Bingo! I wish we could say we put round pegs in round holes, but I think our officer management is more in line with road crews working round the clock to fill holes. Occasionally when somebody asks for somebody because they know that person is the right person, we get it right, and sometimes we just get lucky, but by and large we fill holes. Before we can get officer management right, we need to examine all the reasons we just fill holes.

Some of the problems:
1) Attrition
2) Op-tempo
3) Juggling competing "glass" balls - when everything is a priority, nothing is a priority
4) Parochialism
5) Lack of incentives in relation to 1 & 2
6) Failure to review personnel files (could be due to 2, 3 or 4), I think they are calling this "whole person assessment" or something along those lines

I do not blame the HRC folks. They are the proverbial one armed switchboard operator trying to keep all the calls connected. In light of current conditions they are probably doing better then we should expect. However, I do think as Steve mentioned, our system is out of date with the current resources and requirements. We have not only "mass" based requirements, but also extensive & increasing "technical" (covers the myriad of skills) requirements. Unless you increase the numbers of people who have the latter, the former will get "filled" with what is available. To boot, we are competing for these talents with the same incentives we had when all we had were mass based requirements. If you want good people, they are going to cost you.