DOD Merit-Based Pay Initiative

The New DOD Merit-Based Pay Initiative
The Joke's on America

by

Tom Molloy

In this article the term DOD includes Army, Navy and air Force employees as well as those employed by the Pentagon.

I was a federal employee for almost 40 years. Contrary to the mythology that emanates from presidents, cabinet secretaries, political appointees, many congressional representatives and senators, the vast majority of federal employees with whom I came into contact worked very hard. I was in a professional job series and my colleagues and I consistently worked 10 or more hours per day without compensatory time or overtime pay. Often my job called for travel and we were generally required to travel on weekends (our time) and received no extra pay. I am not complaining. We accepted this as the normal state of affairs. We also learned to ignore politicians denigrating the federal bureaucracy. For some reason or other, bashing federal employees is a form of macho demagoguery that gets votes. According to the mythology, the typical federal employee is lazy, ignorant, inept, apathetic, whining clock watcher who can’t be fired. Republican politicians are particularly prone to promulgate this mythology and many ordinary American citizens believe it.

Several months ago I found myself on an airplane seated next to a retired executive, who had held a very responsible position in a large corporation. He was vehemently opposed to government waste (i.e., all forms of welfare for the poor, but not tax deductions for business lunches). He was convinced that federal employees were goldbricks. I didn’t try to argue with him. It would have been nugatory. However, when he paused for breath, I remarked that it was shame that social security checks always came late and for the wrong amount; Medicare kept screwing up payments to doctors; and so many letters and packages were lost in the mail. He looked at me quizzically and said he had been lucky because he didn’t have such problems. I said neither had I. I added that we were fortunate because the federal employees taking care of us were the few who weren’t inept and lazy.

He will go to his grave muttering imprecations against federal employees.

From what I gather, when you cut through the hype, the goal of the new DOD performance-based pay initiative (PBPI) is to shape up the good-for-nothing DOD civilian employees. The PBPI is replacing a system that certainly needed improvement, but was not the disaster that demagogues proclaim it to be. It is an urban legend that federal employees can’t be disciplined or fired. Managers can and do discipline and fire employees. The benighted or malicious who claim that federal employees can’t be fired are simply uninformed. As a supervisor, I learned that the deck was stacked in my favor. Given a few months, I could have fired anyone I supervised, irrespective of their level of job performance.

As I understand it, under the new systems individuals will get no annual pay increase unless they meet certain “objective” standards. To the uninformed, a group that apparently includes Secretary Rumsfeld, this DOD initiative will ensure that the beleaguered American taxpayers get full value for their money. But, folks, there is one problem that is a show stopper. The premise for a merit-based pay system is the ability to render an objective evaluation of each employee’s performance. This premise is a fantasy. No one knows how to objectively rate job performance for employees in soft skill jobs—those jobs in which judgment, discretion, creativity, tact and initiative are so important. In a word, this whole gut-wrenching implementation process is bullshit.

I have had some humbling experiences with the elusive goal of developing “objective” soft skill performance standards. In the 1980’s the Department of the Air Force initiated a new appraisal system for its civilian employees. The goal was to establish objective performance standards for each civilian position and base the annual appraisals on employee adherence to the standards. Easier said than done. In my organization there was some enthusiasm for this initiative. However, we soon realized that none of us knew how to develop such performance standards for our cadre of professional employees. The AF told us that we would receive training in the preparation of performance standards.

Sure enough, a colleague and I were sent to a three-day workshop to receive the required wisdom. Upon our return, we were to be the performance appraisal gurus who could provide guidance to our colleagues. I was an enthusiastic supporter of the new initiative. The workshop leader was a very charismatic ex auto industry executive, who was reportedly an expert in performance measurement. The first day we discussed the deficiencies of the current appraisal system and the hypothetical benefits of the new appraisal system. On the morning of the second day, we were divided into several groups and assigned the task of developing objective standards for a secretary. By the end of the day, we had merged the input of each group into a single product. Our expert praised our performance standards and showed us how close they were to the actual performance standards of his secretary.

