PaCE : Performance Appraisal and Competency system

[Navy_Pete]

How does "DWAN access is not available" and "via email only" work exactly?

(I'm really liking this GIF, almost a standard COA now).

I think policy wise you just have to show you are doing regular div notes, so probably should be some kind of common sense allowances for operations and postings. Not sure how you email something in without PKI anyway though as the form with div notes would be PRO B, so for some people the old paper binder version is still probably the best solution.

 

[Zoomie]

I attended multiple Teams briefs this past week on Manager roles and the mechanics of PaCE. I didn’t like the comments that we needed to transfer people in and out of their position numbers on MM to reflect their employment during the year. Deploy on Op Neon for 2 months, send Mbr to dispatch section of MM and get added into reception for Op Neon, then reverse that when he/she comes back. Every time you change your location on MM, you generate a new log in and default password -I suspect this will get tiresome.

 

[SupersonicMax]

I attended multiple Teams briefs this past week on Manager roles and the mechanics of PaCE. I didn’t like the comments that we needed to transfer people in and out of their position numbers on MM to reflect their employment during the year. Deploy on Op Neon for 2 months, send Mbr to dispatch section of MM and get added into reception for Op Neon, then reverse that when he/she comes back. Every time you change your location on MM, you generate a new log in and default password -I suspect this will get tiresome.

Ya, I always thought the credentials tied to a position vs an individual was weird and cumbersome….

 

[dapaterson]

Monitor MASS is a hack made with little business process owner input, and not designed from the ground up with security in mind.

 

[Good2Golf]

That MM’s bastardized roots are growing into other processes is an example of why the CAF can’t have nice things. Lord knows how crazy it would be to define, specify and develop software IAW ISO/IEC/IEEE Std.12207

 

[dapaterson]

I recall in the early 2000s, with little to no user access control in place, someone renamed a unit in Shilo "Princess Patricia's Canadian Mechanized Infantry" for fun.

Pro tip: reliable systems have strong access and edit controls.

 

[Zoomie]

Monitor MASS is a hack made with little business process owner input, and not designed from the ground up with security in mind.

Concur - yet we’ve decided to go ”all-in” using this software? Readiness, CFTPO, leave and now career. EMAA is apparently dying soon - to be replaced by MM?

 

[CountDC]

according to certain members of the monitor mass team it is more secure than PKI. I would have to disagree with them as while an admin for PKI I could not change security settings, I could only setup and issue the card. As LACO for MM I could grant any member listed with the unit full access to everyone in the unit.

As for the renamed unit - I would suspect that was a member of the unit or it's higher HQ that was given maximum access rights and probably shouldn't have been. The issue wasn't necessarily the security of the system, it was the lack of training and understanding of the LACOs. Many of them would just give anyone full access without realizing what that involved. Give people only what they need to have. Sect Comds only need access to their section not the entire area/bde/unit.

Of course there is also the factor that the person responsible for the name change obviously did something they were not authorized to do and shouldn't have (but we do like to have fun with new systems). Reminds me of the new pay system a ways back and a Cpl that became I think General overnight - oops.

 

[Jarnhamar]

PaCE sounded good for the first 45 seconds until I read units were still meriting soldiers. I look forward to having my evaluations of subordinates overruled IAW where the regiment wants to see them.

 

[rmc_wannabe]

PaCE sounded good for the first 45 seconds until I read units were still meriting soldiers. I look forward to having my evaluations of subordinates overruled IAW where the regiment wants to see them.

Even if it was removed formally from the process, it still would happen. At least this way, there is an actual regulatory failsafe in place to ensure the unit meriting has a left and right of arc.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

I recall in the early 2000s, with little to no user access control in place, someone renamed a unit in Shilo "Princess Patricia's Canadian Mechanized Infantry" for fun.

Pro tip: reliable systems have strong access and edit controls.

Same thing happened by accident in our database, a officer changed every proponents name (15,000 files) to the one he was trying to input. thankfully there was a backup so we only lost a few days work. After that only admin staff were allowed to start a file.

 

[Underway]

Had a PER and PaCE review at this point. The Naval Technical Trades are doing both this year as the trial run. Long post to follow...



