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Promotion and PRF Information


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Not sure what a bullet means? Click the expand button to see a plain english description. Not sure about an acronym? Mouse over. Had a kick ass year? Write 20 bullets. No so much? Put down a good 5. One line not enough? Add an explanatory paragraph. PRF time? Click your best 10, then let your boss revise the list, on up to your senior rater. You're a board member and you want to see an officer's strats? Click "Show Strats". Want to see if a senior rater is speeding? View all of their submitted strats for this year group. Tired of printing out records for promotion boards? Here's an iPad.

All of that becomes easy if we just get away from the idea that OPRs are a sheet of paper and instead think of them as information.

This is one of the most obvious, yet somehow completely revolutionary, ideas I've seen/heard. If the AF had to meet a real bottom line (not the kind that comes "up front" in a lame ass email,) then we'd have an IT department that would've been all over this years ago. Instead, we have no means of making this a reality, so...back to business as usual. Hundreds of man-hours spent per each and every completely inadequate and utterly archaic performance report "form."

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My CC does not believe in the one mistake Air Force mentality and neither do I. I told someone who showed up with a blemish that I didn't want to know what happened. New base, equates to a brand new start in my eyes. Additionally, I told the individual you have to show leadership you have moved beyond whatever happened and continue to strive as an officer and leader. If you become a "toxic" individual after your ordeal and unreliable, you can expect leadership to maintain a negative mindset about you.

I had to tell someone months ago that SOS may not be in their future. When supervisors annotate something in an OPR and a board or the OG/CC sees those remarks it's an easy kill for not going in residence. I told the individual you have to be "seen" and "heard" in this squadron and exceed the standard in the CC's viewpoint so he goes to bat for you.

At SOS, my class did a mock PRF. One of the groups grading the PRF did not see a person had been arrested twice so they scored his package pretty high. I pointed out their error. I had a reservist ask how long I'm going to hold the arrests against the officer? I could only respond that the other officers have been doing what's right and deserve to be promoted. I could understand if he got arrested once, but twice is my limitation. Now look at how much trouble you can get into while in the Army and still get promoted. I'm an Army brat and I've seen it first hand. Different services...different personnel.

You are a shitty "leader." Great motivation telling someone they might not go to SOS when pretty much everyone goes........doucher. That person probably cares even less about SOS after your "awesome" feedback. I'd argue most solid dudes could give 10 less shits about SOS...a borderline dude might give 20 less shits....nice work.

You did a mock PRF!? WOW! I think everyone does that there....I remember doing that years back. Now you're the expert?! You suck, go cut yourself.

Edit to add: You are what's wrong with the AF.

Edited by Recut
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To avoid the EPR everyone gets a 5 debacle, those grades should be tied to a unit commander (or div chief, etc) and entered into a database. Upon meeting a board, those scores get compared to that commanders career long "grade point average" and presented to the board along with that average. If you got 4s but his average was a 3.5, you did okay. If you got 4s but his average is 4.8, then you are below average. If everyone gets a five, then that cc screwed his true top performers. Built in stratification, difficult to BS the system, no more challenge determining the 30% from the 60%, much less need to resort to square filling to rack n'stack.

But that's too different, so we'll keep doing the same old thing and just complain about how inadequate it is.

For those of you familiar with Navy/Marine pilot training, this is what I've been told they do with their students score since they don't have set classes that train with set flights, but just an assigned instructor or two. Your scores from each instructor get weighted based on the instructors avg. score, so Lt X who's instructor is a Santa Claus goes up against Lt Y who's instructor is a hardass and never saw an "E" on his write-up get to compete on the same level.

*Note: this was three years ago and what I was told by other marine and navy students in my flight.

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We need to give up the metaphor of a "form", as though in the modern digital era character counts and "two-pages" mean anything. We use acronyms and incomprehensible language for two reasons: 1) Once upon a time someone had to write performance reports on a typewriter. 2) When you force bad communication, it becomes really easy to hide bullshit. Those are both really bad reasons to recreate OPRs in some wonky document viewer program rather than using the flexibility electronic records should provide. Not sure what a bullet means? Click the expand button to see a plain english description. Not sure about an acronym? Mouse over. Had a kick ass year? Write 20 bullets. No so much? Put down a good 5. One line not enough? Add an explanatory paragraph. PRF time? Click your best 10, then let your boss revise the list, on up to your senior rater. You're a board member and you want to see an officer's strats? Click "Show Strats". Want to see if a senior rater is speeding? View all of their submitted strats for this year group. Tired of printing out records for promotion boards? Here's an iPad. All of that becomes easy if we just get away from the idea that OPRs are a sheet of paper and instead think of them as information. For my next rant, TAFs, METARs, and NOTAMs written as though we were still paying to send them via teletype...

Why are there not more people that get this?

It constantly shocks me that we are 12+% into the 21st Century and we still have a typewriter mindset on 99.69% of what we do--even when we have "digitized" it in the form of a PDF or FormFlow.

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.......

