Talent Management 2030
November 2021
TALENT MANAGEMENT 2030
1
BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT
Seven decades after its creation, the Marine Corps personnel system is overdue for a fundamental redesign. Our
organization, processes, and approach to personnel and talent management are no longer suited to today’s
needs and incompatible with the objectives of Force Design 2030. Transitioning to a talent management
focus, and system, is required. Without profound improvements made at speed, the deciencies in the current
system will result in the failure of broader service modernization efforts.
This report charts a new course for our personnel system and is informed by a decade’s worth of studies,
books, reports, and academic articles on military personnel reform, in addition to the signicant body of literature
on organizational leadership and the science of management. Like our force design effort, the redesign of our
personnel system is a work in progress. This report explains why it is necessary and details some of the initial steps
we are taking to create the information age personnel system required to continue winning the Nation’s battles.
“The Marine Corps will only be able to
practice maneuver warfare if its personnel
policies are consistent with what maneuver
warfare demands.”
- General A.M. Gray Jr.,
29th Commandant of the Marine Corps
TALENT MANAGEMENT 2030
2
positions above all other career experiences. Reinforced
by the 1980 Defense Officer Personnel Management
Act (DOPMA), this system has remained fundamentally
unchanged to this day.
Within this 20th century context, the Marine Corps
created an industrial age manpower model, the outlines
and objectives of which have remained remarkably
consistent over time, despite profound changes in the
environment. Indeed, the very name of our personnel
headquarters – Manpower and Reserve Affairs
(M&RA) – is indicative of our industrial age approach
to personnel. A sampling of dictionary denitions for
“manpower” includes, “the total supply of persons
available and tted for service”; “the number (or supply)
of people working or available for work or service”;
and, “power in terms of people available or required
for work or military service.” In all cases, the denitional
common denominator is a view of people as supply or
available inventory – a core industrial age perspective.
While today’s manpower system would be remarkably
familiar to a Marine from the 1950s, they would be
amazed by the social, economic, nancial, cultural, and
technological changes that have transformed our country
and the world. And while that Marine would recognize
today’s global context of strategic competition, they
would be surprised by its complexity and scope, as well
as the Marine Corps’ role in new domains of competition
and warghting, such as space and cyber.
THE URGENCY OF CHANGE
Let me be clear: I have the deepest respect for the
hard-working men and women – both uniformed and
civilian – who manage our personnel system. Over
many decades, countless unsung heroes across the
M&RA enterprise have kept the machine running,
contributed to the readiness of our warghting units,
and made lasting, positive impacts on the lives of our
Marines and their families, me included. And while our
personnel model may have been appropriate in an
Our current system of personnel management – like
those of the other services – was designed in the
industrial era and predates a host of cultural and
technological developments that characterize today’s
world. Understandably, that model was built with a
different set of underlying assumptions about human
capital, many of which are no longer valid. Consider,
for example, that when our industrial model was born,
only about one-third of women were in the workforce,
compared with approximately 60% today. College, and
even high school education, was for the privileged: in
1950, just 34% of Americans graduated high school, while
6% completed college, compared with approximately
90% and 33% respectively, today. And business was
exclusively analog; our manpower model was devised
in an era before personal computers, mobile phones,
and the Internet, when Marines received paper orders
and paper paychecks.
America’s post-World War II national security priorities
shaped the development of our personnel system.
Focused on the threat posed by the former Soviet Union,
we sought a force to ght principally in large, set-piece
battles in Europe and along its maritime periphery. Our
manpower model thus aimed to create and maintain an
enlisted force predominantly composed of young troops
(and primarily conscripts in time of war), prepared for
the physical rigors of combat, but otherwise requiring
little education or training. There were exceptions, of
course, as all services prioritized technical skills among
some specialties, but the overriding paradigm reected
our combat experience in World War II, which prioritized
youth, physical tness, and discipline over education,
training, and technical skills.
For ofcers expected to command units of young
men with minimal education, leadership ability was
understandably the most important and sought-after
characteristic. This led Congress to pass the Officer
Personnel Act of 1947, instituting an “up-or-out”
development model with rigid, time-driven promotion
schedules that prioritized command (leadership)
YESTERDAY’S INDUSTRIAL AGE MODEL
“While our service never seeks change for change’s sake, we
have always embraced it when change had the potential
to improve our lethality and effectiveness.”
TALENT MANAGEMENT 2030
3
a corps of Marines that is more intelligent, physically
t, cognitively mature, and experienced. We need a
system that can identify each Marine’s talents, help
them develop those talents into skills and aptitudes,
and assign them to billets and duties where they can
apply their strengths to best support their unit’s mission.
Without fundamental change to our personnel system,
executed at speed, we risk undermining the larger
goals of Force Design 2030. Our modern operational
concepts and organizations cannot reach their full
warfighting potential without a talent management
system that recruits, develops, and retains the right
Marines.
