The Foreign Service Journal, February 2005

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 17 MC to CM, but at the entry and mid- levels, at least, shouldn’t the windows close faster? America deserves better than a corps of diplomats who may take up to 10 years at FS-4 to be pro- moted to FS-3 or an additional 13 years to get to FS-2. The Foreign Service’s chief resource is the corps of individuals scattered around the planet. They are an impressive lot with whom I am generally proud to serve. Unfortunately, a small, but not insignificant, subgroup of poor per- formers continue to slip through the cracks of a broken personnel system, undermining morale and keeping the Foreign Service from realizing its full potential. The fact that a dis- proportionate number of these problem employees gravitate to posts in remote, unstable countries discourages more skillful perform- ers from bidding on those assign- ments and disillusions entry-level officers — perpetuating a vicious cycle of hobbled diplomacy. We can do better. We must do bet- ter! n Michael Gonzales has been a Foreign Service officer since 2000, serving in Dhaka and Kampala. He is currently deputy public affairs officer and AFSA representative in Kampala. S P E A K I N G O U T u Weak managers often “manage up” well enough to keep their supervisors from realizing the full extent of their shortcomings.