The Foreign Service Journal, September 2012

The members of those panels have almost certainly never met the em- ployees they are reviewing. All they have to go on as they pit each em- ployee against the rest of the group for promotion is a stack of EER narratives from the previous three to five years and their best judgment. So promotion panelists must “read between the lines” of each evaluation, doing their best to spot descriptions that damn with faint praise to flag em- ployees who performed less well than the rest of their cohort. The only other input for their decisions is award nom- inations. Not once in the process is the ac- tual supervisor — the one who has the greatest knowledge of the employee’s performance — asked to rank his or her employee against their peers. And yet we wonder why we sometimes see good employees passed over for pro- motion while bad employees rise through the ranks. Our review process is in drastic need of an overhaul. We need a sys- tem that significantly reduces the amount of time and energy it takes to produce a review, freeing up that time to pursue the important work of diplo- macy and development. It should also accurately and fairly evaluate employ- ees and, without overstating their ac- complishments, produce EERs that enable promotion panels to identify high-performing employees. Finally, we need to rely more on su- pervisors’ familiarity with these indi- viduals by asking them to rank their subordinates against others in their class. For an idea of how this might work, we can look to the Marine Corps. A Better Way The Marine Corps Fitness Report (NAVMC Form-10835A) includes a brief description of the position (akin to our work requirement statement) and then a short (15-line) statement on the Marine’s accomplishments during the reporting period. There is both a primary rating section, com- pleted by a rating officer known as the Reporting Senior, and a secondary re- view completed by a Reviewing Offi- cer. So far, that sounds like the EER process. Otherwise, however, the two processes could not be more different. The Marine Corps rates its mem- bers quantitatively on 14 different cri- teria, rating from A (worth just one point) to G (seven points). In addi- tion, each RS has a rating profile that is tracked throughout his or her ca- reer. To guard against grade inflation or 18 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 2 S P E A K I N G O U T Currently, promotion panelists must “read between the lines” to spot evaluations that damn with faint praise.