 Well, hello, and thank you for joining us this afternoon on Facebook Live. I'm Hank Manitras from the Pentagon at the headquarters department of the Army G1. Today, our primary discussion will focus on a very important topic, the largest change to the non-commissioned officer corps in 50 years, the enlisted centralized selection board process. Signed by the secretary of the Army just last month, the Army will implement this over the next three years. It's a talent management effort that serves as a catalyst to evolve from time-based promotions to merit-based promotions. An added benefit is it will improve readiness, leader and professional development, and the professionalism of our non-commissioned officer corps. As our panel members will discuss it, it will affect decisions on promotions, assignments, retention, and it will maximize the potential of the Army's greatest asset, our people. We'll have more plenty in-depth discussion on this over the next hour, and we'll have some good dialogue with our participants on the U.S. Army Facebook Live feed. Right now, let's introduce our panel members. Our first guest really needs no introduction. We have the 15th sergeant major of the Army, SMA Daniel Daley, whose leadership and vision have been instrumental in helping shape this policy. As I'm sure everyone is aware, SMA Daley was sworn in as the 15th SMA January 2015. Throughout his tenure, he has led a number of efforts to improve the quality of life for our soldiers and their families, including this policy. So thank you, SMA, for joining us today. Thank you. Our second panelist is Sergeant Major Mark Clark, who is the sergeant major for the Directorate of Military Personnel Management for HQDA Army G1, and he is chiefly responsible for personnel management initiatives that affect the entire enlisted force across all components of the Army. As you can expect, he and his team have done the heavy lifting for developing the key changes in this policy, and these are the first changes to this policy, like I said, in more than 50 years. It's humongous. So thank you for joining us, Sergeant Major Clark. Thank you. Gentlemen, our goal today is to explain the changes in this new Army directive and lay them out so that we get the proper information straight to the field from our senior enlisted leadership. With that said, we can begin by giving you both an opportunity to share your thoughts and discuss the policy changes, and then we'll move into answering questions that have filtered into us here in the studio from our Facebook Live audience. SMA, take it away. Well, thank you. And Sergeant Major Clark, thanks for being once here today. Well, as you heard, this is a very big change to the Army. Over 50 years of doing our promotion system the same way we have been time and time again. And we didn't change for without good reason. Our promotion system has served us well, but we can do better. And that was the sole reason of why we made these significant changes to the promotion system. We want to change our system from largely a time-based system to a talent-based system. And that's where our promotion system is going today. Many of the changes that we've made in just the past few years led up to and were part of this greater change that we've been planning for some time. Sergeant Major Clark's team, along with the enlisted talent management team, have been working on this for over two years, and have put a lot of time and analysis and making sure that this is the right direction to take our non-commissioned officer corps for the future. I can assure you that it is the right direction to take our NCO Corps. And it will serve this non-commissioned officer corps well. And most importantly, it will compensate and reward those who work hard, who are most talented, versus be solely focused on time as a means to promote. There's a lot of things that are to be understood about this, a lot of details. That is forthcoming. There's a very deliberate plan to train and educate the entire non-commissioned officer corps here in the near future, beginning with our most senior sergeants majors in the upcoming Senior Enlisted Training Leader Development Conference in near Fort Bliss, Texas in June, and also the graduating class of the Sergeant Majors Academy before they depart this graduating year. That chain teaching will filter down through the chain of command over the next three years, which how long it will take us to fully implement this entire process. But we can talk about some of the details and get into the finer details of what the entire process is inside of the questions. Sergeant Major Clark. Thank you, SMA. So two years ago, the Sergeant Major Army challenged us to look at why we were doing time-based promotions. And in our analysis, we were able to determine that not only could we improve our promotion system, but we could also use that very same system to inform other decisions as far as who's the best qualified to be trained, who's the best qualified for assignments, and also who's the best qualified to retain. And with that, there are multiple benefits that are associated for the individual soldiers as well as the Army and the self. Through the new centralized evaluation board, soldiers will be more informed. They will be informed on where they stand amongst their peers. They will no longer have to guess where they stand. They will be notified through the Army career tracker. They will also be informed by limited feedback from the boards on what was positively or negatively affected a board member's vote on their actual board file. The soldiers also have more influence now than what they've had in the past. You now, through your performance potential and your board file that you present to a board, can determine how you rack and stack on an order of merit list within a board. This also will make you more qualified for the most demanding and challenging assignments that we have. The other benefits are more opportunities for soldiers with promotions. Currently, right now, we look at soldiers in zones of considerations with two years time and grade. Soldiers will now be looked at at 18 months time and grade to give them a six month advantage of being looked at earlier so that we can train them to be prepared for the positions in which they're going to go into after they're selected for promotion. Those opportunities are open to all the soldiers from staff sergeant through sergeant major who will be evaluated through this process. But most importantly, this process will improve Army readiness. We will now be able to promote soldiers, assign them and train them based on them being the best qualified in order to man our forces so that we can be the most lead through Army in the world. Okay, so we look forward to your questions and we appreciate you being online today to ask us those questions. All right gentlemen, thank you. Let's go with our first question. Some soldiers have to wait a year or longer after they've received their sequence numbers. Will the update to the policy prevent extended wait times allowing you to pin on sooner? I'll address it and I'll go to Sergeant Major Clark for some finer details. So first and foremost, the fundamental process of how we evaluate you through the board process which it used to be called a promotion board in the future will be called an evaluation board is the same. The non-commissioned officer's career path is by MOS is outlining DAPAM 600-25. That process will remain the same. The first fundamental changes is how we sequence individuals. Previously, the board