In 2019, Congress gave both Service Secretaries and
Service Chiefs new and signicant authorities to reform
their personnel systems. My intent is to use these new
authorities, exercise those we already possess, and seek
support for any additional authorities required in order
to bring our personnel system into the information age.
Our initial changes will trace four broad categories,
each of which will be described in detail in the body
of this report:
(1) Implementation of new models for recruiting talent;
(2) Establishment of an assignments process consistent
with our warghting philosophy;
(3) Introduction of new initiatives to increase career
exibility; and
(4) Adoption of modern digital tools, processes, and
analytics, consistent with industry standards.
While some changes will happen immediately, others
will require signicant adjustments to organizational
structure and responsibilities. This report provides the
conceptual foundation for our approach to talent
management and should be read as an action plan.
I expect the Marine Corps to move at speed in
developing and implementing the initiatives listed in
this document, and others identified in the coming
months, in order to achieve a full transition from the
current manpower system to a talent management
system no later than 2025.
earlier era, it is no longer suited to our service needs
or the expectations of the Americans who ll our ranks.
The time for change is now.
The core objectives of all modern personnel
management systems are to recruit individuals
with the right talents, match those talents to
organizational needs, and incentivize the most
talented and high performing individuals to remain
with the organization. Our current manpower system
is not equipped to meet any of these objectives, except
in the bluntest of ways. To use a rough analogy, our
current manpower framework treats every Marine like
a round peg and every billet like a round hole, while
a talent management system recognizes that both
Marines and billets come in different shapes and sizes.
While our service never seeks change for change’s
sake, we have always embraced it when change
had the potential to improve our lethality and
effectiveness. As the Marine Corps refocuses on
naval expeditionary warfare, we must undergo parallel
changes to our personnel system to ensure we are
able to recruit and retain the right Marines for today’s
era of renewed global competition. It is essential that
our personnel system supports the broader goals of
Force Design 2030 and enables us to maximize the
effectiveness of concepts like maneuver warfare, stand-in
forces, expeditionary advanced base operations, and
distributed operations.
Borrowing from ideas in the CJCS instruction,
Implementing Joint Force Development and Design, we
cannot create a modern talent management system by
adopting a “force development approach” to change,
seeking incremental adjustments to our manpower
organization and processes so that it can do what it
does better. Instead, we must embrace a “force design
approach,” seeking change that will empower our
personnel enterprise to do things differently to enable
the competitive advantages of the larger force.
It begins and ends with preparedness for combat. Our
ability to ght and win on future battleelds demands a
personnel system that can recruit, develop, and retain
“Our modern operational concepts and organizations
cannot reach their full warfighting potential without a
talent management system that recruits, develops, and
retains the right Marines.”
TALENT MANAGEMENT 2030
4
TENETS OF A TALENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
• Marines are individuals, not inventory. Whereas
a manpower management system views personnel
as inventory or a commodity to be managed, a talent
management system views personnel as individuals with
different skills, strengths, interests, and motivations.
• Talents can be identified and evaluated. Data, when
properly collected and analyzed, can provide powerful
insights about the talents and strengths of both an
individual Marine and a unit.
• Talents can be developed. While a Marine may
be born with certain talents, those talents can only
become strengths, aptitudes, and skills through focused
individual effort over an extended period, fueled by a
Marine’s desire to excel. The Marine Corps can help
cultivate an individual’s talents with the right education,
training, and experience, but ultimately the responsibility
for talent development rests with the Marine.
• Matching talents to duties maximizes performance.
A Marine Corps that matches Marines’ talents to their
duties will perform at a higher level in competition
and combat.
• Incentives power the system. While all Marines are
motivated to serve and seek a challenge, they are also
humans, and human behavior is driven by incentives.
High performing Marines should be promoted faster
and assigned to our most challenging and consequential
billets. They should be further incentivized to excel
and develop their talents with incentives tailored to
their individual needs, be it duty station preference,
prioritized school selection, nancial compensation, or
any other action within our power to affect.
• There is always a boat space for talent. High-
performing Marines are identied and actively retained,
regardless of military occupational specialty (MOS).
Talented Marines can often apply their strengths in a
wide variety of positions beyond their primary MOS.
When provided additional education, training, or
experience, they can readily satisfy talent shortfalls
elsewhere in the system.
• Data drives decision-making. Successful personnel
organizations rely on data and analytics to inform both
institutional and individual personnel decisions.
TALENT MANAGEMENT
Creating change begins with a common understanding
of the problem, as well as universally recognized
denitions. What exactly is talent, and how should
it be managed? What are the characteristics of our
industrial age model and why do they matter? Why is
change required today? What can we learn from the
other services and private sector? This report aims to
answer those questions.
