Saturday, July 09, 2011

Reading the Board's Entrails ... and Then Eating Them

Chap rolled a question Joel and my way about Dan Drezner's article about being denied tenure, asking what we thought about it WRT command screening or promotion boards.

I read Dan's (who BTW I am a big fan of - you can see his works here) article first, then Joel's take.

Joel makes some solid observations about "up & out" - as for me, I was struck more about the emotional side of things. This should ring true to any officer who decides to make a full run at it; except for the very few who make 4-stars and wind up as CNO or CJCS; everyone eventually receives an "F" - or makes the decision to punch out.
I've been asked the same questions repeatedly over the past half-decade: What happened? If I could go into the wayback machine, what would I do differently? Do I still think about it? What lessons would I impart to others? Am I still bitter?
...
Tenure denials come with a multiplicity of stresses. The emotional pain of rejection is married to the material anxiety of trying to find gainful employment elsewhere, the anxiety of reassuring friends and family, and the existential anxiety of questioning if academe is the right career. In my case, however, only the emotional pain was an issue.

So what have I learned? The most important thing is that I now know that many of the mysteries that come with tenure denial will never be satisfactorily solved. I was inundated with "What happened?" questions the moment my news went public. In retrospect, the very fact of my denial suggested that my sources of information were not reliable. Even though I was at the center of the storm, my understanding was partial at best. People who earn tenure tend to have strong allies who lobby fiercely on their behalf. I didn't have any of those. I received the formal description from my department chair, and a few colleagues who were inside my academic star chamber told me their versions of events. Each of those people told me what they believed to be true—but their interpretations were incomplete. The result was a true Rashomon-style set of narratives.

Some of my friends started spinning fantastical explanations, including my political views and simple jealousy. Indulging in "What happened?" musings is inevitable—indeed, most social scientists are trained to search for underlying causes. But a good social scientist must also be wary of overdetermined outcomes. There is always the element of chance to any outcome.
...
Having to talk about it at every conference I attended for the next few years meant reliving the experience in a Groundhog Day manner. As interconnected as academics might be online, news of this kind spreads slowly. Even if colleagues know, some of them will play dumb in a face-to-face encounter, in the hope that my account will reveal some insidery detail.

With each successive explanation, everything becomes more rote. I soon had my humorous but reasonably forthcoming script at the ready, and it made these interactions increasingly anodyne. The only time I went off-script was when I was approached by a friend or acquaintance who had just been denied tenure—this happened on a surprisingly frequent basis. Over the next few years, junior international-relations professors sought me out to tell their tales and ask for advice and support. I had unwittingly become a patron saint of tenure denial.

In retrospect, these conversations were the most rewarding part of the entire experience. Academics are not a terribly empathetic lot, and those who have never been denied tenure lack the tacit knowledge necessary to understand the stages of grief that one endures after an outright rejection. Talking to my fellow rejectees permitted a candor that was not possible in other professional conversations. Discussing the many emotional roadblocks with those in a similar predicament allowed me to get a better handle on my own journey.

When does that journey end? I have mixed news to report: The pain of rejection is like a scar that never completely heals. Those who aspire to join the academy have spent their lives doing really, really well at school—and being denied tenure is about the loudest F one can earn. The sense of failure never goes away.

On the other hand, experiencing the ultimate rejection made the prospect of failure in other ventures less scary. I've taken greater risks in my research in the past half-decade than I ever did before—and the rewards have been very good. I've published four books, written or co-written 10 peer-reviewed articles and about 30 book chapters, essays, and book reviews. One of those books was about international relations and ... zombies. I'm a full professor at the oldest school of international affairs in the country.
There are many people who go into a selection board with everyone two echelons above them telling them how great they are - how much a "sure thing" it is - talking to them about what the next step is for them - but in the 10 seconds it takes to read the results - they go from Superstar to never-was-has-been.

Some take it very hard, some take it with a shrug. One thing that is true though, it all works out for the better in the end. Only for those who fall into bitterness is there no recovery.

Dan, like most, wind up in a very good place in the end - perhaps with a little more character for the experience.

Finally, if you want the background on Dan's tenure loss, I posted on it in the update to this post in 2005.