members would vote. They would rack and stack individuals based upon the requirements laid out in DAPAM 600-25. And then that sequence, they would be resequenced based upon time and service time and grade. That process will not happen anymore. It'll be a true talent based list. So when the board decides that you're the most talented individual and you've met all the prerequisites for the evaluation of that year, you'll be assessed as the number one person. Then you'll be assigned a number. That number for the first time in the history of our centralized selection system will show you how you rated against your peers. It won't be the sequence number just determined you're the most senior or the most time and service or time and grade. That is your first indication of your performance based upon your peers and your same MOS and skill level. We will assign promotion allocations on a quarterly basis which will give our non-commissioned officer's predictability. So the promotions will still come around the same time to get us exhausting tire lists because that's our intent is to promote for the annual requirement and we will promote based upon requirements and we can accurately predict those requirements in real time through the new system. So the number, the total length of promotions for that annual won't change much because it's still gonna promote throughout that year. The fundamental change that we're doing is we're gonna promote the most talented first. Absolutely. And just to add to that SMA, so with the new promotion piece there will no longer be a actual promotion list that we will publish. We will now publish a list of all the fully qualified non-commissioned officers in alphabetical order. So there won't be a committed list to where we're committed to promoting someone where you have to wait 12 to 18 months to be promoted. The one thing that is gonna help with predictability in time is in the past we used to set promotion allocations and when that promotion board was finished and we resequenced by time and service time and grade we would draw a line within that board which is called our Sublect Object. Sometimes we get that number right. Sometimes we don't. It's all based upon predictability of known losses, retirements, chapters, those kind of things. But sometimes it's off. Sometimes we either have to carry that deficit into the next promotion year or we have to add even more promotions to the next promotion year because we had to wait for the next year in order to do that. Under this promotion board we have a fully qualified list and if we need to continue to promote all we do is keep moving down that list and promote the individuals. Once they're fully qualified because remember this is not a promotion list this is an evaluation list. You still must meet all the requirements of step to get promoted. That sounds good. It makes total sense to me. Question number two. If everything is based on merits what or who helps to keep the integrity of the system and how do we know that leaders are truly advocating for the most highly qualified NCOs as opposed to the most highly liked individuals? Yeah, this is a great question and a lot of times I hear this out in the field of perception of inequality inside of a promotion board. Let me tell you after being a member and a participant in numerous amounts of boards I can tell you this system is very fair. As I mentioned earlier DAPAM 600-25 outlines the career path for you and your MOS and skill level and it clearly says lines out the things that you need to do to be successful within your MOS and your skill level. The board must demonstrate their ability to be able to assess packets before they can continue on in the board process. So when the board members show up they're giving a briefing. They review the board guidance from myself, the chief staff of the army, the board president and they review the requirements in DAPAM 600-25 for the board. Then they are tested by giving a mock board process. Each of them are given files. They must board those files and they must all board them within a specific range which we call aberrant of each other and they cannot continue on with the official board until that is done. Charmander Clark, did you want to clarify anything? Absolutely, well in addition you the individual soldier will know where you are ranked on that OML because you will be notified through Army Career Tracker. And in that notification when we post a 90 day notification of the OML numbers that we plan to promote you will know if you are within that quarterly notification. So unless you are not fully qualified meaning you have not attended your PME, your SLC or your MLC that is needed for promotion or you are not flagged or barred for re-enlistment you are otherwise qualified and you will be promoted in the order that you are on the OML. So you as an individual soldier have the ability to track to ensure that you are being promoted in the order of merit. And additionally there's a bunch of processes within the board process to keep it fair. Like when board members are reviewing packets none of them are reviewing packets at the same time in the same packet and not even in the same order. So it doesn't go from one board member to the next. It's random. They each sit behind their own computer systems. They are evaluating based upon the established standards that are outlined by the board president and they are continuously throughout the board process assessed on the ability to give fair assessment to each and every packet on an individual basis. What I remind non-cubist offices all the time is if you want to know what you have to do to get promoted it's into BAPAM 600-25. It is updated on an annual basis by your proponent and it is relevant to what the Army needs in that MOS and skill level. Well earlier as we were talking about promoting based on allocations and requirements. So how will HRC balance out fully qualified NCOs against the promotion demand that's out there? What happens when there's a low demand but thousands of fully qualified NCOs? Well go to Sergeant Major Clarks and she's the subject matter expert on personnel management. So within the new NCO evaluation board process we were able to combine our QMP and our QSP process our qualitative service program and our qualitative management program. So if there is a concern of a stagnation within an MOS we will take the OML and we will start from the bottom from the not fully qualified and we will be able to separate those individuals from the military and from the fully qualified. If they are within good standards we can also reclassify them to make room in certain military occupational specialty so that we can continue to have promotions and growth within those CMS. Yeah and so important to notice as Sergeant Major Clarks said in the past we did several boards to help manage the force either through promotion or selection criteria or quality management. Now we were calling this a multi-use board so each skill level will be evaluated each year and everybody will be eligible for that same board and when you're assessed you'll be assessed as fully qualified or not fully qualified. Those individuals who are not fully qualified may receive notification that they're at risk for administrative separation from the army especially if they get assessed for a second year and the second year they're still on fully qualified. So this board allows us to cut down the number of promotion boards we do a year and it allows a single look by one group to equally measure the performance of each