The business and management literature offers a number
of useful descriptions for talent and talent management,
but there is no standard, widely accepted denition
and our sister services each dene the terms slightly
differently. As we move forward in the critical task of
reimagining talent management across the Marine
Corps, we will use the following denitions to guide
our efforts.
DEFINITIONS
Talent is an individual’s innate potential to do
something well. A Marine turns their talents into
strengths, aptitudes, and skills through dedicated study,
repetition, and hard work – a process accelerated by their
curiosity, passion, interests, and desire for excellence.
A Marine may have a talent for foreign languages,
writing, leadership, athletics, mechanics, accounting,
or any other skill, and while the right formal training
and education can help a Marine develop their talents,
it is important to note that ‘talent’ is not a synonym for
‘MOS’ or ‘training.’
Talent management is the act of aligning the talents
of individual Marines with the needs of the service
to maximize the performance of both. It describes a
system of institutional processes and policies designed
to attract, develop, retain, and incentivize the most
talented and best performing Marines.
A talent management system identies an individual
Marine’s talents, helps them develop those talents
through education, training, mentorship, and
experience, and assigns them to positions where they
can best contribute to the success of their unit and
the Corps. This system also identies and rewards the
most talented with tough assignments, accelerated
promotions, educational opportunities, additional pay,
duty station preference, and other incentives.
TALENT MANAGEMENT 2030
5
DIVERSITY, EQUITY, INCLUSION, AND TALENT
MANAGEMENT
The core ideas that underpin talent management
reinforce what we all understand instinctively about
our service: Marines make the Marine Corps. We
have never defined ourselves by our equipment,
organizational constructs, or operational concepts. Our
identity has always been – and will remain – dened by
the character, intelligence, courage, tness, and talents
of our people.
The Marine Corps draws its collective strength and
identity from all its Marines, so it is critical that
we prioritize policies that maximize the individual
strengths of every Marine, regardless of race, gender,
sexual orientation, creed, or any other marker. To
that end, we will commit to prioritizing diversity, equity,
and inclusion as part of talent management – not to
satisfy abstract notions of political correctness, but as a
very real means to recruit, develop, and retain Marines
of varied talents.
How should we understand diversity, equity, and
inclusion in the context of talent management? Beyond
their accepted definitions, what do these terms mean,
why are they important, and how will we prioritize them?
• Reinforcing diversity. Every Marine has a unique
personal background. Their upbringing and experiences
shape their outlook, patterns of thought, talents,
and strengths. The Corps benets when it attracts,
and remains attractive to, Marines from a range of
backgrounds, and thus, diverse perspectives and talents.
Research in behavioral economics illustrates that teams
with diverse perspectives and modes of thinking
solve problems faster and more creatively. In this
way, diversity provides us a competitive warghting
advantage over our adversaries, particularly those
who place a premium on uniformity of thought. To
capitalize on the talents, strengths, aptitudes, skills, and
perspectives of the whole force, our talent management
system must reinforce a culture where the contribution
of every Marine is respected and valued.
“...teams with diverse perspectives and modes of thinking
solve problems faster and more creatively. In this way, diversity
provides us a competitive warfighting advantage over our
adversaries...”
• Promoting equity. Together with leaders across the
force, our talent management system should create
a level playing eld, allowing all Marines an equal
opportunity to succeed and enabling our most talented
to advance. With the eld set, we ensure the game is
equitable when all players have the right equipment and
a thorough knowledge of the rules. Today, some Marines
have the leadership abilities, intelligence, and tness
to succeed, but lack the mentorship, opportunities, or
education that would enable them to take full advantage
of their talents. Fostering equity in the force is about
equal treatment, access, advancement, and opportunity
for all Marines based on their individual skills, abilities,
aptitude, performance, and merit. It also means
identifying and eliminating structural impediments
that limit our Marines from developing their talents into
strengths and reaching their full potential.
• Encouraging a culture of inclusion. We are “The
Few and the Proud,” known across the globe as an elite
force with elite standards for leadership, intelligence,
and tness. Once an individual earns the title “Marine,”
they have made the grade. There are no additional
obstacles or barriers to entry – “Once a Marine,
always a Marine.” Our talent management system will
reinforce our leaders’ focus on building inclusive teams,
where diverse perspectives and talents are valued and
respected, and where every unit, career specialty, and
echelon of leadership is open to every Marine, based
on performance. As a service, our culture will remain
compelling to all segments of society when people see
that others like them who earned the title are treated
with dignity, fairness, and respect.
To be successful in competition and conict in the 21st
century, we must take full advantage of the talents,
strengths, skills, and perspectives of every Marine. Our
talent management system will support this imperative
and our leaders in prioritizing diversity of thought,
fostering inclusivity, and implementing policies that
ensure equity across the force.
TALENT MANAGEMENT 2030
6
equal number of replacements to ll the ranks (~36,000).
