OPMS XXI--an integrated strategy

An Interview with Maj. Gen. David H. Ohle

Last year the Army launched its third officer personnel management system study. The first two, in 1971 and 1983, worked well for about two decades but eventually needed thorough review for many reasons, particularly the changing global environment, the impact of the information age and ongoing revisions to national military strategy. This time, the Army hopes to create a dynamic, interactive system flexible enough to work in future years. The idea is to avoid the static systems of the past and their built-in obsolescence. By determining required changes to OPMS and recommending an integrated implementation strategy, the OPMS XXI Task Force expects to satisfy Total Army and joint requirements into the 21st century, and develop officers who expertly employ appropriate skills, knowledge and attributes, and whose behavior reflects Army values. The task force is using as a model for the new OPMS the leadership study developed in 1988 by former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, when he was deputy commandant of the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Dennis J. Reimer initiated the redesign of the officer evaluation report as well as the officer personnel management system.

He launched a comprehensive review of leadership and character development with the expectation that the results of the redesigns and reviews will ultimately mesh with the Army's core values to create a balanced officer development system that works effectively.

ARMY Editor Mary Blake French interviewed Maj. Gen. David H. Ohle, director of the OPMS XXI Task Force, concerning the task force's current activities and the scope of its changes to career development for Army officers in the future.

Q. I understand that you are now director of the Army's Officer Personnel Management System XXI Task Force, which supports the professional development needs and career patterns of active and reserve component officers over a 30-year career. What have you done so far?

A. Gen. Reimer, in his initial guidance, gave me three months to get the task force members on board and up to speed because 25 of the 31 members of the task force are operators and have had no experience in personnel, so I had to bring them on, move them to Washington, and start an education process so that they would understand what the personnel management system was all about. That took us up to the first of October. Since then we have been developing the characteristics of the next OPMS, defining the problems and designing what the model or the plan will be. We're trying to do a logical progression of goal definition, mission statement, goals, objectives and the plan. It was a very long and laborious first quarter but it really paid great dividends because we have everybody up to speed and they're full players now.

Q. What are your goals?

A. Our goals are to create a system that is better for the nation, better for the Army and better for the officer. The new system will balance the Army's diverse personnel requirements while providing Army XXI with a tactically and technically competent officer corps. Rigidity is the main problem with the current system. It wore out because it had little flexibility to change. We think that we'll create this flexible system for the future so that you can adapt it year by year rather than wait 15 years to reconvene another study group.

Q. I understand Army Chief of Staff Gen. Dennis J. Reimer chartered this task force. Did he provide guidelines?

A. Gen. Reimer said that warfighting remains the preeminent skill of the Army, but he also emphasized, "we need officers who understand how the Army works." You can see the slight change in focus. We're still going to maintain that warrior ethos for the Army, but we also have to have others who can understand and work in other jobs in the Army. He's given me the mission to broaden the definition of warfighting to include not only combat, but also stability and support operations; to be able to do the Bosnias and fight the forest fires and provide hurricane relief. We have to be able to conduct operations on land across the whole spectrum. He asked us to take a look at the different approaches to training, and differences between cultural and skill training. Cultural training is that training done in the institutions that is so essential that it really provides part of the socialization of the Army officer. Any training done in the institution that doesn't do that is skill training, and we have to look at innovative ways to do that skill training. Can we send officers TDY? Can we incorporate new distant learning techniques to provide that education to the officer? He also asked us to take a look at creating learning organizations in our fighting operational units. In other words, can they do things other than just training for war? For example, because of the shortage of officers, can the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) also write the doctrine for air assault operations? Right now they don't; it's written at Fort Benning, Ga. Maybe we have to make them a learning organization so that they help in the total effort of the Army. We'll look into that. Gen. Reimer provided pretty straight-forward guidance but he still told me to take a look at the whole system and fix whatever needs fixing. He said don't necessarily be constrained with where we are today.

Q. What are the problems with the current system?

A. There are four basic problems. First, we have a misalignment or an imbalance in the structure and the inventory of the Army. We have enough officers, but they're in the wrong grade and [at] the wrong skill [level]. It's a problem that we have to solve. It's a problem between the operations officers and the personnelists, where you have structure and requirements versus affordable inventory. The operators want more structure and higher rank, the personnelists want less inventory and lower rank because it's more affordable, so you have to match the two.

The second problem is the assignment turbulence. We're moving officers in the Army too fast. There's a personnel policy right now that says a major after he serves one year in a branch qualifying job, as an S-3 or an XO, is eligible to be reassigned, so you talk to the division commanders, the corps commanders, the training center commanders, and we're losing our experience of the warfighter. So what they say is stabilize the force, slow it down, give them more time. If you give them more time, there will be more experience; it has many other effects-fewer PCS moves, more time with your family, and more opportunities for families to be active in the community. It just creates a healthier Army if you can do that.