So first few comments. On the Legend you'll see the Performance and Scoring. It's important to read these. Basically if you are doing your job properly you should get an Effective (E). If there are no unusual circumstances, no need to guide others in unusual circumstances, and there are no challenging situations you should be getting an Effective. HE and EE are reserved for those situations where it has gone severely sideways somehow. As you can see this also means that a Cpl would get an HE for something that the WO might have seen five times and would get an E for.

This is very important as unless you have an excellent example/justification of how something was out of normal or extremely challenging for a ranking board E is the default for a normally competent member. The vast majority of rankings should be an E. All the ranks above E are relatively hard to justify with the new system.

As an example I had a good PER this year, Mastered/Superior for most things. I had a solidly Effective PAR with a few things that were HE, EE and SE. My PAR score overall was a 62 (out of 100) but my PER was very high. My highest section was a 75. 62 is just past the merit listing cutoff of 60. It was a shock in comparing the PER vs the PAR, the PAR forces you to go to the middle scoring.

Next are the different categories. In particular Military Ethos, Credibility and Influence, and Teamwork. If you look at the subcategories you can see how deep they drill down. A large number of these are going to be death for some jackasses who pretend to be leaders (Accepts responsibility, Art of Influence, Courage). Also for something like Courage it won't be demonstratable in many positions or even work environments.

The member posted to Ottawa doing their normal job with no subordinates and pushing paper from one side to another will have an E-based PAR.


Few interesting things here. Recognition which is a category about rewarding subordinates, Initiative is evaluated twice, once about encouraging subordinates to take initiative and the second time to take individual initiative. The focus on subordinates is very prevalent all through the PAR. Reward the behaviour you want to see, and it appears the CAF wants to reward helping subordinates be their best.


Ethical Reasoning is a category that is great as is Interpersonal Relations. Trust is a subcategory within Interpersonal Relations. I'd love to see how a supervisor is going to evaluate that properly. Should prove a challenge unless they speak to that individuals subordinates themselves.

Environmental Stress Reduction is an interesting one, buffering the stress from your subordinates is something that used to be called "No Leadership by default" which was telling your subordinates that the CO wants it done so do it, vs telling them to do it using your own leadership instead (so you don't look like the bad guy). Also the sharing of stress resources is an interesting addition with Stress Education. Again the focus on subordinates and the team.
Developing Self is a nice change. No more random "I took a course on basket weaving" for a few points. Now whatever you do to improve yourself professionally has an impact properly, as well as your ability to deal with feedback and improve.


Final cut and pastes are here. Dealing with change in particular "Recognizes when change is not required and where possible ceases unnecessary change initiatives" is quite frankly opposite of the PER. Sometimes change isn't required. This is balanced by the other categories here where dealing with change and implementing change is important.

So there is the PAR section on Performance. I'll post later on Potential but that should be enough to get the convo going.

Overall I think this is good. There is quite a bit of "reward the behaviour you want to see" in here. Its far less self-focused and very much organization, team, and subordinate-focused. If you help your subordinates succeed in achieving the mission you will have a good PAR. There will also be quite a few Not Observed in PAR's going forward. Not everyone will have the opportunity to display everything on these lists. It will heavily reward positions that have subordinates, or are on operations.

Lastly I would recommend that as an individual use the Notes function heavily in PaCE. Keeep a journal of your day to day activities and add Notes into PaCE weekly, tie them into the subcategories so that it makes things easy for your supervisior. There was a lot of stuff that I did day to day to help out people in the office, co-workers of different ranks to deal with stress, coaching (how to do technical writing for CPO's for example), and personal development they my supervisor had no idea I did because... well why would I? It didn't matter much under the PER but it really matters under PAR.

 

[Navy_Pete]

I noticed the same thing with the PAR; going to be difficult/impossible for a lot of jobs to observe some of these points, and is actually a lot more work for the supervisor to fill out than the old PERs.

The actual pilot for it is a bit of a mess though; the review process was really unclear and all the notes throughout the year didn't transfer over to the PAR module. May be a button problem, but if I can't easily figure it out after doing the training modules and having 20 + years of computing experience (including some basic programming/GUI design) then I would submit it's a MM issue for being counter-intuitive (with crappy small button icons).

I did like that it starts with everything scored E, but there are a lot of individual items to address with very little room to put comments on. Suspect the bun tosses will be a bit more of a challenge to figure out how to rank people that all have basically the same score.

