By Lt Col Richard Coe, USAF ret
Regarding military Officer Effectiveness Reports/Enlisted Performance Reports, all DoD branches should change their promotion Boards to eliminate all names, sex, race, ethnicity, etc. as well as photographs of the individual.
This will force the Boards to use only merit in analyzing an individual for promotion.
The following expands on what should be seen by a Board in an individual’s file:
- No Photograph
- Delete or black out all references to an individual’s name.
- Use initials instead of name or pronoun.
- Delete or black out all references to an individual’s race.
- Delete or black out all references to an individual’s sex/gender.
- Delete or black out all references to an individual’s ethnicity/race/color.
- Delete or black out all references to an individual’s age
- Delete or black out all references to an individual’s religion.
- Delete or black out all references to an individual’s marital status.
- Add the following which bear on war-fighting:
- Within standards for BMI.
- Passed the PFT
For years Boards have struggled with promotions. With this system the rater will be forced to expand on the merits of the individual rather than allowing a “picture” or other non-merit based reason to be used to promote.
No doubt this will cause much consternation on the part of raters and Board members, but it will eliminate the “Quota-based promotions”.
As a result, the individual and everyone else who works with them will know the person was chosen solely based on the person’s experience and qualifications.
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