The Marine Corps is unique among the services in
embracing an enlisted force model that perpetuates
this remarkably high turnover rate. Indeed, while the
other services have matured their forces over the last
few decades, the Marine Corps has remained committed
to preserving its bottom-heavy grade structure and
youthful character, maintaining the largest percentage
of teenagers among the services.
The massive annual personnel turnover that the Marine
Corps oversees is not the result of widespread disinterest
or incompatibility on behalf of Marines who might
otherwise reenlist. Instead, it is a consequence of service
decisions made more than a generation ago to adopt
a “recruit and replace” personnel model rather than an
“invest and retain” model. While those decisions may
have been appropriate in their day, the assumptions
underpinning them are no longer valid. Given the
considerable societal, economic, and technological
changes that have occurred over the past four decades,
and in the context of renewed global great power
competition, it is time that the Marine Corps take
decisive steps to mature the force.
In 2022, we will begin recalibrating our enlisted
personnel model to better balance retention and
recruiting, and in doing so, mature the force with
three primary outcomes. First, this shift will improve the
physical tness of the Marine Corps. While conventional
wisdom may hold that a young force is most t, the data
suggest the need for a more nuanced understanding.
Aerobic and anaerobic athletic performance typically
peaks in the mid-twenties, a scientic nding supported
by our own PFT and CFT data. Marines in their mid-to-
late twenties do more pull-ups, crunches, ammunition
cans lifts, and run faster than Marines aged 17-22 (those
typically in their rst enlistments).
“A Marine Corps that
matches Marines’
talents to their duties
will perform at a higher
level in competition and
combat.”
NEW MODELS FOR RECRUITING TALENT
The Corps continues to attract high quality Americans
who are inspired to serve their country as Marines
and our recruiters do an admirable job administering
a recruiting program that satises the needs of our
current manpower system. Unfortunately, our repeated
successes in recruiting large cohorts of young Americans,
year after year, has obscured three fundamental problems
with the existing paradigm.
First, we have created a personnel model that is overly
focused – and, in fact, dependent – on recruiting rather
than retention. This is a consequence of service decisions
made in the mid-1980s and reinforced by our sustained
recruiting successes over the past three decades. To
maintain both our end strength and the right talents in
our workforce, we must carefully calibrate and balance
service investments in recruiting and retention. Today
we are out of balance, placing too much emphasis on
recruiting new personnel to maintain end strength, and
too little emphasis on identifying and retaining the most
talented individuals already in our ranks.
Second, due to both our demanding recruiting goals
and the absence of appropriate tools, we are not doing
enough to screen and evaluate applicants before they
enter service. A robust screening and evaluation,
executed prior to recruit training, will allow us to better
assess each applicant’s suitability for service, while better
aligning their strengths and interests to appropriate
career elds.
Finally, our recruiting model is exclusively focused on,
and optimized for, recruiting teenagers and those in their
early twenties. In this current era of heightened global
competition, the Marine Corps requires a vehicle for
rapidly recruiting mature, seasoned experts. We can
no longer afford the cost in time – measured in years,
and sometimes decades – to train and educate all our
technical leaders, particularly given the extraordinary
pace of technological change.
REBALANCE RECRUITING AND RETENTION TO
MATURE THE FORCE
For the last 36 years, the Marine Corps has been
committed to maintaining a predominantly rst-term
enlisted force, composed of Marines on their initial
service contracts. To maintain this bottom-heavy grade
structure pyramid, we discharge approximately 75%
of rst-term Marines every year, recruiting roughly an
TALENT MANAGEMENT 2030
7
model, as it fails to include a whole range of service
savings associated with maintaining a more mature
force (e.g., fewer recruiters, instructors, lower PCS and
separations costs, lower mishap rates, etc.), not to
mention improvements in training and discipline. A
more apt question is, can we afford not to mature the
force? Success on future battlefields as a distributed
stand-in force will require our Marines to be more
physically fit and cognitively mature, with a higher
level of operational experience. The implications of
a more mature force are profound and far-reaching.
For instance, a more mature rie squad (the aspiration
of every Commandant since at least Commandant
Gray), composed of second-term Marine sergeants,
kept together over years, will be dramatically more
capable than squads we have produced in the past.
Recalibrating our current enlisted personnel model is
the rst step in producing this more mature force.
ENHANCING ASSESSMENT OF POTENTIAL
RECRUITS
As Commandant Dunford noted in 2015, “there is
room for improvement in our screening processes.”
First, we need to put more energy into determining an
applicant’s suitability for service. Approximately 20% of
those recruited do not complete their rst enlistments, a
strong indicator that the service can do better to screen
potential recruits. The consequence? Every year we
separate thousands of Marines before they complete
their initial contracts (“non-EAS attrition”), costing the
service hundreds of millions of dollars annually, with
signicant impacts to readiness across the Corps. While
we currently screen an applicant’s physical health and
intelligence (albeit with a rudimentary tool – the ASVAB),
our unacceptably high non-EAS attrition demonstrates
that current screening methods are insufcient.