28 comments:

  1. kmadams8510:22

    I think it's a shame that people who get good at mid-grade jobs cannot choose to continue doing them.  There are plenty of staff jobs "off the path" that require competence but not absolute brilliance, and they are sometimes also fun.  Once I knew I wasn't going to promote, I managed to extend one of those to a 4.5 year experience of personal growth as a good staffer, received a couple of nice shiny awards and then was shown the door.  I would still be doing that job if they would have let me.

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  2. 74 (William Powell)12:18

    I knew fairly early that performing my duties to the best of my ability and getting promoted were not necessarily the same thing.  When I fail-selected it still felt bad, but I could look at myself in the mirror.  Because there IS such high attrition, people should steel themselves for non-selection from the get-go.  Then, if you make it, you can be pleasently surprised.

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  3. P.S. Wallace12:35

    There is a story, in I believe Buell's "The Quiet Warrior", about Halsey and Spruance having dinner a few years before America entered World War II. Both men had been successful in their careers, but at some point it became obvious that they were not viewed as the top men from their classes, and that as things were then they would probably not rise to the very highest levels (C-in-C or CNO). Halsey, in a good mood, asked Spruance if he had it all to do over again, what would he want to be.  Spruance was pensive for a second, and then said "A successful naval officer." Halsey's reply--"Me too."

    In system safety circles there is a truism that go thus: Just because you didn't blow up doesn't mean you were acting safely, and just because you blew up doesn't mean you were acting unsafe. I'd say something similiar is true regarding promotions. It's a tough business, and predicting performance is a tough job. And the only proof of the pudding is in the tasting. It took a war/threat of war for Halsey and Spruance to get on the path to reach 5 and 4 stars and the top echelons of the Navy. Don't think it would have happened otherwise.

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  4. CDR Salamander14:19

    Nice pull.  There was an interesting article that came out a few months ago that outlined where, after DEC 7th, the "Top 20" Flag Officers were sent up to the President.  By the end of the war - only one of them were at the top.

    Peace vs. war I guess.

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  5. CDR Salamander14:22

    Gramps.  That is a great set of rules to keep your sanity and to die with a smile on your face.  Like I tell people all the time, life is too short to stew in bitterness over what is, to 99.9% of the world, nothing.

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  6. Anonymous14:41

    Having retired at least three paygrade levels above any presumed competency, at least from my point of view, I can nonetheless vouch for that "ten seconds," when the bottom falls away.  In my case, I knew from the day I made my last rank that it was, indeed, terminal.  What I had not expected were the command screening boards that preceeded it, not once, but three times.  Each time, the debrief had some previously unmentioned flaw that no one had bothered to point out or mention, but nonetheless the boards felt were ample justification to say "not good enough."  A tough, large and bitter pill, but as was said by others, it changes nothing. One can keep looking aft or proceed and move ahead. I chose the later and now, looking back, have few significant regrets.

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  7. Anonymous14:42

    Dagnab it! That's me, Andy

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  8. Bull Snipe15:45

    Spruance's fitrep after Midway.  3.9 in Leaderhsip

    http://www.slideshare.net/NHHC/adm-spruances-fitrep-after-battle-of-midway

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  9. sykes.115:51

    I served on a Promotion and Tenure Committee at a major state university for many years and Chaired it for several. People who are not going be tenured become obvious after a few years. They almost always fail to understand or take seriously the published expectations. They assume that real excellence in irrelevant (to the school) activities will offset failure in the main objective. They are always surprised, very hurt and often angry. These are difficulty interviews for all involved.

    The University of Chicago is one the top research institutions in the world, and its faculty are required to be highly-productive, internationally-known and respected researchers. This means several refereed publications per year, a few well-received books, highly visible talks at major conferences and, in the sciences, something on the order of $500,000 per year of externally funded research. A number of completed Ph. D. students is also needed.

    Many very good, competent and even hard-working people fail to get tenure at schools like Chicago. Chicago's expectations and demands are extremely high.

    The reasons that were used to deny Dr. Drezner tenure will never be known because P&T committees operate under rules of confidentiality. However, since several people have expressed admiration for the quality of his work, I would guess it was a quantity issue, or perhaps failure to achieve an international reputation. Political Science is a hugh field, the heap faculty is very big, and getting to its top is enormously difficult.

    Except in some degenerate "disciplines" like women's studies or social work, politics (political or faculty) generally aren't very important. It is probably a minor issue in Political Science. In 37 years, I only heard one criticism on nonacademic grounds, and that was from an atheist who was concerned about hiring an evangelical Christian.