knock-a-bished officer within that evaluated pool. Excellent. Well certainly everything we do in the army and in the personnel world is tied to readiness and you've mentioned already that this will enhance our readiness. Love for the both of you to chime in and sort of expand on that a little bit how this really does affect readiness and improve it. Yeah absolutely and many knock-a-bished officers that have been through the promotion system in the past you can all remember that sometimes you'll wait on a promotion list for some time and you realize that why your promotion number was so high, your sequence number was so high. Well honestly it's because it was based upon your time and service, time and grade regardless of how you fell out on your performance on the board. So how the board rated you. We took a look at that and we said we wanted to reward talent. Talent bates promotions is the direction we wanted to go. Every knock-a-bished officer in this promotion system will still have to meet the time and service and time requirements to be eligible for that evaluation board. But once the board is complete and once the board members have reviewed and assessed everyone in that pool it will be true talent that depicts your number. And if you're number one on the list you'll be offered an opportunity to go to school first and when you complete that training and meet all the requirements for promotion and there is a requirement for promotion in your skill level on MOS you will be given that promotion. And that's how the simply how the new system is gonna work. That is gonna build readiness because it rewards the most talented individual. It rewards those people who are working hard to do the things that the army needs them to do. And that's most important. We have requirements in the army. We have authorizations in the army and they change all the time. And this is an evolving and changing and adapting army. And that's why we have to change a promotion system to meet those demands. Absolutely, yes it may. With our current process that we have now it takes us two years to grow a Sergeant First Class and a Master Sergeant in three years for a Sergeant Major. With the new NCAA evaluation board process we will be able to meet immersion requirements in the time that we need them. If a new requirement is identified after a board has been processed currently we would have to wait till the next board in order to promote or select someone to fill those requirements. With a standing OML we can simply move down to the next qualified or the best qualified non-commissioned officer who is fully trained and fully eligible to be promoted to promote them to those requirements. Thus giving an opportunity for soldiers to be promoted faster versus waiting for the board the next year. Yeah, so like now when we're growing the army I mean under our old system if I said hey we need to add this many Sergeant First Classes or Master Sardons we had to wait for the next board cycle? Absolutely. But under this new one I won't have to. We will be able to use the standing OML that we have to promote to those requirements now. And just keep moving down the list by the most talented people to fill those authorizations. Absolutely. Excellent. Our next question from the field. How soon does the notification process begin for selected NCOs? Sharmaid? So similar to the current process that we have once a board is approved and the list is actually published to the field in alphabetical order with an asterisk notifying who is the best qualified meaning they had a 5.5 or higher on the board vote by the board members. That list will be published to the field and those individuals will then be scheduled for school. So it's more of a selection for school. So as you go to school the individuals who become fully qualified for school will be the first individuals that we end up promoting. And there's normally a 30 day timeframe from the release of the list to when HRC schools branch can start scheduling individuals for school. All right, Sharmaid, in talking about timelines we mentioned that we're gonna phase this in over the next three years. Can you walk us through the timeline on that? Yeah, absolutely. I'll talk the reasoning and allow Sharmaid or Clark to talk some of the specifics. As you know, this is a big army and we've been doing this promotion system. I've said up front that it has served us well to this point but we can do better. And we have to phase this in over time to meet the demands and requirements of the army first and foremost and the readiness requirements. And secondly, so we don't hurt any non-commissioned officers. We have current boards that are still in effect, current sequence number of promotion lists that are still in effect. And we have to sequence a lot of other things to make sure that this works and it is implemented over time. So that's why we chose to implement this over a three year period. And it gives us space. There are a little bit of room in there if we have to make slight left or right adjustments or changes to other policy or procedures to complement the process. And this allows us to do in stride after action reviews, after each board, starting with the most senior and working down. Right, Sharmaid? Absolutely, SMA. In addition to what the SMA is saying, starting this year, fiscal year of 19, we counseled the non-commissioned to the Sarm Major Board and the Command Selection Board and we replaced it with the Sgt. Major Evaluation Board that is gonna take place here in August. In addition, also in May, we conducted the Master Sergeant Promotion Board. When that board is released, those individuals will no longer be sequenced based on time and service or time and grade, but they will be sequenced by OML numbers. Also, fiscal year 20, we will start the Sarm Major Evaluation Process for those who will be selected for Class 71 to go to United States Sarm Major, United States Army Sarm Major Academy. And then in fiscal year 21, November of 20, we will do the Master Sergeant Board where those individuals will use the new NCOE Evaluation Board to be selected. And in February of 2021, we will do the Sergeant First Class Board where all staff sergeants will be evaluated through the NCOE Evaluation Board for selection to Sergeant First Class for training and also assignments. So if I'm on a current standing list right now and I have a sequence number, am I gonna be grandfathered into that? Correct, so the changes for promotions will not take effect until the November 20 Sergeant First Class Evaluation Board, which is the board we will use to determine who is promoted to Master Sergeant. That's good, so I'm safe. I already got promoted and I've already been selected. I'm okay. Yes. Excellent. Good question, SMA. And naturally, the next question, how does this affect the National Guard and Reserve populations? That's a great question. And when I receive as I've been traveling around lately, the promotion system for the Army National Guard and Army Reserve is different. And so a lot of those differences are governed by law. So currently this system does not have a direct effect on their promotion system, but the National Guard and the United States Army Reserve are currently exploring opportunities to improve and to make their system more capable of meeting the readiness needs of those two components, Sergeant. Absolutely. The current process that we have right now is specific to Title X, Active Component and AGR. However, as the integrated personnel pay system of the Army comes online, we will be able