We will begin by placing more emphasis on data
analytics across the recruiting enterprise. Employing
analytical tools and using data already collected during
Second, a slightly older force will have better cognitive
function and make better decisions in aggregate.
Advancements in neuroscience since 1985 have
signicantly expanded our understanding of the human
brain, which we now know does not fully develop until
a person reaches their early to mid-twenties. Until that
point, a person is psychologically at a decit, more
likely to make poor decisions and accept unnecessary
risk, and less able to control impulses. Marine Corps
safety data support this nding: our youngest Marines
are responsible for a disproportionate share of the total
costs to the service as a result of mishaps, both on- and
off-duty. Our youngest Marines are also responsible
for a disproportionate share of misconduct across the
force. This simple fact of biology cannot be overcome
by training, education, or leadership. Maturing the
force by retaining a greater percentage of qualified
first-term Marines will improve decision-making,
problem solving, and risk assessment among our
junior leaders, with immediate positive effects on
our performance in competition and combat.
Third, maturing the force will increase the readiness
of our warghting units and stability across our MEFs.
For example, today we accept as natural a personnel
model that limits the ability of our infantry battalions to
maintain a consistent level of readiness. Every eighteen
months, the size and prociency of an infantry battalion
drops dramatically as it sheds Marines completing
their rst enlistments. While a battalion will always
experience peaks and valleys in readiness based on its
training schedule, our current personnel model amplies
the extremes. Moving away from a recruiting-centric
personnel model will prevent such dramatic swings in
readiness by increasing the aggregate prociency of
our units, and thus stability across our MEFs.
What about costs? After all, a rst-term lance corporal
earns a lower salary than a sergeant on their second
enlistment. Can the service afford a more mature force?
A simple salary comparison is a poor way to evaluate
the overall cost encumbrance of a new personnel
“Today we are out of balance, placing too much emphasis
on recruiting new personnel to maintain end strength, and
too little emphasis on identifying and retaining the most
talented individuals already in our ranks.”
TALENT MANAGEMENT 2030
8
the success of their units, nd career satisfaction, and
re-enlist. In 2022, we will begin experimenting with a
new process. I am condent that we can develop a
model that leverages the power of articial intelligence,
while effectively managing entry level training pipeline
restrictions and MOS-producing school requirements.
Finally, we will carefully review our waiver processes and
policies with the aim of reducing the number of waivers
granted for recruits with criminal histories of more than
a minor nature. Specically, I am instituting a blanket
prohibition on waivers for any applicant previously
convicted of sexual assault offenses or sexual related
crimes and offenses, domestic violence, or hate crimes,
effective immediately.
CREATING A PATH TO LATERAL ENTRY
Our current enlisted recruiting model is optimized for
recruiting teenagers, and for ofcers, those in their
early twenties. (It was not always this way: During the
Interwar Period, potential enlisted recruits had to be
over 21 and required a character reference from an
employer, teacher, coach, or religious leader). While
we will always seek to attract young Americans to our
ranks, we do not have an effective vehicle for nding,
recruiting, and onboarding talented Americans who
already possess critical skills. In other words, there is
currently only one way to join the Marine Corps – at
the bottom.
While this model affords us a high degree of stability and
predictability, it also incurs opportunity costs. We have
no vehicle to recruit talent unless an individual is willing
to start at the lowest paygrade and work their way up.
Because the Corps “starts from scratch,” providing every
Marine with all the education, training, and experience
they need to progress in their career, it takes time to
build critical skills and expertise. For example, it takes 10
or more years to produce a mid-career expert (gunnery
sergeant) in aviation maintenance.
the recruiting process, we have been able to identify
characteristics most indicative of non-EAS attrition. With
this data, we can now forecast, with a higher degree
of accuracy, which Marines are more likely to leave
active duty before the end of their rst enlistment. The
implications are clear and powerful: employing better
analytics can improve recruiting and conserve service
resources. The service must also do more to evaluate
each applicant’s career interests, talents, personal
and intellectual strengths, experience, motivations,
and propensity to continue in service after their rst
enlistment. While an applicant’s ASVAB results do
provide some rough insights, they are limited. In 2022,
we will adopt additional assessment tools to more
thoroughly evaluate our applicants, seeking to better
place these recruits in career elds where they will
provide the most benet to the Corps while achieving
personal and professional success, and at the same
time, identifying those who are unlikely to complete
their rst enlistments.
Second, to ensure we recruit individuals best suited
for service in our Corps, and appropriately match
their talents and strengths to requirements, we will
introduce a comprehensive psychological evaluation
for all applicants. This practice is common in other
professional elds where psychological hazards and
stresses are routine, including special operations forces,
law enforcement, re and emergency responders,
and some industry. My initial review indicates that
psychological screening can be completed affordably
and with minimal impacts to an applicant’s timeline for
enlistment.