One observation is that this will really drive the type of job impacting the scoring, so will in someways disadvantage people working in support roles compared to peers doing direct operational jobs. Usually folks were getting streamed into those jobs anyway by the trade mafia, but now going to be potentially a significant disadvantage.

Don't really personnaly care about that, but if they thought they had trouble getting people to Ottawa before, that is an extra impediment for the careerist types. Found that knowing who is who in ADM(Mat) was great when I went back to the ships and needed LCMM support, and also understood the processes so I could feed them what they need to get things done (HPRs, UCRs etc).

 

[Underway]

I did like that it starts with everything scored E, but there are a lot of individual items to address with very little room to put comments on. Suspect the bun tosses will be a bit more of a challenge to figure out how to rank people that all have basically the same score.

There is zero need or requirement for a bun toss. I'm not sure what you would even fight over as there is no ranking against your peers from the same unit thus there isn't any need to worry about interdepartmental "best MS from the unit" or such. The points are the points as far as I can tell. You fill out the points and if they meet the cutoff of 60 they go for Potential review. If they all have the same score then they all have the same score, it doesn't matter. The PAR's are supposed to almost all have the same score, that's why the cutoff for further review is 60.

My Potential was ranked using a group of three who are two ranks above (min). For me it was two Cdrs and a civilian equivalent (Adm (Mat) so it makes sense). Because it's a committee that includes someone in your CoC and two from outside. On a ship that would probably be two CO's and someone (honest broker) from ashore. So the "bun toss" would happen there. I'm not sure what information that the board has, but if your PaCE notes are filled out that can't hurt.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Just came across this and thought it relevant, if probably slightly unhelpful

More Harm Than Good: The Truth About Performance Reviews​

If performance feedback only occurs a few times a year, it's unlikely to be meaningful.

In contrast, when formal progress reviews are accompanied by frequent, honest feedback -- and the review is consistent with what you've heard all year -- they can be affirming, motivating and, at the very least, much less awkward.

Gallup has found that when managers provide weekly (vs. annual) feedback, team members are:

• 5.2x more likely to strongly agree that they receive meaningful feedback
• 3.2x more likely to strongly agree they are motivated to do outstanding work
• 2.7x more likely to be engaged at work

https://www.gallup.com/workplace/238064/re-engineering-performance-management.aspx
Needless to say, the best performance management systems encourage frequent, meaningful manager-employee conversations.

And there's also a cultural aspect as well -- performance management systems work best within a culture of honest feedback, where teams have a shared definition of excellence, and with leaders who model what makes a great manager.

Frequent, honest conversations also open the possibility for what Kim Scott calls "radical candor," the ability to address uncomfortable truths.

When managers are unable to have frank conversations with their team members, the result is unhappy employees (who aren't a good fit for their role) don't move on. They continue to receive false praise and encouragement, when the best thing -- for them and for the team -- would be to make a change or find a better role.

What role should your managers and the performance management system really play?​

The best managers in the world are architects of effective coaching conversations. They create moments where genuine dialogue can occur, where employees feel their opinions matter and like they are cared about in a unique way. In addition, great managers:

• Create a continual learning environment that encourages employees to openly collaborate.
• Aren't held captive by their performance management system, tools and metrics.
• Listen and focus on a level of individualized development that can only be achieved by deep familiarity with employees' strengths and aspirations.

No evaluation system can create great managers and engage employees on its own.

Performance evaluations are an imperfect tool that only captures snippets of information. They communicate what is and is not important for employees to do -- for better or worse.

But performance evaluations can also paint a well-rounded picture of contributions, opportunities for improvement and plans for what's next.

In other words, they lay the foundation for a great conversation.

More Harm Than Good: The Truth About Performance Reviews

Discover the four essential truths about performance reviews based on Robert Sutton's and Gallup's research.

www.gallup.com

 

[TacticalTea]

Had a PER and PaCE review at this point. The Naval Technical Trades are doing both this year as the trial run. Long post to follow...

View attachment 71654

So first few comments. On the Legend you'll see the Performance and Scoring. It's important to read these. Basically if you are doing your job properly you should get an Effective (E). If there are no unusual circumstances, no need to guide others in unusual circumstances, and there are no challenging situations you should be getting an Effective. HE and EE are reserved for those situations where it has gone severely sideways somehow. As you can see this also means that a Cpl would get an HE for something that the WO might have seen five times and would get an E for.

