Quote Originally Posted by marct View Post
Many of the high tech firms got around the problem of retention by bypassing their HR departments in both hiring and career decisions. They adopted a mentoring model with hiring/project managers acting as mentors using a very dense network of weak ties as their basis, and this might be a model that the Army may want to adopt, at least in part (basically, it decentralizes a large part of the "individual career growth" responsibilities from HR to informal networks).

Marc
The old regimental system (at least in the US Army) tended to work along similar lines. Obviously the effectiveness varied from regiment to regiment, but officers who didn't make the grade were "encouraged" to leave the service.