Third, we will retool how we assign our enlisted
recruits to military occupational specialties. Today’s
process is mostly arbitrary, with MOS assignments
being driven by recruit shipping dates (i.e., recruits are
assigned career elds based on what MOS slots need
to be lled in a particular time period). We need a new,
data-driven model that assigns recruits to specialties
where they can develop their talents, best contribute to
“Success on future battlefields as a distributed stand-
in force will require our Marines to be more physically
fit and cognitively mature, with a higher level of
operational experience.”
TALENT MANAGEMENT 2030
9
qualied applicants in select specialties, not used as a
means to recruit en masse.
We will also develop return to service options for Marines
who have left active duty. One option will allow those
Marines no longer on active duty, but who continue to
meet our high standards, to return to their former rank.
Another option will allow those who obtained critical
career experience after leaving the service to return
at a rank commensurate with their qualications. For
example, I can envision a Marine who left active duty as
a captain or corporal rejoining our ranks as a lieutenant
colonel or gunnery sergeant, respectively, after spending
5-7 years working in a cyber or IT eld where the service
currently lacks capacity. With the right education and
experience, that same corporal might also be eligible
to return as a mid-grade or senior ofcer.
SPECIALIZED RECRUITING FOR INDIVIDUALS WITH
CRITICAL SKILLS
As we develop the mechanisms for granting career
credit to qualied civilians, we will develop – in parallel
– new ways for nding and recruiting talent. Drawing
from our experience in recruiting exceptionally talented
musicians for Marine Corps service, we will establish
an ofce within Marine Corps Recruiting Command
(MCRC) to exclusively focus on recruiting and assessing
talented Americans with the skills that the service needs
today and tomorrow. Rather than a brick-and-mortar
facility, this recruiting ofce will be exclusively online
and function much like the recruiting ofces of major,
cutting-edge U.S. companies.
As a result of the signicant lead time necessary to
build expertise, we are unable to respond quickly to
changes in the security environment that demand urgent
course corrections. The rapid rise in importance of the
cyber domain, for instance, has challenged us to nd
creative ways to quickly build critical skills at mid-career
and senior levels. Unless we nd a means to quickly
infuse expertise into the force – at the right ranks – I
am concerned that advances in articial intelligence
and robotics, among other elds where the speed of
technological change is exponential, will force us into
a reactive posture. We should have an open door for
exceptionally talented Americans who wish to join
the Marine Corps, allowing them to laterally enter
at a rank appropriate to their education, experience,
and ability.
In 2019, Congress granted the Service Secretaries
authority to award career credit to highly qualied
civilians, allowing them to enter as mid-career ofcers.
I view this authority as a powerful tool to attracting
talent – particularly in low-density, high-demand elds
– and a potent vehicle for bringing fresh, private sector
perspectives into the service. I will work personally with
the Secretary of the Navy and senior Marine Corps
leaders to create a process that takes full advantage of
this Congressional authority. Additionally, we will create
a similar model for awarding career credit to qualied
civilians interested in joining the enlisted ranks.
To be clear, not every MOS will be open to lateral
entrants. For example, it is difcult to imagine a scenario
where a civilian would be permitted lateral entry into
combat arms. The opportunity for lateral entry will
be limited and primarily reserved for recruiting highly
ASSIGNMENTS
Our service culture and warghting philosophy is highly
entrepreneurial. We trust our small unit leaders, operating
under mission-type orders, to creatively solve battleeld
problems and accept necessary risks to accomplish the
mission. Operating with a maneuverist mindset, we
decentralize command and control, push responsibility
to the lowest levels, and allow commanders closest to
the ght to make decisions with as little interference
from headquarters as possible.
Yet, when it comes to personnel management, we
flip our warfighting philosophy and combat-tested
model on its head. Here, we centralize command and
control to the maximum extent possible, empowering
headquarters at the expense of Marines closest to
the action. Commanders (particularly at the battalion
and squadron levels) are largely excluded from the
process – they have no real say in who is assigned to
their units – and while headquarters actively seeks and
values feedback from individual Marines, ultimately the
individual has little inuence on assignment outcomes.
In a process with little transparency, Marines are told
what job they will ll and when and where they will
move their families.
Today’s assignments process is an industrial age relic
and more reminiscent of a centrally planned economy
than a cutting-edge American meritocracy. It does not
efciently and effectively match the talent of individual
Marines with available billets across our Corps. Further,
TALENT MANAGEMENT 2030
10
it hurts retention. Numerous studies indicate that the
inability of a military member to affect their assignment
more directly (when and where they will move) is a
primary driver for them leaving service. To be clear,
our hard-working monitors are not the problem – they
are operating within the constraints of an outdated
system. While the needs of the Corps will remain
paramount, there are better ways to assign Marines
that are consistent with our warfighting philosophy,
and more conducive to maintaining and retaining a
talented workforce.