to implement how we do promotions for TPU soldiers and as well as IMA. Well, I mean, we've heard a lot of talk from you during your road shows and in your presentations at other events and venues, also from the Secretary and the Chief about talent management. So how does this play into the Army's overall scheme of talent management and human capital strategy? Yeah, absolutely. First and foremost, it's rewarding the most talented and it's not a time-based promotion system. And if you heard Sergeant Major Clark a few times mention Ipsa A, the new integrated personnel pay system that's gonna come online and we failed it with the National Guard first, as a matter of fact. It's gonna give us great more capability and this system has been built with that in a mind to move forward. When we move in the future, we wanna use a whole lot more things to determine who the most talented is and not only that, the specific needs of the Army based upon specific requirements of certain positions. It is my goal to eventually get to the point where we can reward the most talented individual by promoting them first, getting them to the assignment that the Army needs them in the most and also the one that they want to go to. I've given the guidance to the team is that first and foremost, we need to meet the needs of the Army and we always will meet the needs of the Army. But secondly, we should try to meet the needs of the soldier and the needs of the family. And if we can do all three, that's a win. Now, I don't wanna set any false expectations. You always gotta go back to number one. You gotta meet the needs of the Army first. Absolutely, yes, I mean. So the OML that will be produced from our NCOA Evaluation Board Process will be fed to the IPSA system through a secure mechanism. That coupled with the 25 point profile that will be built into IPSA will not only help HRC man the field, but would also help commanders at the local level be able to do talent management within their organizations. Yeah, so it's gonna give us an ability that we never had before, to look at a multitude of things. If you know a specific non-communist officer with a specific skill set in their file or that's covered in IPSA, we can reach down in HRC and all the other personnel managers within the Department of the Army system can find specific requirements for specific jobs that we need to cross the Army. So we have designed this system, this new promotion system to complement those add-ons in addition as we move into the future. Well, as we talk about talent management, gentlemen, how do you define talent? Will PT, civilian schools, non-commission officer education system and awards play a role in this? I'd say the answer to all that is yes. And what we're trying to do is, Bill, as you've heard in the past, the well-rounded soldier. All of that will play a role. Most importantly, readiness. And what do we need to be ready? Deployability. It's gonna play a huge role in assessing talent in the future. Your physical fitness, as you all know, we're moving to the new ACFT. And we're doing that to increase the readiness of our Army and increase the fitness level of our Army. Your non-commissioned officer education schools, the 1059 is changing in their future, where we're gonna enumerate where your class standing is. That was also pre-programmed to complement this new promotion system, a new evaluation system. All those things play a role. As I tell non-commissioned officers, is everything you do throughout your career should and will have an impact on your ability to be evaluated at the highest levels and be open to the opportunities for the first opportunities to be promoted in the future. Right, Chairman? Absolutely, SMA. And to kind of put it in another way, if you look at how you were evaluated on your non-commissioned officer evaluation reports, those same items are looked at and that information feeds the NCO evaluation board process, which determines how you can rack and stack on the order of merit list. So you doing all those great things with PT, school and education informs us on who's the best qualified individual, which can in turn determine where you can be assigned or when you can be promoted. And the more information we can give to the selecting board officials, the better we can get at assessing the most talented individuals for the evaluation list. So will the update affect NCOES and will NCOs be able to pin before SLC or MLC? We designed this with the NCOES to definitely compliment it and here's why. All too often we select individuals for promotion under the new system and then we offer those individuals an opportunity to go to school because you know just a few years ago we instituted what was called STEP, select, train, educate, promote. And we did that because thousands of non-commissioned officers had not gone to the requisite level of education required for their skill level. And we created a backlog and at one point it was greater than 50,000 NCOs across the Army. Not good for those individuals but not good for the readiness of the Army. So what this is Laos going to do, you heard Sir Major Clark say that we're going to now look at you 18 months out. Now the perception is going to be that we're going to promote people too fast and that's not true. The reason why we're doing that is so we can train ahead. We want to evaluate you and we find out that you're the most talented individual. We offer you the training opportunity and the great thing about this new system is it's not a promotion roster. So I am not and this team is not bound to owe you a promotion. All right, let's just say for example your number one on the list. We're going to call you. HRC is going to assign you a school slot and they're going to say, hey, you need to go to school. And if you go to school and you graduate and you're fully eligible, the first requirement we need for promotion will be offered to you. Let's say I'm number two and I get called and said, hey, you need to go to school. And I say, no, I can't go to school right now. We can go to number three. We don't have to wait because we have not assigned you a sequence number and it's going to allow us to continue to promote farther down that list. I promise you than we ever had in the past because we know from historical means that hundreds of our NCOs every quarter do not attend school. And it's not for operational reasons. It's for individual reasons. And the rest of the promotion list or the rest of the evaluation list should not have to bear the brunt of that individual not wanting to go to the requisite level of training. I agree. So the new process will actually put more emphasis on completing your NCOES because you can think of it as not being selected for promotion anymore, but being selected for school. And in order to go to school and complete school, that's really when you could obtain a promotable status because otherwise you're not fully eligible to be promoted to the next grade without the school. So going to school once you are put on notification is very important because if you fail to complete your NCOES within the first 12 months after being notified that you're eligible to go, you will have to recompete again the very next year for promotion again or for evaluation board. And that's important. There's no carryovers with this process. If you're evaluated this year, that doesn't mean you continue to be evaluated that same. You have to reevaluate each year unless you were offered a promotion and opportunity to go to school. But it's important. Our non-commissioned officers