The third area is that we have to align the leader development with the OER and the OPMS. All the expectations are not equal right now. You know that there's the comment out there about zero defects. It's because we have an inflated OER.

We think as we bring the new OER on and we bring on a new OPMS, and put them together, we'll bring expectations back to reality. Now everybody gets a maximum OER, and they all think they should be battalion or brigade commanders and general officers. Not everybody is suited to be a battalion commander, so we have to balance our evaluation system, and we will.

Finally, the current OPMS system has no review mechanism, no way to look to the future, so we're going to fix that.

Q. You mentioned the rigidity of the current system as one reason we need an OPMS XXI study now. Are there other reasons we need a study now?

A. There are quite a few reasons why we need a study now. Gen. Reimer and Lt. Gen. Theodore G. Stroup Jr., U.S. Army retired, last year convened a group called the Precursor Study, and they wanted an answer to the question that you just asked me-do we need to do a study? As this group looked at the current OPMS system, they identified 57 issues, problem areas, with the current system. The current system is not broken, but 57 areas needed improvement. After they saw the results of that study group, they said we must redo the whole management system and take it into the 21st century. The problems fell into three areas-career management, structure and force distribution, and training and leadership development.

Q. How do you plan to integrate your work with the leader development XXI, character development XXI and the new officer evaluation report initiatives? (It must be difficult to separate leadership and character development as well as OER initiatives from your own OPMS goals.)

A. It is not an officer personnel management system but an officer integrated management system. The way you must integrate it, I believe, is to make sure whatever changes are being made to the new OER or whatever changes are being made in the leader development system must coincide exactly with the changes that are made in personnel management. Col. John A. Spears Jr., the director of the Center for Army Leadership and the leadership development system at Fort Leavenworth, works closely with us. Jack [John D.] Miller in PERSCOM who runs the project for the new OER and I talk frequently, so there is a total integration. They know what I'm doing and I know what they're doing. It fits together, and then we must have tie-ins with the new management system that leverage both the new OER and the leader development system.

Q. Do you think reasonable career expectations for the officer corps will change dramatically in the 21st century?

A. I think we have to define what success is and success really is a component of what each officer believes. We have to provide the expectation or the reasonable attainment of what success is.

We think it's in three areas: contributions, rank and security. We need to provide the ability for every officer to contribute fully to the Army. Most people automatically say success equals rank. We think contributions will be more important than rank. We also have to consider how the organization offers security for officers and their families into the future.

Q. Are you addressing morale problems?

A. The biggest morale problem is the zero-defects mentality. It's a perception out there. You ask the leaders and they say the zero-defects mentality does not exist in my organization, but you talk to the individuals below and they say it's there. It's driven by an inflated evaluation report where everybody is expected to get a maximum. If they don't, then they think that they've been held hostage, or because of the least little mistake, they are discriminated against. The leaders say that doesn't happen, but in the eyes of the subordinates, it does. The second reason for the zero defects is that they don't have an opportunity to fully develop. Everybody has to be forced through the same command track today for personnel management. And what we have to do is change that so that we don't get everybody through an eye of a needle. We have to provide-and this is the theme for OPMS XXI-multiple avenues of approach to success, not just one. We think that if you solve the evaluation report problems and you provide these multiple avenues of approach to success, you will solve the majority of the morale problems because they can do what they want. Now, if they can't perform, that's another issue. We're talking here about high-performing, quality officers.

Q. I understand that you met with a Council of Colonels - more than 75 lieutenant colonels and colonels - in October. What was the primary purpose of the meeting?

A. The Council of Colonels meeting provides a situation report to the field. Each one of the major commands, each one of the schools and TRADOC institutions selects a colonel to be the commander's representative. The primary purpose is to educate that colonel so that he or she can then go back and take the briefing packages, the slides and the situation report and brief all the personnel at the home installation. It's a quick way to get the word out through an expert. The second purpose of having a Council of Colonels meeting is so that colonel can bring input from the field to us. It has to be a two-way street. We just can't push our information out to the field; we also need to have those colonels bring us part of the solution from their commanders and from the field on how we redesign the management system.

Q. What kind of response have you received from the members of the Council of Colonels concerning the possibility of changing the compensation and reward for officers in the 21st century?

A. Most of these colonels have responded to a series of questions. One of the questions was about military compensation. The responses on every issue range from very conservative to visionary. Compensation is a very difficult issue because most of it deals with our up-or-out system. If you change compensation, you must change the Army's up-or-out policy, or slow it. I mean you don't have to get rid of it. For example, if you tenure majors then you must slow the up-or-out policy. They have offered suggestions across the whole spectrum, and we are analyzing their suggestions so that we can include them in our new model.

