The Foreign Service Journal, February 2006

14 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 6 Recent issues of the Foreign Service Journal indicate that the always sensitive question of who gets promoted, and why, has become more contentious lately. As people rejoice or recover from another fall promotion list, I’d like to offer some views on the subject that differ from those of the State Department’s Bureau of Human Resources and, indeed, from those of AFSA’s leader- ship, as well. In July 2005, I retired after 25 years in the Foreign Service, the bulk of them spent with the U.S. Information Agency. Over that quarter-century, I perused many promotion lists that occasioned in my own mind and, indeed, in the minds of others a conviction that the promotion system is neither fair nor designed to reward outstanding achievement. Further, after hearing countless talks given by HR repre- sentatives about competing against one’s peers for promotion, I think it’s time to talk turkey. The simple fact is that FSOs com- pete as much, if not more, against assignments as they do against peo- ple. As AFSA State Vice President Steve Kashkett put it in his Novem- ber 2005 AFSA News column, “Giving special ‘promotion points’ to those who serve in a few dangerous posts demeans the work being done by FS employees everywhere else. What about the person performing superbly at one of our many impor- tant hardship posts not quite as diffi- cult or as high-profile as Iraq and Afghanistan? What about someone doing brilliant work on vital policy issues in Cairo, Port-au-Prince, Moscow or even Washington, D.C.? Don’t these talented, dedicated FS employees deserve an equal shot at promotion?” Former AFSA President John Naland made a similar point in a “President’s Views” column in the Journal a few years ago when he observed that the difficulty of work — i.e., the hardship of the country of assignment — had become a prima- ry factor in determining whether someone is promoted or not. To put it bluntly, mediocre work in a so-called “difficult” (hardship) city or country is often rewarded with promotions, while even out- standing efforts in First-World post- ings, or in Washington, go unrecog- nized. “You Won’t Be Promoted in Vienna” When I accepted an assignment in 2001 to be public affairs officer in Vienna, I did not anticipate that it would be my final overseas tour. But in retrospect, I realize that the hand- writing was already on the wall. Indeed, the senior officer who offered me the job gave this caveat as well: “You won’t be promoted in Vienna.” At the time I thought I would prove him wrong, but alas, I didn’t. Indeed, none of the section heads at post, including the DCM, was promoted after three years in Vienna, and other deserving offi- cers were denied promotion as well. Well, I suppose we had Mozart to console us. When I asked my career develop- ment officer why I hadn’t crossed the senior threshold despite a strong record as a FS-1, he replied that my last six years of overseas service were all in Western Europe. So much for the fact that I created a Dialogue Center in eastern Germany that exists to this day; that I organized major programs on a number of for- eign policy issues that entailed a huge amount of work; that I institut- ed a training program in Vienna for city and state managers from Central It’s Not Who You Know, It’s Where You Serve B Y J OHN A LLEN Q UINTUS S PEAKING O UT Mediocre work in hardship posts is often rewarded with promotions, while outstanding efforts in first-world postings go unrecognized.