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Bite your tongue, heretic! That kind of talk will get you an appointment with the rack.So Corporals??
Bite your tongue, heretic! That kind of talk will get you an appointment with the rack.So Corporals??
Rank has responsibilities, and each step up you take they become far more serious.I wouldn't go so far as to say I feel bad for these leaders getting in shit ("duh I didn't know better" ) but when you think of it our culture in the CAF creates a lot of these "rank has privileges" types who routinely don't practice what they preach. They're brought up through the ranks getting away with "cause I'm a *$#@in sergeant major" or "cause I'm the CO" double standards.
I can imagine the rank privilege is so ingrained in the people that they're genuinely surprised when they get in shit for something.
The whole rank has privlage is a cornerstone of our culture problem.
Design an "officer selection" to take place after basic training. Check for mental and physical endurance, integrity, performance and thinking under stress, problem solving, etc. Make it 2-3 weeks long. You should be able to quickly find those with the abilities and traits neccesaryHow would you determine who would be an officer then?
It’s easy to see abilities. Far more difficult to see potential. You can’t base your assessment on abilities for 16-20 years old kids.Design an "officer selection" to take place after basic training. Check for mental and physical endurance, integrity, performance and thinking under stress, problem solving, etc. Make it 2-3 weeks long. You should be able to quickly find those with the abilities and traits neccesary
In a perfect world, and not just in the military, a higher standard is expected because one is expected to know better the higher up the food chain one gets.Rank has responsibilities, and each step up you take they become far more serious.
We need thinking officers. If there are ways to find and develop those people other than using a university education as a proxy, run with it.
The "credentials" based model has to remain to the extent that it ensures officers are competent to do staff and command work commensurate with rank/appointment. Most staff officers don't have to "lead" anything; they have to be intelligent, educated, industrious, objective, and detail-minded.
... but a deliberate workforce design that was influenced by a few engineers (of various types) who discovered that it's much easier to make jobs for themselves as project managers. Most of those PM jobs should be made civilian, and the uniformed engineers can get back to focusing on technical work.Precious few of the CAF's engineers engage in work that requires professional engineers. That's a workforce design issue.
Heretic.... but a deliberate workforce design that was influenced by a few engineers (of various types) who discovered that it's much easier to make jobs for themselves as project managers. Most of those PM jobs should be made civilian, and the uniformed engineers can get back to focusing on technical work.
Professional Engineering certification is provincial anyway, so doesn't apply to the CAF. But we definitely do comparable work that you can apply the same principles to, as a lot of it is simply professional ethics vice straight design work.Precious few of the CAF's engineers engage in work that requires professional engineers. That's a workforce design issue.
Yea but how much of your salary do you kickbackIt's all somewhat irrelevant anyway; we spend a lot of money training/eductating people to get very niche specializations, but then tend to ignore them and ask a consulatant if the opinion is inconvenient (at least on the oversight side). Drives me crazy to have some fairly specialist knowledge but somehow a random consultant with no relevant experience can write a report that gets taken with more weight than whatever recommendation I come up with.
I don't think it's that at all; we just chronically undervalue our internal expertise.Yea but how much of your salary do you kickback
to the coffers of whatever party is governing at the time?????
There are ways to be important.....
I've taken a keen interest in the RMA Sandhurst model. (Which was previously brought up in this thread a few weeks ago)Design an "officer selection" to take place after basic training. Check for mental and physical endurance, integrity, performance and thinking under stress, problem solving, etc. Make it 2-3 weeks long. You should be able to quickly find those with the abilities and traits neccesary
Is this something where there might be a need to review what's needed for the deployable force, and what's a static role? Not suggesting the latter should be entirely civilian, but (recalling comments in other threads) lest there be a large deployment, make sure there's no vital static tasks being covered by someone who is, properly, going to be leaving the country with a deployed force.There is already a pretty natural bottle neck in a lot of the engineering trades at the Maj/LCdr rank, where you only have a small number of positions above it, and really get out of the technical work anyway.
The changes to the hiring process make it a lot easier to transition into a civilian job so there is a natural feeder into it. Think it's a win/win, as it keeps people with the experience/training in, and then gives stability for the different jobs instead of changing them out every few years.
It's all somewhat irrelevant anyway; we spend a lot of money training/eductating people to get very niche specializations, but then tend to ignore them and ask a consulatant if the opinion is inconvenient (at least on the oversight side). Drives me crazy to have some fairly specialist knowledge but somehow a random consultant with no relevant experience can write a report that gets taken with more weight than whatever recommendation I come up with.
I think it's really trade specific; in some cases the deployment opportunities disappear when you hit a certain rank, and since Afghanistan ended I stopped seeing CFTPO requests for deployments outside the trade in 'purple jobs' (unarmed observer, watch officer etc), so assume they are being filled by the Army now when they come up.Is this something where there might be a need to review what's needed for the deployable force, and what's a static role? Not suggesting the latter should be entirely civilian, but (recalling comments in other threads) lest there be a large deployment, make sure there's no vital static tasks being covered by someone who is, properly, going to be leaving the country with a deployed force.
I've taken a keen interest in the RMA Sandhurst model. (Which was previously brought up in this thread a few weeks ago)
From what I can gather, it does not seem to be a requirement to have a degree to be an officer in the British Armed Forces. Obviously, if a specialized job requires a degree, then needless to say... it shall be a requirement.
Speaking generally however, I've met many an educated fella who turned out to be obtuse and close-minded. It seems to be common knowledge, nowadays, that a college degree is no guarantee of moral or intellectual fortitude. It is, indeed, nothing more than a proxy.
On the other hand, I've had the pleasure to work with a plethora of enlisted folks who had veritably taken on the path of the warrior monk, consistently striving to widen their perspectives and depth of knowledge.
As such, I'm inclined to believe it would be better to return to the old ways of the midshipman: have prospective officers serve a year or two in the ranks as an alternative to obtaining a degree, before sending them off for a one-year course at RMC. This, truly, would allow chains of command to better evaluate who is a good fit for the role of an officer.
At any rate, the current assessment philosophy seems to be ''we'll take whatever we can get, and if they make it to OFP, that means they're good enough. At worst, they'll fill staff jobs.''