Z.06: Counting What Matters

One thing I will always remember about Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth is her fondness for data. During my two years in USASOC headquarters I got to sit in on a handful of engagements where we briefed her on a myriad of topics. These ranged from the role of SOF in high end conflict, through cuts to the army’s and USASOC’s end strength, and down to conversations about families’ access to childcare on a single base in Florida. She was always attentive on every subject we discussed, but whenever data came up, Secretary Wormuth couldn’t help but lean in a little further. Data clearly interested her.

She put data on her list of six objectives to help guide the force:

My second objective is to ensure the Army becomes more data-centric and can conduct operations in contested environments, which will enable our ability to prevail on the future battlefield.

Perhaps the most lasting impact she could have on making our army data driven is a directive she is reportedly working right now:

“Although the investigation found that the Command Assessment Program withstood an attempt to interfere with its process, Secretary Wormuth will be issuing a directive that formally establishes CAP as an enduring Army program in order to reinforce the integrity of CAP and increase transparency,” the Army statement says.¹

CAP started before Secretary Wormuth, but her directive may be the thing that saves it. She’s fighting against time though, since she’s stepping down on Monday the 20th. I hope her team is working to get this over the finish line before she departs - because General Charles Hamilton wasn’t the only army general who wants CAP gone.

‘My Gut Versus Your Data’

The news of how General Hamilton tried to interfere with CAP broke last spring while I was sitting in the pre-command course in Fort Leavenworth. We were plied into a large auditorium sharing the Military.com article on our phones, noting he was on deck to address our class the following day. He ultimately canceled due to a ‘scheduling conflict’.

I’m not going to rehash the sordid details at length, but I am glad that Secretary Wormuth didn’t lend much credence to Hamilton’s excuses for his behavior. I’ll look at his claims about the disproportionate number of minority officers opting out of CAP below, but his claim that he put no pressure on the CAP board to reverse their decision is indefensible. There is no doubt about the undue influence a four-star general exerts when they inject themselves the way he did with the board. Either Hamilton is too stupid to know this, or he is lying. Neither is compatible with command in our army, and Secretary Wormuth was right to fire him.

But he’s not the only commander out there that wants to end CAP. I’ve met more than one general that sees CAP as an encroachment into a space where they feel their ‘gut instinct’ should reign supreme. My own branch doesn’t trust CAP. Special Forces moved the Special Forces Group commands behind the veil of the Special Mission Unit board to shield them from CAP’s influence.

The aversion to CAP is misplaced. CAP doesn’t even set the order of merit list for CSL selection.² CAP is instead an attempt to add data to the way we select our commanders and command sergeants major. In the end, it only produces a one page report that advises the board. It’s just a part of the selection process, one still heavily dominated by a panel of senior officers who still weight OER senior rater comments over CAP's one page report. The decision doesn’t have to be gut instinct versus data. It should be both.

The Army’s ‘Bad Senior Rater’ Problem

The ancient Chinese called it the ‘Bad Emperor’ problem. Emperors, much like army commanders, had absolute power. In the hands of a ‘benevolent and wise ruler’ this can be a great thing. But in the hands of a bad emperor, this could plunge the country into chaos, wiping out whole generations of future leaders. How do you guarantee the emperors were good?

The old CSL process, driven solely by OER senior rater comments, was flawed because we, as commanders, are flawed too.³ We each have our own biases, and the same ‘ducks pick ducks’ tendencies. There is absolutely a role for commanders’ senior rater comments. But they are not unimpeachable.

When I worked at Human Resources Command, I saw firsthand the bell curve of senior raters. Talented subordinates who got good commanders who could write good OERs won the career lottery, getting the evaluations that ensured opportunities would flow their way.

But we also had great commanders who couldn’t write to save their lives. They might have done great work leading their formations, but they killed the careers of officers they senior rated. One Special Forces Group didn’t produce a single tactical battalion commander for three consecutive years because of one beloved commander who wrote shitty OERs. Bad writing like theirs was why we built a guide to help them.

We also had senior raters who had seriously suspicious judgement. One told me he could tell everything he needed to know about a potential officer ‘by the look of his chin’. A few were biased against officers who pursued broadening opportunities, since ‘there was nothing to be learned outside of combat’. Religious affiliation, or lack thereof, can impact OERs; not every senior rater puts their personal religious views aside. But all of those senior raters were supremely confident they knew better than any data process.

