Quote:
Originally Posted by Webstral
Sage observations. Few get promoted by making waves. No one wants bad news on his Officer Evaluation Report. It's a shame that the inevitable outcome of a desire to avoid being seen as a troublemaker is a disaster like this one.
|
Ah, yes; no officer (or NCO) wants to be the "Atlas Man." (Do OERs and NCOERs still use that little diagram?) But I've seen that happen too many times -- promote someone because he's a good schmoozer but otherwise a royal pain in the ass. If you promote him, you can get him reassigned outside your unit! It's really a lazy and stupid way to solve a problem with a soldier, and it gets used way too often, particularly with problem senior NCOs and mid-to-high-level officers.
Ironically, it's also used to get rid of another type of "problem" soldier" -- the one that sees problems and immediately starts working to fix them -- successfully. It's the sort of thing that makes his superiors pissed because he's exposing unit problems that his superiors were glossing over, ignoring, or actively trying to hide -- and it also makes them look bad because
they couldn't fix the problems. A stupid and lazy senior NCO or officer will get rid of that guy because he "makes us look bad." A smart one will use that guy as his troubleshooter and go-to guy.