The Foreign Service Journal, June 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2014 9 Identifying Talent Sorry, Tyler Sparks, but I am not among the “practically everyone” you assert subscribes to your view of how the State Department should identify talent (“Bring Back the Powell Fellows Pro- gram,” Speaking Out, April) . In the diplomatic service of many countries, unless you attended the right elite school, you’re doomed to the slow track from the start. What’s great about the U.S. Foreign Service is that it pro- vides opportunities for officers to demonstrate ability at all stages of their careers. Trying to identify pre- cocious talent based on academic provenance, personal connections and early assignments (particu- larly in Washington, where one can hitch one’s wagon to high flyers) would disadvantage those who, through no fault of their own, got a boring job, a weak boss or no support during an early tour. America is the land of second chances, and multiple careers. Some of our best diplomats graduated from undistinguished universities or started in completely unrelated occupations, and not all were instant successes once they joined the Foreign Service. It takes seasoning to show true mettle. When I read phrases like “the best of the best,” I am reminded of the “whiz kid” label given to Robert McNamara and other commercial geniuses in the Kennedy administration who were young and smart, and were identified as having high potential early in their careers. They also took us into, and failed to extract us from, Vietnam—and we all know how that turned out. Does anyone who has been on an LETTERS awards committee, or seen how various accolades are handed out, and to whom, in the State Department, honestly believe there could be a fair way to decide which 12 or so mid-level officers out of thousands are the “star achievers,” deserving of special access to a patron- age network and private perquisites that would favor them over their peers? Mr. Sparks claims that the military identifies people “with the potential to rise through the ranks” early on. I would argue that grooming an (to some extent, self-iden- tified) elite of neophytes is just as likely to give you General George McClellan—second in his class at West Point and plenty smart, but lacking the grit to engage General Robert E. Lee in the early stages of the Civil War—as Ulysses Grant, who labored long in obscu- rity after leaving West Point (nowhere near the top of his class) before proving that he had the right stuff to grind the South into surrender. My point is, you never know what people can really do until they have been tried out, in vari- ous jobs, over time. That’s how real leaders should be identified, and that’s the right way to “pick winners.” Having recently spent six weeks on a promotion panel, I found the process to be fair, balanced and largely effective, though I freely admit that it has flaws and (to paraphrase Winston Churchill’s comment about democracy) is the “worst system … except all the others that have been tried.” Before claiming that we have a “bro- ken evaluation and promotion process,” critics should first come up with a better one. S.R. Hankinson FSO Embassy Lome The Social Media Emperor Hallelujah! Someone has finally had the good sense to point out that the emperor has no clothes. Bob Silver- man’s critique in his March President’s Views column of the use of social media in diplomacy (“Are Social Media Over- rated?”) certainly struck a responsive chord with me. It could well be argued that Twitter, Facebook, et al. are virtual communica- tion platforms, insofar as largely vacu- ous information thrown to the electronic four winds is no more a genuine form of communication than fast food is real food. But these so-called media do accomplish one thing: They are a way to conduct enough outreach to satisfy the bean counters in Congress and elsewhere, without spending the time and money neces- sary to do real, extensive evaluation of the impact of the full range of State Department com- munications. Social media might yet prove to be a useful tool in efforts to reach foreign audiences. But the redirection of consid- erable resources to a largely unproven “tech-tool-of-the-day” seems short- sighted and overly optimistic, at best. Until the time comes when evaluat-