    Your colleagues do not generally follow your career very carefully, unless they are working in your group. They are also ignorant of any interim evaluations you have gotten and of the annual review with the Chair of the Department. So, they are always surprised by negative outcomes. They also don't want to know. It's the whistling past the grave yard syndrom.

    I never served in the military, but I doubt selection boards operate very differently than promotion and tenure committees. The fact that different people read dossiers and letters of recommendation differently is why the decisions are made by committees and boards.

    By the way, I, too, greatly benefited from the Peter Principle by at least two promotions. I eventually thought of myself as Bob-the-Lucky, always one step ahead of justice.

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  10. LT B16:49

    Sometimes it isn't the run up to the event, but rather, your ability to grow and move on after it.  Do what is right, and move on.  Giving up the bitterness is never all that easy, but at some point you have to let it go.  Unfortunately choking people out is not a socially acceptable way of alleviating that bitterness. :)  

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  11. tvljr18:56

    As a guy who somehow made O-6 despite a proclivity for profanity and Sam Adams, I always go back to the best CO I ever had, who told me as a young LT that my career would progress until I met that asshole who just didn't like me.  For him it was RADM Ming Chang, also known as Ming the Merciless.  For me it was ADM Fox Fallon, asshole and prima donna.

    At some point you just have to look in the mirror, crack another Sam and move on.  Rejection is as much a part of life as death and taxes.

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  12. Doc Savage20:13

    Concur. I made the final "quitters" plunge this week as I mailed in the resignation of my reserve commission, and have never felt so liberated. Not as a "for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee" thing, but because I think I have a good internal barometer on my abilities, and that barometer points truer when it doesn't have the dead hand of the Navy on it that says "failure". 

    Okay--so the system never recognized the "skills". I served. I paid a price for that service, and if I didn't get the great career I wanted and think could have been/should have been possible--well, that's life. I'm happy I made the attempt, and happy I made the decision to finally write off sunk costs. 

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  13. LT B21:16

    The name of my nemesis was VADM Rodney (I love Babs Mikulski) Rempt.  He had minions though.  Ugly, ugly people, them.

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  14. Anonymous21:55

    No doubt there will be more gnashing of teeth in the coming months when retention boards will meet to conduct the RIF said to start in August. Ass kissing to save your billets begins as soon as tomorrow.

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  15. UltimaRatioRegis22:00

    Terminal rank ain't nowhere as bad as terminal disease.  Hell's bells, I celebrated more passovers than Rabbi Rubinowitz.  But the questions that always has to be asked is, "did (or would) my Marines (sailors) follow me when the shooting started?"

    If the answer is "yes", you did what you came to do.  And often, for the one who puts the velvet dagger in you, the answer is "no".  And I would not trade places or rank with that person for all the whiskey in Ireland.

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  16. AW1 Tim02:55

      I would argue that the greatest failing of our nation's universities is the tenure system.  Get rid of the damned thing and hire and fire the people you want and can afford. Tenure breeds indolence and boorishness, no different than unions. Both are anathema to anyone who values liberty and personal responsibility.

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  17. Grandpa Bluewater.07:02

    Says more about the rater than the ratee.

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  18. P.S. Wallace08:18

    To be fair to Fletcher (who always needs defending, and no I haven't read Lundstrom's book "Black Shoe Admiral" yet)--back in those days it would not suprise me if this was an honest and very good FITREP. (i.e. other guys got 3.0s if their skipper thought they deserved it): and that it took 50 more years of what can only be called an increasing lack of integrity to cause the 4.0 system to be revised. 

    I don't remember when officers got the right to look at their FITREPs, but even after they got that right I believe you still had to go to D.C. to do so--which overall might have meant there wasn't a grade inflation problem back then. Starting thesis, at any rate.  Doesn't mean I'm right.

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  19. Salty Gator11:29

    In the mean time, it is a great reminder to new officers entering the service that if you choose career over everything, at the end of the day, you may not end up with 4 stars, but an empty house, a large I Love Me binder, and one single stinkin letter from the President thanking you for your twenty years of service.

    Better to have a family there to love and be loved by as well.  Your I Love Me binder might not be as thick, but at the end of the day, you will care more about them than your next promotion.  

    The service will go on without one man, no matter how much that one man cares or how significant he was.