Those are both really bad reasons to recreate OPRs in some wonky document viewer program rather than using the flexibility electronic records should provide. Not sure what a bullet means? Click the expand button to see a plain english description. Not sure about an acronym? Mouse over. Had a kick ass year? Write 20 bullets. No so much? Put down a good 5. One line not enough? Add an explanatory paragraph. PRF time? Click your best 10, then let your boss revise the list, on up to your senior rater. You're a board member and you want to see an officer's strats? Click "Show Strats". Want to see if a senior rater is speeding? View all of their submitted strats for this year group. Tired of printing out records for promotion boards? Here's an iPad.

All of that becomes easy if we just get away from the idea that OPRs are a sheet of paper and instead think of them as information.

So what you are saying is that e-mail/word doc I sent to my rater with lots of plain English words describing what I did and the results can be cut/paste/edits into an OPR???? And that the rater doesn't need to spent countless hours OPRsmithing the shit out of everything to shoe horn it into the form??? And that execs/sr raters don't have to spend even more hours figuring out what the hell each item means, filling up white space (or not), making more acronyms, losing even more meaning with each edit, etc???

Are you a witch? Proceed direct to the first big blue koolaid post and drink until you pee blue. Don't forget to TIM.

Out

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Why are there not more people that get this?

It constantly shocks me that we are 12+% into the 21st Century and we still have a typewriter mindset on 99.69% of what we do--even when we have "digitized" it in the form of a PDF or FormFlow.

Lots of people get it. They're just Captains.

There isn't a single person, anywhere in the Air Force at all, over the rank of O-4 who could be described as having "grown up" in the age of the personal computer, and you don't get a solid group of them until you go down to O-3. The ages and year groups just don't work out. That isn't to say there aren't some tech-savvy early adopters O-5 or above, but in my experience, not many. Senior leadership might recognize the importance of this whole internet thing, and, to their credit, work hard to figure it out, but that doesn't mean they get it just yet.

We'll get there, but we're still a decade and a half out from having the first O-7 born post-1980.

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To avoid the EPR everyone gets a 5 debacle, those grades should be tied to a unit commander (or div chief, etc) and entered into a database. Upon meeting a board, those scores get compared to that commanders career long "grade point average" and presented to the board along with that average. If you got 4s but his average was a 3.5, you did okay. If you got 4s but his average is 4.8, then you are below average. If everyone gets a five, then that cc screwed his true top performers. Built in stratification, difficult to BS the system, no more challenge determining the 30% from the 60%, much less need to resort to square filling to rack n'stack.

That's exactly how the Navy does their FITREPs (OPRs). Seems to work pretty well for them.

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That's exactly how the Navy does their FITREPs (OPRs). Seems to work pretty well for them.

I want to see a system where 3's require no comment. 2 or 4 requires a justifying comment from the rater. 1 or 5 requires a comment from the senior rater. Add in Noonin's normalization process, and I think you have a tough to game system.

It would need to address the "stellar unit" where you do actually have a cluster of top performers where a rater really should be giving a lot of 4's and 5's. You do that by not just looking at the rater's average (though that would weight the heaviest), but also the senior rater, wing, and MAJCOM averages. Call it 40% rater, 30% senior rater, 20% wing and 10% MAJCOM for a starting guess.

If you really want to get fancy, you compare a rater's feedback to the future performance of the ratee. Raters with a good track-record for their judgement could get extra weight. Rater's who give 5's to guys who later flame out get dinged.

Edited by BuddhaSixFour
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Lots of people get it. They're just Captains.

There isn't a single person, anywhere in the Air Force at all, over the rank of O-4 who could be described as having "grown up" in the age of the personal computer, and you don't get a solid group of them until you go down to O-3. The ages and year groups just don't work out. That isn't to say there aren't some tech-savvy early adopters O-5 or above, but in my experience, not many. Senior leadership might recognize the importance of this whole internet thing, and, to their credit, work hard to figure it out, but that doesn't mean they get it just yet.

We'll get there, but we're still a decade and a half out from having the first O-7 born post-1980.

You'd think some defense contractor would see this opportunity and jump on creating a system like you'd describe, a la DTS.

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Enough with the SOS talk! Jesus.

But when I was at SOS, we jacked the Apollo 13 award. I mean we were so badass that when we walked up to each challenge, it was like we were in slow motion and shit, and we had a dude that would play this kickass theme music. You shoulda seen it, man. The whole audience was in mouth-breathing awe of of our captainy awesomeness. We'd throw out one-liners, use hand signals, and even made up secret handshakes. We were the top guns of SOS. Our mock PRF boards were so excellent that they snuck in a whole set of actual board records--we killed it. And the wargame, we fist-pumped all night long after defeating the enemy in record time. They didn't stand a chance. We celebrated by getting some fabulous tats.

Man, those were the best days of my life and we really showed the AF that we were the most awesome leaders, ever! Thanks SOS!

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Comprehension is the key to learning! So you should just lie to a ratee? Honest feedback versus a straight up liar. If you choose to be dishonest with your people I hope the same thing happens to you. Not everyone from our base goes to SOS in residence. My previous CC never guaranteed anyone a slot to SOS. I remember him saying he never went in residence and he said the names of a few SQ/CC's on the base who hadn't either.