CREATING A TALENT MARKETPLACE
Taking advantage of the initial lessons learned by
the Army, Navy, and Air Force, we are developing a
web-based “talent marketplace,” where units post
job information about available billets, Marines apply
for those positions virtually, and monitors serve as
overall managers and arbiters. While much in the way
of mechanics remains to be determined, I am committed
to creating a process that places increased responsibility
in the hands of unit commanders and individual Marines,
employs cutting edge technology, and preserves a vital
role for headquarters. Initially, our talent marketplace
will be for ofcers, and eventually senior enlisted, while
we assess options for changes to the junior enlisted
assignments process.
For commanders, who have historically had little say
in personnel assignment decisions, a digital talent
marketplace will give them a higher degree of control
over who lls their staffs, and at the battalion and
squadron levels, who serves as company commanders
or department heads. For the rst time, commanders
will have the ability to highlight and prioritize the
specic professional and educational backgrounds
they seek in their key leaders, detail billet descriptions
and expectations, and articulate their command
philosophies, family readiness priorities, and other
information that might be useful to potential applicants,
facilitating a much better match between Marine and
commander. In the future, pending the development of
suitable controls to eliminate bias, the system may even
enable commanders to interview applicants to assess
how an individual Marine’s personality and leadership
style might impact the dynamic already at play in their
units, and rank order those applying.
For Marines, a talent marketplace will increase
available information about billet openings, improve
transparency, and provide individuals with far greater
influence over their future assignments. Rather than
reviewing a simple spreadsheet with limited data about
available billets (sometimes no more than position
title, MOS, and unit), ofcers expecting reassignment
will be able to review the more detailed information
posted by individual commands. This will allow Marines
to match their talents and experience to specic billet
requirements and ask questions directly to units. For the
rst time, the individual Marine will have the opportunity
to apply for jobs based on their career goals, interests,
and family situation, giving them far more agency in
the assignments process.
Today, monitors are in the unenviable position of
trying to match the professional experience and
personal desires of their populations (often hundreds
of Marines), with the stafng requirements of dozens of
units across the Corps. That task would be herculean
under any circumstances, but today’s monitors do it
with only limited information – almost no input from
units (we discourage it!) and only a questionnaire and
miscellaneous correspondence from each Marine mover
(we discourage excessive communications here as well!).
Further, our monitors have few digital tools for assessing
the past experiences and talents of Marines across their
populations or prioritizing and balancing the needs and
desires of units and individuals. Limited to email, their
own spreadsheets, the Ofcial Military Personnel Files
(OMPFs) of their populations, internal orders writing
systems, and outdated analytic models, the work of
today’s monitors looks too much like it did two or three
decades ago. A digital talent marketplace will free
monitors from the manual task of matching Marines to
units, and instead enable them to manage the system,
“...a talent marketplace
will increase available
information about billet
openings, improve
transparency, and
provide individuals with
far greater influence
over their future
assignments.”
TALENT MANAGEMENT 2030
11
serve as arbiters (e.g., when multiple Marines are equally
qualied for the same position), and spend more energy
identifying the most highly talented individuals in our
Corps, ensuring they receive the most career enhancing
billets.
REDUCE PCS FREQUENCY
While Marines are accustomed to the predictable
frequency of Permanent Change of Station (PCS) moves,
this pattern is not replicated among high performing
civilian organizations, or even among some of our closest
military allies and partners. Why? Does the annual PCS
reassignment of approximately 25,000 Marines improve
our lethality as a force? Does it enhance our ability to
train or improve the skills of our leaders? If the answer
is not unequivocally “yes,” then it is time for a change.
The assignments process should build unit
cohesion and create conditions that best enable
our commanders to lead, train, and employ their
forces for competition and conflict. Unfortunately,
the scale of the annual PCS cycle serves to degrade,
rather than enhance those conditions. Units are left with
gaps in key leadership positions; stability is disrupted
as leaders are in a perpetual state of “turnover”; and
training quality is diminished when Marines, in transit
or preparing to move their families, cannot participate
or are otherwise distracted.
These dynamics have challenged the institution for
decades and contributed to Commandant Gray’s
1990 assessment on the importance of building unit
cohesion: “In combat, the most critical element of a unit’s
combat power is its cohesion. Cohesive units are built
by stabilizing personnel assignments so that Marines
can work and train together over a relatively long period
of time. Units whose Marines are in a constant state of
ux and turnover will perform poorly in combat because
they will not be cohesive combat teams.”
The frequency of PCS moves also puts enormous strain
on our families, who already sacrice considerably to
support their Marines. In particular, moves are highly
disruptive to spousal employment (spouses experience
high unemployment and underemployment), as well
as the educational stability of dependents. Further, it
hurts retention: the frequency of PCS moves is regularly
cited as a signicant factor contributing to Marines
leaving service.