Q. What suggestions have been made so far about the most effective way to integrate the active and reserve components into a single officer development system?

A. We really don't think we will have a single officer development system for all components. The active component system will be different from the Reserve system but they must be interoperable. That's the key word, "interoperable," so that active officers can serve and assist the reserve components, and then we can bring reserve component officers into the active force or active duty for training or active-duty time. The two systems have to be different just because of the amount of training time. The active force is on duty 365 days a year, and the Reserve only has 39 days.You cannot manage the officers and expect exactly the same thing out of both populations, so we will have slightly different, adaptive systems for the active and reserve components. They have to be compatible so that we can work with each other.

Q. Are you planning to use more distance learning for the reserve components?

A. Yes, and for the active component. That is absolutely a key for taking the Army into the 21st century, not just for improving the management system. Distance learning enables you to conduct leader development, which in turn gives you better qualified officers, which in turn provides more opportunities for other jobs in a personnel management system-so one begets the other and they're all interdependent. That's why you just can't look at OPMS by itself. It has to interface with leader development, with the evaluation report.

Q. What's working right now, but may possibly go wrong tomorrow?

A. If we really design the system the way it should be, it will be flexible enough to continue the way it is but then adapt when we see the potential for things to go wrong, which is important. We've never been able to do that in the past. We haven't identified specific issues; what we've done is look at trends that are right today that are changing and may cause problems in the future. The three most important are increasing specialization-with the information age technology, we see that officers have to be more specialized; the changing nature of war-it changes the way you have to manage officers; and active component/ reserve component integration-we see that changing in the future. Gen. David A. Bramlett, commanding general of U.S. Army Forces Command, is conducting a study that will examine the true active/reserve component interface. As you know, we have one active Army battalion commander commanding a National Guard field artillery battalion.

Q. You have included in the characteristics of an officer development system the need to "seamlessly integrate joint and Army requirements" and "produce cohesion and sustained excellence in teams at all levels." How do you expect the Army to fulfill these needs?

A. I think these are two different issues. First let me talk about the excellence in units and teams and cohesiveness. We think you do that by stabilizing the force. The problem is turbulence; we move officers too quickly. We don't have enough time to keep them...they don't stay on station long enough now to be proficient in a job. They need to spend three years on a post, on an operational post, being an S-3 and an XO and a staff officer. Right now the policy says after being branch qualified as either an S-3 or XO they have to leave and go to another assignment. So we think we can get at this unit effectiveness through stabilization. Now the joint and combined issue is a very important issue. As you know we have the Goldwater-Nichols Act which contains joint requirements. We don't see a change to joint requirements, but we do see a change in the nature of the officers we're going to send to the joint arena. We think they will be better qualified, and we also have to take a look at how many officers we have. We have to take another look at requirements from the joint community. As we develop a system that produces expertise across the whole spectrum, we think we will have better qualified officers to fill each of the joint billets.

Q. Are you encouraging officers to contact members of the OPMS XXI Task Force with ideas on improving the officer personnel management system?

A. Absolutely. We have a home page and a representative from every branch and from every functional area on the task force, so if there's anybody out there who has input for the task force, contact us through the home page or through a representative on the task force.

Q. A recent article in ARMY claims that some of the Army's most capable officers are not involved in shaping the 21st-century Army and that other Services are "much better at finding officers who are exceptional warfighters and skilled staff officers, and keeping them in key Pentagon billets." Would you care to comment on this assertion?

A. I think every officer in the Army is trying to assist the Chief of Staff of the Army in taking the Army forward into the 21st century. There are different roles for all the officers. What we really need to do is to build a broad bench of experts who can, in their own area, take the Army forward. Right now the focus is to build the bench in the warfighting area, and we have the best warfighters we've ever had. To a certain extent, we've done that at the expense of building experts across the spectrum that we need to have to take us into the 21st century. As we develop this new system with the hallmark of providing multiple avenues of approach to success, so that everybody doesn't have to be a warfighter, we can have experts across the whole spectrum who not only take us into the 21st century but really help us in the Department of Defense and in the Joint Staff, and with all the commanders in chief in DoD. I think that really is what we have to do.

Q. How might the downsizing of the Army, resource constraints and increasing use of technology affect career opportunities?