This is very important as unless you have an excellent example/justification of how something was out of normal or extremely challenging for a ranking board E is the default for a normally competent member. The vast majority of rankings should be an E. All the ranks above E are relatively hard to justify with the new system.

As an example I had a good PER this year, Mastered/Superior for most things. I had a solidly Effective PAR with a few things that were HE, EE and SE. My PAR score overall was a 62 (out of 100) but my PER was very high. My highest section was a 75. 62 is just past the merit listing cutoff of 60. It was a shock in comparing the PER vs the PAR, the PAR forces you to go to the middle scoring.

Next are the different categories. In particular Military Ethos, Credibility and Influence, and Teamwork. If you look at the subcategories you can see how deep they drill down. A large number of these are going to be death for some jackasses who pretend to be leaders (Accepts responsibility, Art of Influence, Courage). Also for something like Courage it won't be demonstratable in many positions or even work environments.

The member posted to Ottawa doing their normal job with no subordinates and pushing paper from one side to another will have an E-based PAR.

View attachment 71655
Few interesting things here. Recognition which is a category about rewarding subordinates, Initiative is evaluated twice, once about encouraging subordinates to take initiative and the second time to take individual initiative. The focus on subordinates is very prevalent all through the PAR. Reward the behaviour you want to see, and it appears the CAF wants to reward helping subordinates be their best.

View attachment 71656
Ethical Reasoning is a category that is great as is Interpersonal Relations. Trust is a subcategory within Interpersonal Relations. I'd love to see how a supervisor is going to evaluate that properly. Should prove a challenge unless they speak to that individuals subordinates themselves.

Environmental Stress Reduction is an interesting one, buffering the stress from your subordinates is something that used to be called "No Leadership by default" which was telling your subordinates that the CO wants it done so do it, vs telling them to do it using your own leadership instead (so you don't look like the bad guy). Also the sharing of stress resources is an interesting addition with Stress Education. Again the focus on subordinates and the team.
Developing Self is a nice change. No more random "I took a course on basket weaving" for a few points. Now whatever you do to improve yourself professionally has an impact properly, as well as your ability to deal with feedback and improve.

View attachment 71657
Final cut and pastes are here. Dealing with change in particular "Recognizes when change is not required and where possible ceases unnecessary change initiatives" is quite frankly opposite of the PER. Sometimes change isn't required. This is balanced by the other categories here where dealing with change and implementing change is important.

So there is the PAR section on Performance. I'll post later on Potential but that should be enough to get the convo going.

Overall I think this is good. There is quite a bit of "reward the behaviour you want to see" in here. Its far less self-focused and very much organization, team, and subordinate-focused. If you help your subordinates succeed in achieving the mission you will have a good PAR. There will also be quite a few Not Observed in PAR's going forward. Not everyone will have the opportunity to display everything on these lists. It will heavily reward positions that have subordinates, or are on operations.

Lastly I would recommend that as an individual use the Notes function heavily in PaCE. Keeep a journal of your day to day activities and add Notes into PaCE weekly, tie them into the subcategories so that it makes things easy for your supervisior. There was a lot of stuff that I did day to day to help out people in the office, co-workers of different ranks to deal with stress, coaching (how to do technical writing for CPO's for example), and personal development they my supervisor had no idea I did because... well why would I? It didn't matter much under the PER but it really matters under PAR.

Whoever wrote that deserves a BZ.

This is leaps and bounds ahead of the PER. It also gives clear instructions to the assessed member as to what sort of leadership the CAF wants to see, which can help guide their behaviour.

Whereas the PER seemed more like some sort of gimmick, this PAR reads like the people in charge actually care about the results.

It definitely better aligns with how I personally view leadership and my job as an officer, so perhaps there is some self-interested bias in my perception of this new system.

Concur with your comments on the difficulty to assess; 2-down interviews by the assessor, and diligent notetaking by the assessed will be crucial.

 

[Underway]

Whoever wrote that deserves a BZ.

This is leaps and bounds ahead of the PER. It also gives clear instructions to the assessed member as to what sort of leadership the CAF wants to see, which can help guide their behaviour.

Whereas the PER seemed more like some sort of gimmick, this PAR reads like the people in charge actually care about the results.