need to go to the level of training, respect to their skill level. And to all too often, there's a backlog created in the system. Many NCOs out there can attest to it because they get frustrated because they can't get a school slot. Well imagine if a non-commissioned officer is offered a school slot and they don't go. And then they come around two or three months later and they're offered another slot and they don't go. And they fail to show a third or fourth time. We've had some NCOs who have failed to do that seven times. Those are seven school authorizations from one non-commissioned officer that could have been given to another NCO. This new system complements our non-commissioned officer professional development system by delivering training on time, ahead of time and creating opportunities for non-commissioned officers to get promoted and not having to burden by people who don't want to train. All right, next question from the field online. When will the next Sergeant First Class Board take place? Sergeant Clark. So the next Sergeant First Class Board will actually be in June of 2019. So it will be under the current policy where we will do a normal selection board. However, when the promotion list is released these soldiers will be released in OML sequence. They will not be time based. The next Sergeant First Class Board after this one will be February of 21. So we plan a select objective rate of promotions to cover us through fiscal year 21 before we do the first NCO evaluation board in February of 2021. I'd like to go back to something we mentioned earlier. We talked about one end of the spectrum, those that have been grandfathered in. But Sergeant Major Clark, I know that in an interview recently you talked about how millennials might look at this as an opportunity. I'd like for you to talk about that just a little bit. All too often in conversations with young soldiers they are always looking for ways to utilize their talents to set themselves apart from their peers. In the new NCO evaluation board process these soldiers will have the opportunity to be rewarded for their performance and their potential. The better they do, the better chance they have of having a higher OML number. The better opportunity they have to get the most deserving and challenging assignments that they want. The best opportunities they have to be trained ahead of their peers. So for the young millennials I think this is the type of system that they can thrive in because they understand that there is a reward for the hard work that they put in. Yes, I may any comment on the millennial population there who are recruiting right now. Absolutely, and I'm proud of what they're doing. And exactly what Sergeant Major Clark said. You should not be held back because of time and service, time and grade. Obviously we have prerequisites and we're going to maintain those. Meaning there's a minimum amount of time you need to serve in each grade. And we know that in order to build experience. But the analogy I always use is when you get up to the start line and people take off, the person that's given the gold medal is the person that crosses the line first. And that's the way it should be. Because if you met all the requirements to be at the starting line, then you should get all the rewards at the finish line. Cool. Well how will support MOSes compare to combat arms MOSes when those support MOSes may not get the same opportunities? Yeah, go ahead Sergeant Major. So when we do the NCOA Evaluation Board process, all support MOSes will be compared against soldiers that are in the same MOS as them. So they will not be compared to combat arm MOSes. They will be compared against their peers. So your competition, you're being wracked and stacked against those that carry the same MOS as you. So you don't have to worry about being compared to the combat arms when the board members are evaluating your records. Yeah, there's a lot of people that get selected for the board process. They show up and they all get the briefing from the board president. But when it's time to execute, they break down their individual areas of expertise. For example, when the last boards I sat on was the 11 Bravo Sergeant First Class Board. And we looked at the MOS of 11 Bravo, 11 Charlie and some of the 18 series, the Special Operations Series. We didn't look at any other MOSes in there because that wasn't the level of expertise for those board members. We select board members based upon their own individual knowledge skills and attributes. And they also have to be fully qualified within their skill level in MOS in order to serve as a board member, right Sergeant Major? Absolutely. Well, I would like to just talk a little bit about what we're expecting leaders out there to do in terms of educating and preparing their soldiers right now. I would assume that there are some pitches that you're giving SMA at the different leadership courses that you visit. You know, what are we expecting brigade, battalion, company level leadership to be doing to help set their soldiers up for success? That's a great question. First and foremost, be patient. We've built time into this so we could train the force over time, okay? So don't teach them things you don't know about yet. We're going to get you the training package. It's coming and it's not late. It's ahead of schedule because the only real population we're going to affect fully this year is the Sergeant Major population and they are going to be fully trained and educated. Like I said, in June at our annual senior enlisted training leader development conference, every nominative Sergeant Major will be trained by the subject matter experts on every single detail of this and how it will be implemented over the next three years. The graduating class of the United States Army Sergeant Major Academy will also be trained before they graduate and leave this summer. Then we'll issue the training packages to that field and their job is to subsequently train the trainer down through the process. Again, we have plenty of time. If there's questions in the meantime, you can ask your personnel managers, but they're not going to affect the population until you've been fully trained, I assure you. Right, Sergeant Major? Absolutely, yes, sir, ma'am. The biggest thing I would say is focus on getting yourself educating, educating your soldiers, educating your leaders who evaluate soldiers so that we understand the process that is coming forth. You also can reach out on the Army G1 page. We have frequently asked questions. As we receive questions, we answer them and we post them out there for your edification and also soon as the SMA said, we have a training package that we're going to release to the field so that you can conduct professional development sessions in your organizations. Yeah, and I can't stress enough is if you, the most important part is educating your non-commissioned officers on what the board evaluates and that is clearly outlined in DAPAM 600-25. For some reason, it's this unknown thing and it is very clear. It's simple. If you go in there and read it, it's very understandable and you'll agree with what's in there. It's the standards by which each of the proponents has said this is what's important for that skill level and MOS. Once again, I want to remind the audience to keep submitting your questions and thank you again for joining us here on Facebook Live. Submit your questions. We don't get to them in the course of our dialogue here with our panelists. We're going to make sure that we have a crack team