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  20. Salty Gator11:32

    take out the words "safe" and "unsafe" and I will agree with you, B.  Halsey and Spruance were not the play-it-safe type.  They were calculated risk takers and ass kickers.  the fear mongering, career oriented mission-be-damned culture of 'safety' in many cases flies in the face of what these two men were all about.

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  21. Squidly20:08

    As a Supe, you had to kowtow to that commie troll.
    All bad.

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  22. Squidly20:12

    Promotion boards, and the adjunct admin boards, all suffer from several basic flaws:  your record spends little time on the screen, and if the Flags should dwell then the Recorder starts counting down numbers to vote, annoyingly.  If you have a great briefer, then even a so so package will get merit.  Someone with "press 100" can get torpedoed if the briefer sucks.  Scary stuff.

    Yes, the system is "fair" but it is far from perfect.  Good people always get left behind, and all too often those getting ahead are backstabbers and brown nosers.  

    And now that we're in decline, it's only going to get more draconian. 

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  23. Grandpa Bluewater.01:22

    While I agree Spruance had nerves of steel and would make any decision required, what I have read remarked that he was soft spoken and a complete gentlemen. As such, I think he got more out of "you could have done better, next time do so" than most "ass kickers".

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  24. Grumpy Old Ham07:46

    <span>who told me as a young LT that my career would progress until I met that asshole who just didn't like me</span>

    Truer words have rarely been spoken.  In my case, it was one of Skeletor McPeak's minions whose name shall never pass my lips again, and who had drunken deeply of Skeletor's chalice containing the Kool-Aid of "Too many comms types in MY Air Force!"  They must be positively apoplectic<span></span> with the creation of the cyberops career field...

    Still finding it difficult to release the bitterness, even after a decade...oh well.

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  25. I used to wonder at the guys (mostly guys back then) I knew who spent many years as first classes, suffering the pain of "not making Chief" year after year after year.  Those who made it with 17, 18, or even 20 years in seemed to quickly be successful, and if they stayed in often made Senior and Master Chief first time up.  While having many more years "experience" surely helped them be successful as new Chiefs, I propose that a key part of those years of experience was not being on the list, accepting it, and moving forward. That, and watching guys that you trained make it before you, can either breed humility or contempt. It was those who knew that "...humility is good, a great, a necessary attribute which cannot mar you - in fact, it strengthens you - ..." who went on to become some great Chiefs, wise and effective beyond their time in grade.

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  26. Anonymous09:28

    There is much truth in this discussion and in the link to the tenure denial article.  I can only speak to my own case, and again, I must acknowledge that it has unique elements that no one else's will have. So to avoid those let me say that my experience did not involve promotion, the key milestone that took place for me was command select, my "in zone" look. These admin board selects, whether for XO or DH or for command, are the most important boards, not the statutory boards that promote to the next rank.  My fate was decided a full 18 months before I was even looked at for promotion to commander (which I achieved, but I was a terminal 0-5 from the git go).  My other point is that I did not remotely understand what had happened until AFTER I got out of the Navy. Part of it had to do with the pace of my assignments in the Navy, but also with my remoteness from the Navy proper when I took orders to Fort Leavenworth KS.  For officers who are interested in managing their careers efficiently, you are the only one who can do so--counting on the system to manage it for you is a huge mistake. Do not rely on excellent operational performance to take care of you. BTW, there is a downside to this advice because it has the potential to cause one to obsess over the milestones and gates for boards inside the Bupers/Navy Annex...so do not overmanage your career either, but be aware of when your major milestones are and if no one will tell you, then you must be proactive in finding out.  This is one reason so many detailers and assigment officers do so well, they are on site and so know their gates.   John T. Kuehn, CDR, USN (retired)

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  27. Bull Snipe09:37

    The ultimate selection board.  At the end of WW2, Congress allowed the Navy to submit 4 names for 5-stars.  The Navy provided 5:  King, Nimitz, Leahy, Halsey, Spruance.  Ignoring Leyte Gulf and two typhoons, Congress (meaning Carl Vinson) took the first four.  As his parting gift, Spruance got retirement at full pay.

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  28. Aubrey09:45

    In spite of their prior friendship, for the rest of his life after WW2 Halsy (and his supporters) drove the politics that kept Spruance from his 5th star.  Seems the good Admiral felt that his record would not stand well if Spruance was given equal rank and recognition.

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