THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY AUGUST 2024 19 In current practice, even individuals who have been identified as detrimental to an office or post make the promotion list in time, which rewards and emboldens poor managers. Many of these individuals never receive the necessary feedback and corrective training and present the same negative behavior at assignment after assignment. This is demoralizing to those who are going about their work in alignment with promotion precepts but do not make the promotion list. The department has solicited ideas to enhance the EER, and The Foreign Service Journal has published several articles, including an April 2023 Speaking Out by Virginia Blaser, “Why Our Evaluation System Is Broken and What to Do About It,” and an April 2020 feature by Alex Karagiannis, “Evaluation Reform at State: A Work in Progress,” highlighting this need. We do hope that the department will consider incorporating those ideas in the process for improvement. b In closing, there is a foundational scene in the blockbuster movie “Oppenheimer,” where the leading character meets renowned physicist Niels Bohr, and during the encounter Bohr asks Oppenheimer, “Can you hear the music?” Bohr saw Oppenheimer’s potential and was trying to get him to fully understand the deep and intuitive mathematics involved in physics. The advice spurred Oppenheimer to pull the puzzle pieces together to do what had not been done before in that critical discipline. Separately, a mentor of mine once stated: “When a group of people fully understands the system, the group is then able to make changes to the system to benefit the institution.” At this critical moment in the State Department’s history, we need to “hear the music” of a changing workforce in order to build and promote a workplace culture of civility, accountability, and balance. We should pool all our resources, talents, and energies for the good of the institution. That time is now. n
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