A. As you know we have downsized considerably. We've gone from 780,000 to 495,000. We hope this is steady state. As we downsize, we have reduced the number of positions in the operational force. We've gone from 18 divisions to 10 divisions, so we have fewer warfighters today. The requirement today is that everybody still has to be a warfighter at the field grade level. We think that as we provide other avenues of approach to success, we will start to diversify the officer corps across the whole Army, not just in the warfighting command career field. We have to be able to do that to provide these opportunities because with only 10 divisions, we have only so many requirements. We still have quality officers across the whole Army. Rather than develop an Army of haves and have nots, we must provide other opportunities for those who, for whatever reason, don't get into the command billets or don't get into the command career field. We think we have great officers who will have opportunities across the whole spectrum now, not just with the operational boards.

Q. Has the downsizing of the Army in some cases limited the nature and range of career experiences open to officers? If so, what is the task force considering as a means to provide a variety of meaningful career experiences for officers in the 21st century?

A. As we go forward into OPMS XXI, we think we will develop new career fields. Shouldn't we have an information operations career field? That is the hallmark of the Army for the 21st century. We have to deal with information age technology, and we have simulations that play such a big part in the way that we train and prepare our forces for warfighting. We have to have a specialty that deals with simulations so that we are continually ensuring that we have the latest and best simulations available to train our force.

Q. Would you explain the relationship between technology and the officers implementing it in the 21st century?

A. I think they go hand in glove. In the Army in the last 10 years before the information age revolution, technology was not well integrated. The officers brought technology in during equipment upgrades. Now, technology and future technology are part of the Army; everybody deals with technology changes all the time. Most every officer has a computer. You sit down and you deal with the information age technology on a daily basis. Because you have this information age technology available, you then see other technology innovations across the whole force and you're able to develop and learn at a faster pace. I think the relationship will be even closer in the future rather than on parallel tracks as in the past.

Q. When do you plan to publish the OPMS XXI Task Force report?

A. We plan to publish it on July 1 and implement it on October 1. As the Army does on most everything, we must go through a marketing chain-teaching period where we educate the officer corps on what the changes are, so that when we implement it, it's not a start-up and everybody knows what's happening. So I think if we put this implementation plan together, this chain-teaching plan, we'll have a smooth transition from where we are today to where we will be in October.

Q. What impact do you think it will have on the lives and career paths of the 21st-century Army officers?

A. I think it will have a tremendous impact. First of all, the officers of the 21st century will be different, they will be trained differently, they will be more educated in the new information age and they will be able to contribute more across the whole spectrum. We think there will be better opportunities. They'll be greater opportunities across all jobs in the Army for all soldiers. It will provide an opportunity for officers not only to serve as warfighters, but also to choose a specialty and decide what and where they really want to contribute. It puts the onus of future service on the officers rather than on the system, so that the officers get to do what they really want to do, while doing what the Army needs them to do. We think that will enhance the whole Army.

Q. That can only work to a certain point though.

A. Well, you have to meet the needs of the Army absolutely. The operational chain of command is a very structured career field. As the officers don't get to compete in the operational force, they must do something else. Today they have no opportunity; they must probably retire or serve in the current grade. By providing other opportunities for them, we think we enhance the whole capability of the Army, not just the operational field.

Q. Are you interested in hearing what our readers think would be good for the Army officer of the future?

A. Yes. The OPMS Task Force XXI is not just a closed special think tank to redesign the Army. This is a task force that is in fact taking input from the entire Army. We're reaching out; this is not a cloistered study group. We have to make this system work, and the only way it will work is if we get the input from the field.

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Maj. Gen. David H. Ohle

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MAJ. GEN. DAVID H. OHLE was selected by Army Chief of Staff Gen. Dennis J. Reimer to serve as the director of the Officer Personnel Management System (OPMS) XXI Task Force on May 13, 1996. Before this assignment, he served as the deputy commandant of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College,

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Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

He has also served as director of the Louisiana Maneuvers Task Force, which developed Force XXI concepts to prepare the Army for the 21st century. A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, he holds a master's degree in social sciences from Ohio State University. His military experience spans more than 28 years of service in a variety of command and staff positions.

He brings to his current assignment the perspective of an officer with a thorough knowledge of the Army's plans and process of projection for the future and a recognition of the necessity to develop the kind of officer and the kind of leadership the Army needs in the next century.

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The OPMS XXI Task Force wants to hear from you.

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The OPMS Task Force is soliciting comments from the officer corps on the current officer personnel management system and recommended changes to it. Send comments by e-mail to tallonc@hoffman-emh1.army.mil or by fax to (703) 325-6523. Comments may also be mailed to OPMS XXI Task Force, 2461 Eisenhower Ave.,

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Suite 800, Alexandria, VA 22331-0009. For more information, see the OPMS XXI home page on the World Wide Web, http://www.army.mil/opms/ and you may also access the web site via a link on the U.S. Army home page. (Click Subject Index and find "OPMS XXI Task Force.")