Up until this point, I had, as is not my wont, kept my counsel. I now felt compelled to speak out. The “objective” performance standards we had produced were crap. I asked the expert if he honestly

Tracked the average number of typos, grammatical errors, punctuation errors, format errors his secretary made per page?

Calculated the average time it took his secretary to retrieve a document from the files?

Knew the percentage of documents his secretary misfiled?

Kept track of the percentage of telephone calls his secretary directed to the wrong office?

Counted how many times a quarter his secretary failed to exercise proper (objective?) tact?

Tracked the number of times his secretary took a few extra minutes for breaks or lunch?

Calculated how many words per minute his secretary typed?

His answer was evasive and I told him that, in my opinion, anyone who actually measured a secretary’s performance by such standards was an anal-retentive nut and couldn’t keep secretaries long enough to learn their names. He responded to my ad hominem attack in kind. He pompously informed me that he was the expert and implied that I was just a humble functionary privileged to be in his presence. I responded that I now had some inkling of the reason for the decline of the American auto industry. A puerile exchange, to be sure, but I had a feeling of catharsis.

The next day we were again divided into groups and told to produce objective performance standards for a hypothetical first-level supervisor. To make a long story short, the standards we produced were far from being objective. We produced performance standards heavily dependent on the judgment of the rater. That is to say that our “objective” performance standards were as objective as the German Democratic Republic was “democratic”.

I had anticipated that our expert would show us how to fashion our crude attempt into an objective performance measure. Instead, to my chagrin, he suggested a few trivial changes and blessed our standards. I left this workshop with feeling of uneasiness because, having had the benefit of this workshop, I was supposed to show colleagues how to write objective performance standards.

After this fruitless workshop, I began to read about performance standards and learned that no one knew how to develop objective standards for soft skill jobs. One author (I forget who) summed it up succinctly: “In soft skill fields, the supervisor is the standard.”

This limitation notwithstanding, every supervisor of civilian employees in the DAF was told to shut up and prepare “objective” performance standards. We gave it our best shot and the new system was implemented. Despite the fact that the standards were subjective, the new system was tolerably efficient.

The advocates of this new performance evaluation package had advertised it as a muscular, kick-ass, 500 pound gorilla. When the customers opened the package, they found an emaciated monkey. Nevertheless, despite its imperfections, the system worked reasonably well. Annual appraisals were rendered. Employees were given awards, promoted, downgraded or fired. All the while, the usual chorus of demagogues relentlessly portrayed the federal service as rife with goof offs; screw ups, and goldbricks who are immune to being fired. Of course, there are inefficiencies in the system. But anyone who has recently taken a commercial flight, rented a car, had cable TV problems or dealt with an insurance company can tell you that the private sector also has some inefficiencies.

I am certainly not opposed to a system that truly rewards merit. The problem is that the technology to objectively evaluate merit in soft skill jobs doesn’t exist. When you promise employees to deliver an objective system and deliver a highly subjective one instead, employees become cynics. My civilian friends working for DOD, have told me that the cynicism has already begun. There are few true believers. These veteran employees recognize bullshit when they see it. They fear that the new system will be worse than the one it replaces. <>

Many DOD civilians are in the unenviable position of having a military boss (MB) who knows little or nothing about their job. The reason for this phenomenon, which in the private sector is generally regarded as managerial lunacy, is officer bloat. There are far more officers than needed to fill the combat and combat support positions that are normally considered military jobs. DOD assigns the large number of excess officers to jobs that would normally be performed by civilians. To be successful, the incumbents of these jobs should have a level of expertise many MBs simply don’t have. This creates the bizarre scenario of professionally ignorant MBs supervising civilian experts. This daffiness wreaks havoc throughout DOD. There is a double whammy. Not only do MBs generally perform miserably in these mid-level and senior management positions, they also block access of qualified civilians to these positions. The MBs come and go like drive by shootings. The civilians learn that the basic operating principle is “a uniform trumps all civilian experience and knowledge”. The word “morale” elicits snickers from civilian employees in the clutches of an ignorant MB. In DODland, you will find the world’s greatest cynics.

