A brief afternoon with CNP

CNP came and visited, because hey, who REALLY wants to hang out in a place like this?

 Chief of Naval Personnel stopped by our base recently and had an all-officer call.  My XO and I went, partly because lunch was provided (but mostly because he was speaking). He rattled off a lot of potential upcoming changes. I put his (approximate) thoughts in italics and mine in regular font.



LinkedIn Style detailing. There is a pilot going on right now for 1100 people, and after that it will expand. The administrative feature behind this is to move the placement officers out of Millington and over to the Type Commanders. 

I'm a fan, if executed correctly, mainly because I'm finding that detailing seems to depend more and more on your PRD and less on what actual job you would be good for (or want), so opening it up would help make the "fit" part of "fit and fill" better.

SECNAV tours with industry will be expanding to have more companies and more opportunities.

O5 and O6 will have high year tenure moved to 40 years. The catch is that there will be expanded authority to retire officers early via a continuation board, similar to what happens with E7-E9. 

So I don't understand the need for this. First, O5 base pay caps at 22 years, and O6 pay at 26 years, so there isn't a lot of incentive to stay in longer for them unless you make pay changes...which given our small pay increases I don't see happening anytime soon. Second, if you're an O5, that would take you from a maximum of 28 years to 40 years, so you would spend 12 years never advancing while still potentially PCS moving. I don't see the draw there at all. At 28 years, the average O5 is 50 years old. If you're in the situation where you could hang around, but you know you likely won't advance and face the chopping block every other year on a continuation board...why would you want to hang around?

Increase Below Zone selection maximum percentage from 10% to 25%.

Agree. We don't offer our top performers bonuses, select assignments or anything else besides advice like "Go to the Pentagon for a great tour." But, if we select them early for promotion, that could definitely provide incentive to work hard.

You too can become nothing unless you wear stars on your shoulders...just pick an assignment here! Image from Wikipedia

Reorder promotion merit so that top 15% selected from the board pin on and get paid right away.

So instead of you get promoted and paid based on where your lineal number falls out, you get promoted based on where the promotion board ranked you. So if you're an above zone select but a below zone guy was picked over you at the board, he would get paid and pin on before you do.

I like the idea, although I find it silly that we stretch out the promotions over a year. Could we maybe shorten it to six months? Why make someone a "select" forever? Even the Chiefs don't do this.

Shift to a cloud based integrated pay system.

CNP said that he has something like 88 databases for personnel stuff that don't talk to each other. He is working to put them all "in the cloud" so that it will make pay and admin easier. I like the idea, hopefully it executes well.

Blah Blah "Your pay is messed up." From Dilbert.com.

Add A, B, C, and D to the end of NECs to reflect a level of expertise, such as technician, supervisor, etc.

A really good way to better capture billet "fit" instead of just fill, this would prevent a command from getting a large influx of new bodies that fill billets, but lack experience needed for the command to run properly. Another great idea.

Shift to monthly spot checks for PRT.

CNP expressed interest in shifting the PRT from a twice a year deal to monthly spot checks instead. I definitely would like that flexibility, but my biggest worry is that too many people will abuse it and we'll go back to the system we have now. As it is, too many commands say "PT on your own" and make that their low standard.

Replace NavFit98a with eNavFit.

Hey, we could enter the 21st Century! I'm all about an online EVAL system so we can get away from physical signatures and routing pieces of paper. The Army only beat us by a few years.

Better target compensation.

If you got a better orders location, would it be worth a lower multiple for your SRB? That idea is being broached. Not a bad idea, as it gives more flexibility, but the Navy tried it before without much success.

Overall I liked the possible changes coming, so it will be interesting to see how far they go.
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The views expressed in this blog post are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Navy, Department of Defense or U.S. Government. Additionally, they don't necessarily reflect the views of the Chief of Naval Personnel, because I could have misheard or misinterpreted what he said, and I didn't write down anything verbatim. He doesn't even know me or that this article exists. On top of that, Congress or the President could totally change these ideas before they ever get implemented.

So don't call CNP's office citing this article. It'll make him mad and make you look stupid.