offi- cer crafts vague EER statements about a “fine performance” and “solid workmanship,” hoping against hope that the promotion boards will appro- priately identify these euphemisms near the lower rungs of the scorecard of superlatives. A perfunctory entry in the “area for improvement” box might encourage someone to “hone his time management skills” rather than “get to work on time and stop missing dead- lines.” Sure, tenure may take an extra year, five more posts may suffer under the officer’s incompetence, and co- workers will have to carry the burden, but we “avoided a lawsuit.” With weak FSNs, the infuriated supervisor describes the employee’s performance as “satisfactory” — damning with faint praise, while high enough to permit the annual step increase and avoid a grievance from the FSN. The poor performance per- sists, mission goals are not optimally achieved, the FSN is bitter, and the supervisor remains angry, but finds solace in the fact that “I’m transferring next summer and it will be someone else’s problem.” As for weak managers overseas, the damage is pervasive yet insidious. Subordinate employees are often left to their own devices with minimal supervision, and communication with other sections or offices is virtually severed, yet institutional rigidities and exhortations not to “rock the boat” deter senior managers from disrupting the façade of harmony in the office or mission. Compounding the problem, the employee often “manages up” well enough to keep the senior officer from realizing the full extent of the employ- ee’s shortcomings. Even when the reviewing officer does make a good-faith effort to refer to problems, the natural tendency is to resort to canned praise and trivial areas for improvement in a naïve effort to preserve morale at post. But senior management’s attempted punt The don’t-rock- the-boat culture of our Service undermines America’s foreign policy objectives in much of the world. Foreign Service Evaluations: A Broken System B Y M ICHAEL C. G ONZALES F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 13 S PEAKING O UT w