You must have not read the post from Liquid about referral OPRs either.

No, I'm not the expert on PRFs. But I'm trying to be so I can ensure people are well taken care of in that regard.

OK. Quick lesson and this is over because no one wants to see this crap on this board.

-SOS is not some elite program you attended, get over it

-It is not that difficult to get "selected" to go there

-Just about everyone on BODN (except SNAPS obviously) has been there and done that

-If you want to be a great leader that you seem to want to portray, you should find a way to motivate people that don't have SOS in their future to make it. A real leader will find a way to inspire someone to achieve things. Real leaders don't sit and judge people, especially against one's self -- certainly not using SOS as criteria........SOS? YGBFSM!

-You are inspired from some dude named Liquid on this board. Maybe he/she is for real, maybe not....but if that's where you are drawing your inspiration from then I don't even know what to say

When I said you are what's wrong with the AF, here's what I am thinking: It seems you think that leadership is about "mentoring" people to be like you -- someone who really thinks that SOS is the end all be all (as an example). Since you went you are the shit and no one can measure up to you. Get over it, I don't care what your commanders say, almost everyone goes to SOS. You aren't special and you need to drink a cup of STFU and listen. OUT.

To other posters: You are right, enuf on SOS. Next beer's on me.

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I gotta ask, because I know two slicks in the fighter world... Are you a fighter pilot? And more importantly, what's your rank? It would really help your street cred if you could provide some details to your thin Internet veil. You could just post your SURF for all I care.

I honestly hope that you aren't so proud of yourself that you believe even half of the garbage you're spewing on here. Are people really so narcissistic to discuss their achievements in leadership?

You sound like a WSO that snuck into the flight commanders office.

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Can we receive more information on the PRF process?

What questions do you have?

About 10 pages back there was a discussion on "honest feedback" on OPRs. You insinuate it's okay to lie to an individual and you probably lie on OPRs as well. Which would make you the problem regarding raters who don't annotate the truth in an OPR.

Careful. OPRs are not feedback to your people. Feedback forms and discussions are for that. OPRs are written for an outside audience (boards,etc) and are not written to be read literally. They are written in code. If you want to convey that someone is an "average officer" and literally use those words, the message you actually sent was that he is a dirtbag.

So be careful when you say "lie on an OPR". You should strive to send an honest message. That does not mean you write literal truth on the form.

Edited by Danny Noonin
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Lots of people get it. They're just Captains.

There isn't a single person, anywhere in the Air Force at all, over the rank of O-4 who could be described as having "grown up" in the age of the personal computer, and you don't get a solid group of them until you go down to O-3. The ages and year groups just don't work out. That isn't to say there aren't some tech-savvy early adopters O-5 or above, but in my experience, not many. Senior leadership might recognize the importance of this whole internet thing, and, to their credit, work hard to figure it out, but that doesn't mean they get it just yet.

.

And you would be incorrect....completely. I am solidly in the O-4 group you think you know, and our family got our first PC when I was 5 (Apple IIGS I think) and had them in our house until college. Internet you say? We were dialing up BBS at 9 years old and dowloading sketchy movies at 1200 BAUD. So what exactly was your point?

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And you would be incorrect....completely. I am solidly in the O-4 group you think you know, and our family got our first PC when I was 5 (Apple IIGS I think) and had them in our house until college. Internet you say? We were dialing up BBS at 9 years old and dowloading sketchy movies at 1200 BAUD. So what exactly was your point?

He said "above the rank of O-4"...

His point was that technology has a multitude of ways to streamline our daily processes and make desk work generally tolerable but because the old people in charge don't trust what they don't understand and are too lazy to learn, we will be forced to do additional work until guys like you get in charge.

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He said "above the rank of O-4"...

His point was that technology has a multitude of ways to streamline our daily processes and make desk work generally tolerable but because the old people in charge don't trust what they don't understand and are too lazy to learn, we will be forced to do additional work until guys like you get in charge.

Well, they trust it. They just make the e-form have the same look and functionality of the paper form. To include the e-Routing Slips. :banghead:

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During the last DT, each board received one candidate nominee. The rest of the seats went to selects. HAF plans to keep the number of candidates that go to school very low to take care of the selects in a fiscally constrained DE world.

Liquid -

Any word on whether HAF is going to let candidates go off the alternate list? I know the SOF DT only had enough selects nominated to fill the primary seats - hence all the alternates are candidates. So when inevitably spots open up, is HAF/AFPC going to allow more than one candidate to go if they're pulled off the alternate list or will those slots go to another DT that has selects on the alternate list?

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Liquid -

Any word on whether HAF is going to let candidates go off the alternate list? I know the SOF DT only had enough selects nominated to fill the primary seats - hence all the alternates are candidates. So when inevitably spots open up, is HAF/AFPC going to allow more than one candidate to go if they're pulled off the alternate list or will those slots go to another DT that has selects on the alternate list?

I'm no Liquid, but I was told that alternate candidates will only fill in for candidates that are on the list.

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