It definitely better aligns with how I personally view leadership and my job as an officer, so perhaps there is some self-interested bias in my perception of this new system.

Concur with your comments on the difficulty to assess; 2-down interviews by the assessor, and diligent notetaking by the assessed will be crucial.

I really like it, it's a massive breath of fresh air. @Navy_Pete is not wrong in that it's more work for supervisors. I'm planning to be entering notes myself and riding my PO's/MS to take good Div notes as well and enter them. For two reasons. First is that it helps the member well ahead of time to correct deficiencies and see how their CoC views them, second is that it reflects well on the PO's and MS PAR who are taking an interest in developing their subordinates and doing the proper admin for them.

We'll see if that plan survives contact with the enemy, but its a worthwhile goal I think (Something for the Personal and Resources Management Section )

 

[Navy_Pete]

There is zero need or requirement for a bun toss. I'm not sure what you would even fight over as there is no ranking against your peers from the same unit thus there isn't any need to worry about interdepartmental "best MS from the unit" or such. The points are the points as far as I can tell. You fill out the points and if they meet the cutoff of 60 they go for Potential review. If they all have the same score then they all have the same score, it doesn't matter. The PAR's are supposed to almost all have the same score, that's why the cutoff for further review is 60.

My Potential was ranked using a group of three who are two ranks above (min). For me it was two Cdrs and a civilian equivalent (Adm (Mat) so it makes sense). Because it's a committee that includes someone in your CoC and two from outside. On a ship that would probably be two CO's and someone (honest broker) from ashore. So the "bun toss" would happen there. I'm not sure what information that the board has, but if your PaCE notes are filled out that can't hurt.

At some point the PARs will feed into a promotion board, which is where the comments are going to be critical. If you have 3 people with and average score between 65-66 (or whatever) that's probably within the normal margin of variation where it's effectively the same, so how do you decide who is further up on the promotion ranking?

I think the PAR skeleton and intentions are great; I think we far too often don't give supervisors sufficient time and bandwidth to do it properly. If someone is supposed to be doing it for 3 people, but is actually doing it for 10 while acting in the job above them, at least the PER system allowed you to 'cram' at mid year and end of year to do the PDR/PER. WIth the reliance on PAR notes it's really more effective to do continuously, as long as MM is working. At least this way people can put in their own notes for supervisors and vice versa.

And because we're awesome, the CAF is more likely to kick someone in the sweets for not doing the ongoing divisional work, vice recognizing that they are massively overwhelmed and can't keep up to the workload, and addressing that.

 

[Eye In The Sky]

Lastly I would recommend that as an individual use the Notes function heavily in PaCE. Keeep a journal of your day to day activities and add Notes into PaCE weekly, tie them into the subcategories so that it makes things easy for your supervisior. There was a lot of stuff that I did day to day to help out people in the office, co-workers of different ranks to deal with stress, coaching (how to do technical writing for CPO's for example), and personal development they my supervisor had no idea I did because... well why would I? It didn't matter much under the PER but it really matters under PAR.

I know the Navy loves Div Notes (to the point they are beyond over-used) but weekly FN might be too much. I’ve done monthly FNs so far and keep a notes/etc on things I do outside of my expected tasks (my JD and TOAs).

In bigger sub-unit, the boss will be overwhelmed with FNs if everyone is submitting weekly ones. I can see the navy going that way because “Div Notes”…thankfully the Trent where I am at is Monthly or Quarterly.

 

[Underway]

I know the Navy loves Div Notes (to the point they are beyond over-used) but weekly FN might be too much. I’ve done monthly FNs so far and keep a notes/etc on things I do outside of my expected tasks (my JD and TOAs).

In bigger sub-unit, the boss will be overwhelmed with FNs if everyone is submitting weekly ones. I can see the navy going that way because “Div Notes”…thankfully the Trent where I am at is Monthly or Quarterly.

Navy talks a good talk about Div notes, but really doesn't actually do them very well. I've never ever been presented with a good set of div notes by my superior without the CO having to do div note inspections beforehand.

I see what you're saying though. PaCE process itself recommends minimum quarterly note entry. I put a reminder in my calendar but monthly seems more bite-sized and less likely to cause issues.
For myself, I would probably keep track on a notepad and do a single data entry once a month with the highlights.