Ironically, many of the problems with the current appraisal system spring from the failure of transient MBs to comprehend it and use it correctly. Under this new PBPI system, these ignorant, sometimes arrogant, MBs can, with the stroke of a pen, deprive civilian subordinates of significant income. Ignorant MBs often resent the best and the brightest civilians, who are living reminders of their own ignorance. To avoid ego shattering encounters with the best and brightest, they shun them. They tend to ally themselves with the unit’s dullards, who often have developed sophisticated ass kissing skills in order to survive.

If Secretary Rumsfeld wants to fix a problem, the infestation of MBs unqualified for their jobs would be a good one to tackle. This problem is the source of many of DOD’s legendary inefficiencies. Imposing another faddish appraisal system on the civilian employees is a sham.

The best and the brightest civilians I know fear that the dullards are going to emerge victorious under the new PBPI system. They predict that the dullards will not only survive, but will thrive. When you have an ignorant boss, the worst offense you can commit is to be right. Ask General Shinseki.

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED TO ME

<><>A FUNNY THING HAPPENED TO ME
<>ON MY WAY THROUGH LIFE

By

<>Tom Molloy
<>

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<>Perhaps, the funniest incident I have ever witnessed took place on a lovely Sunday afternoon in the spring of 1960. The afternoon began as an ordinary one. Ted and Jack (*see footnote), two of my college classmates, and I went to the gym on campus to play basketball. After a few hours of hard-nosed, take-no-prisoners games, we were exhausted. We went to Jack’s room where we discussed the world’s problems. I recall that Jack, who was a glib SOB, gave an eloquent apologia of Fidel Castro, explaining that he was not really a Marxist. It turns out that Jack was wrong, but, as you will see, that is not why he is most remembered by me. No one gave a shit how Jack thought about Castro, anyway. Jack excused himself and went into the bathroom to take a shower.

No sooner did the water start running than there was a knock on the door. I opened the door and there stood Jack’s mother, father and luscious Deborah, Jack’s almost fiancée. It was a no-notice inspection staged by Jack’s mother. Typically as soon as Jack’s mother entered a room, her penetrating, rapacious eyes swept the room looking for imperfections. Her eyes could talk and they always told Ted and me that we were two of imperfections she would like to remove from Jack’s life.

<>Several months before this inspection, Ted had managed to totally fluster Jack’s mom. He was in the bathroom when the Grand Dame came to inspect Jack’s room. He happened to have several condoms in his pocket. The Muse of Mischief inspired him to a bit of deviltry. He left several condoms in plain view in the bathroom. After he exited, Jack’s mom entered to conduct her inspection of the bathroom. <>When she came out of the bathroom, her demeanor had changed markedly. She was unusually taciturn and distracted. She was like a deflated balloon. She muttered something about an appointment and left. Jack was stupefied. She had never left without a few truculent remarks about Jack and his low class friends. <>

I don’t think Jack ever did find out about Ted’s condom caper. Had he known, he might have beaten the snot out of Ted. At any rate, the condom cure didn’t last. The next time we saw Jack’s mom, she was as belligerent as ever. <>

Jack’s family was patrician. Although they were Irish Catholic, they out wasped the wasps. Dad tried to be a regular guy, but Mom was an insufferable snob. Mom did not approve of Deborah, a very smart, pretty, red-blooded, Irish Catholic girl of middle class background. Evidently, Mom didn’t think red blood and blue blood should mix. She kept telling Jack that Deborah was a Jewish name and that Deborah must be a descendant of one of those Jewish sailors in the “Spanish Amato”. In Mom’s mind even a slight whiff of Jewishness ipso facto disqualified Deborah as potential bride. The rest of the world, captivated by the vivacious, charming Deborah, wondered what she saw in Jack. <>