of folks answering your questions after we're done well after this broadcast. Next one we have though from the field is will the update affect the DA photo process? That's a great question, Charmander. So the short answer is no. So that you can understand how the DA photo impacts your actual board process. When a board member is looking at your file, the very first thing that they see is your DA photo. So you want to make sure that you and a squad leader or a supervisor takes the time to ensure that your DA photo is up to date and represents you because this will set the tone of how a board member views your file and the individual that you're representing yourself to be. Yeah, absolutely. And I can't stress enough that there is a different change. In the past, you could decline a look for promotion. Under this evaluation system, everybody's going to be evaluated. So if you fail to update your photo in accordance with Army regulation, you could be at risk of falling below the same level as your peers. This evaluation board could lead to your administrative removal from the Army if you are selected twice in two years in a row as being below the standard of your peers. What I tell you is this requires every non-commissioned officer to do their job and every non-commissioned's job is to follow the regulation and update their records. Will there be an exception to policy for pregnant soldiers to compete at any NCOES in order to allow them to be competitive? We entertain exception to policies from promotion all the time. One that we have written into the regulation right now is for operation. So we don't hinder any of those people who are doing what the Army's asked them to do. And chain of commands can submit exception to policy for soldiers. So following some of the social media posts out there as the stories come out about this process and procedure and the naysayers out there, there was nothing wrong with the old system. And I think if we could just revisit that for a second to address that, talk about some comparisons, the old system versus the new, why the old system just really is outdated. Yeah, absolutely. And you heard me say it has served us well for many years, 50 years is a long time. Both of us are a product of that promotion system so we can't talk necessarily about it. That doesn't mean we can't improve on it. And we took an opportunity, this opportunity to do just that. Also it meets emerging requirements. As we talked before, we used to have to wait till another annual board cycle before we could change the requirements. How often does the Army requirements change? Well, let me tell you, since I've been the Sergeant of the Army all the time, we are constantly downsizing the Army or growing the Army or adding authorizations and moving authorizations. And whether you know it or not, that has a direct effect on our ability to promote soldiers on time and meet the demands of the Army. And this is an ever-changing environment that we live in every single day. And the requirements, the four structure requirements for the United States Army change to meet those ever-changing requirements. Giving us the ability to promote as necessary off of a standing evaluation list enables us to meet those emergency requirements on a quarterly basis versus an annual basis. As you heard Sergeant Major Clark say earlier, under the old system, if we didn't promote enough, we'd have to wait till the next board cycle and then select more. And then what happens if the requirements change during that year? Then we over-promoted. So to be very honest, what we would do is we would stall the promotion system because we have to promote to the Army's requirements. And we ended up doing this wave of over-promoted, under-promoted, over-promoted, and it frustrates the force. The biggest angst I think that you're gonna hear people say is there, what about predictability? In the past, I used to have a sequence number and I knew I was gonna get promoted. But I can tell you, if you're doing what the Army needs you to do, all right? The promotion allocations are gonna be the same as they were in the past, but it's gonna reward those people who are doing what the Army needs them to do. We're gonna be able to skip the people who don't choose to go to school for their own reasons, all right? We're not gonna hold it against anybody for something they didn't do wrong, okay? But there's a lot of people throughout the year that because of themselves don't go to school and we can skip over those individuals and give that promotion authorization to a deserving non-commissioned officer. That's gonna help us get farther down that list. If the requirements change in the annual cycle, we don't have to wait for the next board cycle. We can say I need six to 10 or 12 or maybe a hundred more allocations for a specific MOS. Sergeant Major? Absolutely. And to further echo what the SMA is saying, with our current process that we have now, when we release a promotion list, we the Army have committed to promoting you. And as requirements change over the years, we may not actually need those promotion in that MOS by the time we're actually promoting you, but we may need them in another MOS. And so the new process gives us the flexibility to promote where we need the requirements and to make sure that we aren't over-promoting where we don't need it and that we can make up the shortages where we're hurting in other MOSs. And I think the biggest change, I think in a lot of senior non-competent officer would attest to it is, you're working hard, you're doing exactly what the Army has asked you to do. You met the requirements to compete for promotion, but you have to wait in front of everybody else who may have not been as talented as you, who may have not been hard working as you, have may not see the valuations as high as you. You have to wait for them to get promoted based upon time. Time is not the primary factor to determine talent. It is a factor that helps determine whether or not you have a level of experience. But that experience sometimes is good and sometimes is bad. This rewards exactly what we should be rewarding, performance and potential. Two-part question for you. Part one, how will this affect the MOSs in high demand for NCO versus smaller MOSs, or MOSs that are over-strength? And how does this affect those that are constantly deploying? Because you mentioned going to school, they may not have that opportunity since they're in a high-op tempo. Absolutely, and I'll address the deployment. It's our manager. I'll let you talk about the high-demand and low-demand MOSs. First and foremost, we have built into the process of waiver. So if you're doing what the Army's asking you to do, all your chain of command has to do is submit a waiver and we can promote you. So if you're deployed or there's an operational requirement, now the regulation is written, and I assure you that the first and foremost, you should go to school. I've told leadership all the time. If there's an opportunity, even if the unit is deployed to send that non-occupied officer back to go to school, that's what you should do. And we've enabled that by putting schools in places like Kuwait and we do MTTs in the Horn of Africa and other locations. And even in Afghanistan in recent years, we've done some MTTs because we gotta train you. We gotta train you to be able to do your job and lead your soldiers, and that's first and foremost. But the system is designed to not hurt soldiers who are doing exactly what the Army needs them to do. But looking at the numbers, I'll