Except they only enjoyed power with none of its responsibility. They, as commanders, knew best. But when they got it wrong? When a subordinate turned out to not be as good as thought, none of them held themselves accountable. They have given us commanders which every subordinate knew were toxic. In one case it took an armed standoff with police trying to save his family before the leadership would acknowledge he was unfit. But then they hid behind hollow excuses of ‘we had no idea’. Not a single one of his senior raters suggested they, or anyone else, should be held accountable for their bad judgement in recommending him.

No senior rater of a toxic or criminal commander ever lost a rank or a dollar of their pension. And none of them have ever suggested they should.

With CAP, we can do a post-mortem on failed commanders. In some cases, we’ll see what we already knew but chose to ignore. But in others we’ll find new things to assess for, further improving the process. When your selection process involves looking at data, you can improve it with even better data. The old board can’t do this. Ask anyone who claims the old process was better for the data to back up their claim and you won’t get any, because they don’t have any.

While I’m firmly in favor of CAP, I have published my own critiques of it. I’ve argued it should start measuring a leader’s data literacy. I’ve also argued tests like the essay contest aren’t giving them the data they need, while prejudicing against neurodivergent brains like those with dyslexia. Others can surely propose their own changes to what we should and should not count. We should absolutely have a robust discussion on what to measure. But that’s no justification to not measure altogether.

Getting Past A Bad OER

CAP doesn’t solve the ‘bad senior rater’ problem, but it takes some of the damage out of it. Since the start of CAP, I’ve seen officers get selected who never would have had a shot under the ‘OER only board’. They have thrived in command. They are officers who had slightly different careers or got a middling OER along the way. Sometimes a senior rater just doesn’t like your face. CAP allows these officers to demonstrate what they can do, and according to the army’s own data, they are doing exactly that. Roughly 1/3 of the officers CAP finds ready for command would not been selected through the old ‘90 second per file’ OER only board.

Perhaps more impactfully, every year CAP sees officers at the top of the paper OER order of merit list fall right off it. These are officers selected for below the zone and ‘merit based’ early promotion who were found to be so toxic at CAP they were held back. But CAP is redemptive and gives officers, even these toxic ones, a chance to compete again the following year.

Peers

Much has been made of the ‘peers’ portion of CAP. It was one of the places that Hamilton cited as justification for his interference, after he’d reportedly heard her peers were going to ‘light her up’. While his story is very suspicious, peers aren’t used at CAP in the way people might presume.⁴ We’re looking for commanders, not cheerleaders.

I can attest to this because I have bad peer evals, and yet I was found ready for command at CAP. I’ve received peer evaluations in officer basic, each phase of ranger school, the captain's course, each phase of the q-course, and in command. Over more than a dozen different rounds of peer feedback, I only did well once.⁵ I have rough elbows. They’ve sanded down some from when I was a junior officer, but they’re still there. It’s something I need to keep working on.

The psychs and the blind board that have access to peer evals aren’t screening out people with negative comments. They are listening for self-awareness though.

Possibly the most important question you get asked at CAP isn’t in the board. It’s with the psych. Get this question right and you’ve got a great chance at success at CAP. Getting this question wrong though? You’re inviting a tougher board, and a potential ‘Not Yet Ready’ result.

The question is, ‘What do you think your peers said about you?’ Have the humility before you go to CAP to reflect on this question and be prepared to talk about how you’re working on it.

Why Are People Opting Out?

There’s no single answer to this question. For every officer, there are multiple reasons for why they might choose to attend CAP or not. I’ll examine a few, from ones I see as good reasons to ones I see as poor.

First and foremost, command isn’t for everyone. My friends in the civilian world are baffled to learn a lieutenant colonel battalion commander doesn’t make one penny more than the non-battalion commander lieutenant colonels in their unit. Not everyone wants to command and not everyone who does want it should get one. Plenty of phenomenal officers want other things and they should pursue them.

CAP also comes around seventeen years of service. For a lot of officers those seventeen years accumulated debts. Not exactly monetary ones, but the bills still start to come due. Over 50% of married officers of my generation have spouses with advanced degrees and careers - or they would still have careers if we didn’t move all the time. As kids start to hit middle and high school, those moves start to incur a bigger cost on the families. And spouses, rightly so, want to get the same fulfillment we soldiers get out of our careers.

One reason for the disconnect is so sharp is because we’re still led by a class of generals who overwhelming come from a different generation; one that thinks the army is entitled to our spouses' labor free of charge. That generational dividing line is a piece of why we’re seeing people decline CAP.