During lulls in our sterile, forced conversation, Jack’s ribald shower medley boomed out of the bathroom. Suddenly the bathroom door flew open and there stood Jack holding his pecker as if it were a machine gun and spraying his guests with imaginary bullets. It was quite a scene. For a moment Jack stood riveted, buck naked, holding his “peckermatic”. During this moment there was absolute silence in the room. <>Then came the piece de resistance. His mother, in her best “let’s-pretend-nothing-has-happened” manner, asked, “How are you, Jack”? as he beat a hasty retreat back to the bathroom. That ripped it. I exploded with laughter. I laughed so hard I thought I was gong to expire on the spot. Jack’s dad had the traces of a smile and Deborah, poor Deborah, was trying to stifle her laughing, but in the end she too was swept way by it. Ted had left the room, but I could hear his raucous laughter in the hallway.

Jack’s mom stood ashen-faced. <>She then slowly and deliberately denounced Jack’s friends who had led him astray and bemoaned the fact that he associated with girls who were sluts. Deborah and I couldn’t stop laughing during this denunciation. <>

That was a long time ago.

<>During the year after graduation, I saw Jack, Deborah and Ted a few times. One night at a bar on 86^th Street in New York City, we decided to baptize Jack to cleanse his soul of the ghastly sins of attempted matricide and patricide with his “peckermatic”. We formally held down a reluctant Jack and baptized him with a pitcher of beer, naming him “Gunner.” I attended Gunner’s wedding to Deborah before this young 2^nd lieutenant shipped out for Vietnam. A few months later Gunner was dead. I never saw Deborah again, but I hear she died in 1999. I saw Ted a few times over the years, but he also died in 1999.

*The names have been changed in this anecdote, but the events are real to the best of my recollection.

Junk Justice

Jail’em, Jail’em, Jail’em

by

TOM MOLLOY

I have no background whatsoever in criminology or law enforcement, but I think the sentences meted out to nonviolent offenders in the United States are absurd. From what I read, the United States incarcerates a higher percentage of its population than any other nation. It is our apathy that permits our judicial system to continue this indefensibly extravagant practice. It’s time to rise up and urge our legislators to adopt a rational paradigm for punishment of nonviolent offenders. <>

Let’s look at the concept of incarceration. What is the rationale for incarcerating people? Incarceration can serve four purposes: to punish, to rehabilitate, to deter and to protect society
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<>PUNISHMENT. There is no doubt that restricting people’s freedom of movement and freedom of association by putting them in prison is a harsh form of punishment. What is doubtful is whether locking up nonviolent offenders is a cost-effective form of punishment. Reportedly, it costs between $15K and $30K per year to keep an individual in prison. There are many ways to punish nonviolent offenders without putting them in jail. Take the recent cases of the corporate executives whose greed caused so much pain to so many people. In no way do I wish to belittle the enormity of their crime, nonviolent though it may be. Nevertheless, it doesn’t follow that incarceration is necessary or desirable. Greed and hubris led them to commit their crimes. Ergo, an appropriate punishment might consist of impoverishment and humiliation. I suggest the measures below would provide suitable punishment at very little cost to the taxpayers.

Strip the offenders of financial assets,

Compel them to work at menial jobs for minimum wage (e.g., dishwasher, restroom attendant),

Allow them no other income,

Force them to live in a government-run open bay dormitory,

Provide a kitchen where they must prepare their own meals,

Charge a monthly fee to defray the cost of lodging and the small staff that monitors their behavior,

Enforce a strict curfew,

Assign each lodger chores for the upkeep of their lodging facilities,

Limit their leisure time and recreational opportunities, and

Incarcerate only those who don’t conform to the rules.

ALTERNATIVELY, a very cheap, but fearful punishment would be the following:

Impose an appropriate fine if one is warranted.

Sentence nonviolent offenders to report at designated times to an auditorium where they will sit for a specified time on specified days without eating, drinking, smoking, talking, sleeping etc.