tell you, every quarter, I review the number of those non-commissioned officers and the reasons why they have not gone to school. The lowest number is operational needs. The highest number is individual requirements. So we still have to fix ourselves. Operational requirements we will compensate for, but I need non-commissioned officers to do the things that the Army asked them to do, get to school so they can become fully eligible. Sorry, Mitt. So to address high demand and low demand MOSs, for the high demand MOSs that are very hard to retain, soldiers who are performing well, who are ranked the best qualified on their OML and those high demand MOSs may be selected for continuous service beyond their RCP because we need them and they are actually doing the great work that we need them to do. For those that are in low demand MOSs, if you are a fully qualified non-commissioned officer towards the bottom of your OML list, we will offer you the opportunity to reclassify into a under-strength MOS because you are still doing what the Army is asking you to do and you want to serve, so we will give you other opportunities to serve in a different MOS. Yeah, so this really helps us balance the force. Sergeant Major Clark made an appointment, and this is there about RCPs. Retent's control points, which is a time-based system is what we use to help us manage the strength of a force. So we have a mandatory time you can serve as a Sergeant First Class, a Master Sergeant, a Sergeant Major, and sometimes that serves the needs of the Army and sometimes it hurts the individual. You have some fully qualified, high-performing non-commissioned officers that still have a lot to believe in the Army, but we can't retain them because of RCPs. This system allows us to get away from that because it rewards talent and it retains talent. We can use talent as a means, as retention, and force management because we do have to tell people it's time to go home as well, and we should, right, and not time, and it rewards those individuals who continue to sprint at the finish. So will NCOES school seats be increased and will the Guard and Reserve soldiers get equal preference for those? Well, we have always given equal preference to Guard and Reserve. As a matter of fact, a multitude of our knock-based officer education and professional development system seats come from our COMPO 2 and 3 schools. We have what is called the One Army School System. The One Army School System is in full effect and all training knock-based officers out there in units have what is called the Common Operation Pitcher for the One Army School System. So they can see available training seats. If a designated unit who's designated for those training seats has not secured them within 90 days, they can go in there and then secure those non-commissioned officer training seats for their unit. That's been going on for some years. There's a little myth about not having enough training seats out there. I can assure you that we meet the demands of the requirements of the Army each year. And throughout the year, we do what is called a Trap System. I'll let Sergeant Major Clark describe the details of it. But basically, sometimes we don't get the number right. Or, as I talked before, the requirements change throughout the year. Well, we have a mechanism place that allows us to adjust that, Sergeant Major. So as the SMA said, we currently have the capacity to train the requirements that we need for soldiers to get promoted. However, sometimes individuals don't go to school and that's a school seat of an individual who could have been trained that doesn't get trained. And so what happens when we have additional training requirements based on what we didn't project for, we have to do what's called a Trap Process where we resource for additional instructors so that we can do additional classes and ensure that individuals get trained. So how does this affect soldiers who are on permanent profile? Well, that depends. Every profile is specific. What I tell you is that if you can meet the demands of your MOS and skill level, then it should have minimal effect. But if you can't, as you know, we just updated policy just a short while ago about being deployable. There's a requirement for you to be deployable as a soldier. And you should be a requirement for you to be deployable as a soldier. So it depends on the profile. But I'll tell you is you need to meet the demands of your MOS. So in short, I would tell you the policies associated with profiles that impact your ability to train are still in effect. There are no changes associated with those policies. That's right. Well, as we mentioned qualifications, the term fully qualified is throughout this new directive. Can you give some examples of what a fully qualified NCO looks like from the board's perspective? Yeah, sure. So when board members vote your file, they vote from a one minus all the way through a six plus. On average, if a soldier has a three minus or above, they are considered what is considered fully qualified. If your score comes up to a two or below, you are considered what's considered not fully qualified. So we will use the not fully qualified individuals who receive a two or a one. And we will send you a notification to let you know that the board has found you not fully qualified. And if your service does not, or your performance does not improve that your service could be at risk. If a soldier is a three or above, this means that you are fully qualified for promotion if requirements are available. Which means, for example, the 2018 Southern First Class List for 42 Alphas, we had a 96% selection rate. Which means we selected everyone who was fully qualified because those were the requirements that we had for that MOS for that year. So like we mentioned earlier, what if I found unqualified on the first board? You send me a notice, tell me, put me a notice saying, hey, I need to do something different than what I'm doing now. On the second board, I come on fully qualified, then what happens? So in the first time that you're found not fully qualified, you will receive a headquarters DA bar to continue service. You will have 12 months to overcome that bar. If you receive a second not fully qualified for the board, then you will be separated from service. And that's where we can add that promotion allocation to the next year's evaluation board, right? Absolutely. That's good. Okay. Well, how about those with special duties? Will they continue to outweigh others such as drill sergeant over recruiting duty? Question from the field. Yeah, and I get this question all the time. What I tell you is go back to DAPAM 600-25. So it depends on your MOS. What I tell you is it will clearly outline, for example, I was a young 11 Mike and then 11 Bravo. And if you look in there, it'll say you should serve as a squad leader first. And then a broadening opportunity as a drill sergeant or recruiter will be looked upon favorably. So it depends. It depends where you are in your professional development model. Depends on your skill level. And it depends on the specific MOS, aren't they? And I would tell you from my experience of sitting on the board is not just whether you're a recruiter or whether you were a drill sergeant, it's how you perform in those positions. So I want you to understand that just serving in a position does not guarantee you a promotion. It will help make you competitive with your peers, but it's determined on how you perform when you are in those positions. But if you are unsure whether you should do