Afghanistan and Iraq are also challenging things we all have to figure out. We lost brothers and sisters fighting in wars that left us with unsatisfying consequences. These conflicts defined the careers of my generation of officers. We have to get right with the duality of wars that made us but also broke us. I remember deciding in 2011 that Afghanistan wasn’t ever going to be worth more to me than my marriage. Not everyone I know made the same calculus. When we left in 2021, those soldiers were left feeling like they had nothing.

Those are all good reasons for people to opt out of CAP. But there are also people who think they shouldn’t have to go. Officers who spent their whole careers being told they were awesome on OERs. So why, after seventeen years of accolades, do they now have to prove themselves to anyone? This is hubris. You can measure this sentiment by looking at the disproportionately high number of Rangers and Special Forces officers who opt in to attend CAP. We are accustomed to selections, have grown in a culture of ‘earn the beret every day’. We don’t feel threatened by CAP. No officer should.

There are also a non-zero number of officers who are genuinely worried about passing an ACFT. I can only speak from my own experience, but the CAP ACFT was the most professionally run fitness test I’ve ever done in my army career. The graders took the time to ensure you were clear on the standards before starting, counted every good rep, and corrected any that were short. They didn’t even laugh when I ate shit twice during the sprint-drag-carry. You have no reason to worry about the professionalism of the graders at CAP. If you have concerns about your ability to perform … well, check out my series ‘Where Data Meets Gains’ for some tips on how to get better.

I haven’t addressed Hamilton’s charge that the majority of minority officers are opting out of CAP because of racism. This is mostly because, as a white male officer, I really don’t have any room to weigh in. I’d hate for it to be true, since it seems like such a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whenever someone is applying for SFAS, we tell them, ‘don’t self-select’, because that is the #1 reason people don’t make it through. More than ruck marches, more than pull-ups, more than peers, and more than land-navigation. The overwhelming majority of people who don’t wear a green beret chose not to wear it.

Declining to attend CAP because you think the process is biased against you won’t change anything. It won’t prove anything either.

What You Take Away From CAP

I think everyone who has even a passing interest in command should go to CAP. First of all, it’s easy. CAP is by far the least stressful selection event I’ve ever done. You get four days away from your work email and each day is divided into just two tasks: one before lunch, one after. They open up a pretty good chow hall and there’s plenty of time between events. There are no pre-dawn white board updates, no log PT, no food or sleep deprivation. Just clear tasks with clear standards, most of which are in an airconditioned room.

But you shouldn’t go to CAP just because it’s easy. You should go to CAP because it’s good for you. CAP asks you to have humility.

Grab a list of well-known job interview questions and contemplate your answers. Things like ‘Tell us about a time you failed’, ‘Describe an ethical dilemma you’ve faced in your career’, and ‘How do you go about identifying a new way to solve a problem?’. Look back over your career and find specific examples and how they shaped you. Before CAP, reach out to peers you trust and to ones you’ve struggled to work with and ask them for your strengths and weaknesses.

Then spend the week before CAP, and the week you’re there, reflecting. Who are you as an officer? How did you get this way? Who were your mentors? Who do you mentor? What change do you want to drive as a future commander in the army? Joe Byerly is correct to point out, we don’t set aside enough time in our careers to reflect, always too busy with another deployment, another meeting, and an endless supply of emails.

If you spend CAP reflecting on the answers to questions like these, then regardless of how CAP turns out, it will be an unambiguous good for you and the soldiers you lead.

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Update:

Secretary Wormuth’s PAO reached out with a link to the published directive. The directive includes publishing the weighting of different metrics of CAP:

It also covers finding more permanent facilities to ensure CAP has a home. This was great to read and will have an outsized impact to the army which will continue to impact our formations long after her departure. Hat tip to her and her team.

1. Command Assessment Program. An assessment run in the fall where the Army evaluates the next generation of the Command Select List (CSL) leaders among its Lieutenant Colonels, Colonels, and Sergeants Major.

2. Command Select List. The list of those selected for command and command sergeants major at the Lieutenant Colonel and above in accordance with Title 10 of the US Code.

3. Officer Evaluation Report, an annual report card on how a soldier is performing which used by promotion and CSL boards.

4. CAP uses an algorithm based off administrative data to match officers who served in the same unit at the same time. The emails are sent out automatically to officers all over the world, with most CAP candidates getting over twenty peer and subordinate reports. For Hamilton’s ‘trusted officer’ to overhear even a majority of those twenty plus peers would require, at a minimum, an incredible amount of luck, timing, and TDY.

5. That was at the conclusion of the Q-course in Robin Sage. However, given that my team of NCOs was assessing me based on my role as a detachment commander, they weren’t really looking at me as ‘peer).