At the discretion of the court, permit offenders to read approved materials after they have served one third of their sentences.

Charge offenders a fee to defray the cost of their punishment.

One instance in which prison as a punishment was ludicrous was the Martha Stewart case. What point was there in sending her to prison? After imposing a suitable fine, a judge could have sentenced her to report to the auditorium seven nights a week from 1800 to 2200 for six months and six nights a week for an additional six months. I believe this form of relatively inexpensive punishment would be highly effective. The very thought of having to spend several hours an evening in state of irksome boredom makes me shudder. Only offenders who didn’t comply with these rules would be sentenced to terms in prison.

REHABILITATION

The generally high recidivism rate indicates that rehabilitation is not a very good argument for incarceration. Apparently, the prison experience brutalizes some nonviolent young offenders who, had they not been in prison, would probably never have another encounter with the law. They emerge from prison bitter, hardened criminals. If we emptied our prisons of nonviolent offenders, we might apply part of the monetary savings to establishing rehabilitation programs for violent offenders.

DETERRENCE

Deterrence value of prisons depends on the degree of reluctance of individuals to repeat the incarceration experience. One of the factors that diminishes the deterrence value of prison is the generally low IQ of habitual offenders. They simply don’t anticipate the consequences of their actions. They live in a world of incomprehension and ambiguity. The much reviled, but nonetheless seminal book, The Bell Curve* contains a marvelous explication of the nexus between IQ and criminality. The more intelligent the inmates, the less likely they are to be imprisoned again. Either prison has rehabilitated or deterred them or they have simply become more masterful practitioners of crime.

PROTECTION OF SOCIETY.

Incarceration, expensive though it may be, effectively protects society from rapists, armed robbers, muggers and murderers. They can’t hurt us while they are locked up. Society may not wish to take a chance on alternative forms of punishment for these predators. We don’t feel comfortable unless they are removed from society. When we consider the corporate financial criminals and Martha Stewart, I don’t think any of us would have felt threatened if they had been sentenced to an alternative form of punishment.

The prison imbroglio now has a new aspect: prison entrepreneurs. Perversely, corporations rather than the state have taken over the management of some of our prisons. Prisons have become a business and prison inmates are a commodity. All things being equal, the greater the number of inmate-hours, the greater the corporate profit. If I were the CEO of a prison management corporation (PMC), I would be lobbying legislatures to pass laws that would send more people to prison and lengthen their sentences. Longer sentences and criminalization of behavior lead to increased profits. If farting in public were to be criminalized and achieve the status of a felony, we could lock up offenders for years. Prison management corporation stockholders would reap the benefits of felonious farting. Again if I were CEO of a PMC, I’d be lobbying to make, parking violations and spitting on the sidewalk felonies. As felonies, these two crimes could be profit leaders. As CEO of a PMC, I would also lobby for reduced sentences for violent offenders. Violent offenders are relatively less profitable and a royal pain in the ass. They require a great deal of expensive supervision because they are uncooperative, unrepentant, irrational, surly, and downright dangerous to warehouse. Prison guards who supervise the violent offenders are under constant stress. They live in fear of becoming victims of sudden, unprovoked act of violence. The stress results in a high rate of expensive turnover among the guards. In my position as CEO of a PMC, I would lobby to incarcerate jaywalkers and litterers for extended periods. They require much less supervision. They are profit leaders.

As CEO, my goal is to make a profit for my shareholders. The larger the prison population, the greater my profit. A little payola and a few favors to the right legislators can work wonders. With any luck we can create new felonies. For example, we might sentence people who fail to wash their hands after going to the bathroom to 10 years in prison for reckless endangerment of public health.

<>Ain’t free enterprise great?

*Most of the press attacked the Bell Curve as racist. I read it twice and I did not find any racist content. The press had a field day destroying straw men. I found the Bell Curve to be very upsetting and depressing because it pointed out that we have social problems that do not lend themselves to simple solutions proposed by liberal or conservative politicians.

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