recruiting or whether you should do drill sergeant, I must echo what the SMA said. Refer to DAPAM 600-25. It will outline it for your MOS. What jobs that you should hold at each grade. Absolutely. Well, something you just said there kind of sparked something I'd like to ask Sergeant Major Clark and going back to what defines a fully qualified soldier and you've linked that to performance, can you get a little more specific and talk about what would happen or what would cause a soldier to be not fully qualified? Yeah, let me tell you what I've observed. Just to ease some of the angst out there. If you're coming to work and doing your job every day and performing at a level that's commensurate of your peers, you're gonna be fully qualified. You have to earn a one or two evaluation by a board member. And I'm telling you, I'm a person that's set on many boards, okay? And what are some examples of an unqualified failure to meet height and weight, failure to pass an APFT, did something derogatory, got a DUI, okay? Had an EO violation or a SHARP violation. They received a well below the standard of evaluation on their non-commissioned officer evaluation board or four or five, right? Recommended by the chain of command to not be promoted or continue in service. You have a bar, you have a flag, you're non-deployable. These are all the things that clearly make you unqualified. Right, Sherman? You hit it right on the head, isn't it? Will the revisions affect how and when fully qualified sergeants first class are fracked to first armed positions? Well, let me clear up something about fracking. Fracking is based upon an authorization, okay? So it won't change. If you are within a certain time period of taking over an authorized first armed position, then the chain of command can frock you if you are in a status, right, Sherman? So we intend to look at revising the regulation as it pertains to fracking because one, the concept of promotable will go away because there's no longer a promotion list that is released and that you are promotable. So with that concept going away, we expect leaders to find first and foremost the most fully qualified master sergeant to serve in those first armed positions because the analysis that we've done here shows that we have way too many sergeant first classes serving as first sergeants than master sergeants, which is what we do the requirements based on to fill those first armed positions. Absolutely, but Sergeant Major's right. We have to look at the language because there's still gonna be those opportunities where you have somebody that's fully eligible. They've been evaluated, they're high on the list, they've been to record level school. They're fully eligible for promotion. So we'll get back to you on some language change on that, but of course if we need to, first and foremost, we need to find fully qualified master sergeants to fill those first armed positions, but we will make sure there's an opportunity. So that's clearly understood by the force when that takes an effect. All right, next question that we've gotten from the field. How does the OML work when you've already attended SLC-MLC? We may have already covered it, but they might have just tuned in. Yeah, that's great news. And in the future, a lot of those people will have because we're gonna train ahead. The intent of this system is to get rid of the backlog. So if you're fully qualified and you're high enough on the OML, the evaluation list and the Army has a requirement for promotion, we're gonna be offering it to you. That's the great news. So if you're trained ahead, good on you. That's it right there. Now, Sergeant Major Clark, I know that your office puts out the board instructions. Could you give us a rundown of how that's gonna play out as far as announcing each board? What types of instructions will you issue and what do soldiers need to do if they have questions? Okay, so with the current process, we normally announce the board 120 days out, giving soldiers the opportunity to update their records and validate them before they go to the board. With the new NCOE evaluation board process, we intend to add a 60-day window on the back end of the 120 days that we're giving soldiers to update their records because we want commands to have an opportunity to also validate those records, saying that those individual soldiers are fully qualified and eligible for promotion. Yeah, and this is every single non-commissioned officer in that skill level in grade, right? Absolutely, yeah. Good, all right. Well, gentlemen, I see that the questions are starting to slow up a little bit, and I've exhausted my round of questions that I had prepped for you. So why don't we start with some closing comments? Sergeant Major? Absolutely, first and foremost, I gotta thank the team here in the Army G1. They've done phenomenal work and the DA Secretary. This isn't something that we thought up overnight or something we did in haste. Several years of analysis have gone on to this, synchronizing this with our current promotion system, making sure that it's gonna be lockstep with the changes we're gonna make in the future with things like Ipsa A and the changes we already made would step and making sure we can first and foremost meet the necessary requirements of the Army. Nothing is ever gonna be perfect, but we are closer to where we were before, I assure you. Having been intimately involved in this process for the last two years and have included all the senior representatives of each of the major commands throughout the Army through the entire process with frequent updates on a quarterly basis of the progress and where we were headed, I have their 100% concurrence that this was the right thing to do. Last year, we presented this to the senior enlisted training and leader conference over 200 nominative level SARM majors. Every single one of them said, this is the direction we need to go for the future of our NCO Corps. What I ask you is be patient. We owe you more information and more training to make sure that you're fully informed on this. Of course, send us your questions. If you have concerns and questions, we need to answer them. It's our responsibility and it's our responsibility to train you so you can turn around and train your soldiers. Help me dispel the myths. Help me dispel the things that people don't even know about yet. We're gonna get you that information. We're gonna arm you with the appropriate information so you can then arm your soldiers. But keep the questions coming and the more questions we send in, we'll follow up with another event like this and we'll answer them as soon as they get here. So thanks for what you're doing. I promise you that the team here has done a phenomenal job of designing a system that's gonna take us well into the future and remain the best non-commissioned officer corps this world has ever seen. Sergeant Major Clark, any final words? So I would just ask the field to continue trying to educate yourselves on this new process. A lot of cultural changes that are gonna change how we do business. As the SMA said, please keep sending us your questions. We wanna make sure that we have dotted the I's and cross the T's on everything to ensure that this system is the best for the individual soldiers in the Army as well. All right, Sergeant Major Mark Clark, the G1 DMPM Sergeant Major and of course Sergeant Major of the Army, SMA Dan Daly. From all of us here at the Pentagon and the Army G1, I'm Hank Manitrez. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for watching. Yeah, thank you.