Beginning in 2022, monitors will seek to keep Marines
and their families in the same geographic duty station
as long as opportunities for career growth exist. In
other words, monitors will make more regular use of
Permanent Change of Assignment (PCA) orders, rather
than PCS orders. The PCS move will continue to be
a normal feature of Marine Corps life, and Marines
should expect to move as part of their normal career
progression. However, the institution will no longer
view “homesteading” as a negative practice to
avoid, but rather a vehicle for improving training,
increasing unit stability, and reducing the stresses
we place on our families.
360-DEGREE FEEDBACK
Selection boards seek to identify the best and most
fully qualied candidates and base their decisions
exclusively on the information contained in a Marine’s
OMPF, with tness reports (FITREPs) being the primary
reference. Fitness reports, however, provide critically
important but limited insights into a Marine’s strengths
and weaknesses. At present, the FITREP captures only
the positive views of two supervisors who, in some
cases, are not co-located with the Marine reported on
or only had limited observation of them. 360-degree
feedback, by contrast, includes the perspectives of a
larger number of seniors, peers, and juniors and can
include unattering feedback that is prohibited from
inclusion in a Marine’s FITREP.
This feedback is thus an important vehicle for expanding
our understanding of a Marine’s strengths and
weaknesses, which are critically important as boards
and service leaders select, form, and assign leadership
teams across the Corps. Further, 360-degree feedback
– already employed by various organizations within the
“The assignments process should build unit cohesion and
create conditions that best enable our commanders to
lead, train, and employ their forces for competition and
conflict.”
TALENT MANAGEMENT 2030
12
DoD – are a proven means for identifying traits of toxic
leadership and can help reduce the incidence of toxic
leaders advancing to senior levels within the service.
Beginning in 2022, we will institute 360-degree
feedback for leaders, on a pilot basis. This feedback
will be made available to the Marine and their Reporting
Senior, with the aim of encouraging leadership growth.
No later than 2024, we will incorporate 360-degree
feedback into the selection board and assignments
processes to ensure that this important input is properly
considered by those selecting and assigning our future
leaders.
SUBSTANTIATED ALLEGATIONS IMPACT
ASSIGNMENTS
Convictions for sexual related offenses, and convictions
or substantiated allegations of sexual harassment
or discrimination will be prominently noted in a
Marine’s record and impact the assignments process.
Effective immediately, monitors will be required to
communicate directly with a gaining unit’s commanding
ofcer when they assign a Marine with a conviction
or substantiated allegation. Further, Marines with a
substantiated allegation of harassment or discrimination
are disqualied from command selection or assignment
as a unit’s sergeant major or senior enlisted advisor.
INCREASING CAREER FLEXIBILITY
Rigid career paths are a natural consequence of our
industrial age system, which places a premium on
building common experience and producing Marines
of similar, predictable quality. While this may be most
evident in our ofcer ranks, it impacts enlisted Marines
as well, with three primary consequences.
First, the lack of career flexibility reduces the diversity
of experience and education among our senior
leaders, evident in the remarkably similar careers of
our general ofcers. To be promoted to the highest
ranks, ofcers must strictly follow well-worn career
paths on a set-timeline. Any deviation to pursue a non-
standard educational, joint/interagency, or other career
experience, including through the Career Intermission
Program, is shunned, as it comes with tremendous
risk to an individual Marine’s career path and could
result in a missed career milestone, derailing an ofcer’s
future promotion potential. The result is an unhealthy
uniformity in experience among our senior leaders.
Second, our current system places all ofcers on the
“command track,” which is profoundly wasteful of
human capital. Some ofcers have the skills, interest,
and disposition to serve in command leadership billets,
while other ofcers are predisposed to serve in staff
leadership roles. The success of our warfighting units
depends on good leadership in both command and
staff positions, but our industrial age model only
prioritizes the former, resulting in the inefficient
allocation of talent and suboptimal performance
of units.
Third, the rigidity of the personnel system limits our
ability to accommodate the changing career interests
and family situations of our Marines – ofcers and
enlisted – resulting in lost retention opportunities.
Retaining talent requires meeting Marines where they
are, not penalizing them for changing interests. As a
service, we must keep doors open for talented Marines
who desire to continue serving. There is always a “boat
space” for talent.
PROMOTION OPT-OUT
Our current promotion model incentivizes ofcers to
pursue conventional career paths that enable them
to complete milestone billets and education on an
established, rigid schedule. Officers are, in turn,
disincentivized from pursuing unconventional career
experiences or education that may yield long-term
benets, but which takes them off track for key billets.
Even a small deviation in the timing of assignments
can have signicant consequences (e.g., an extra
6-12 months in school might mean a major misses the
opportunity for a key eet billet before their lieutenant
colonel promotion board).
While the service will continue to value both key billets
and professional military education, we must also create
paths that increase the diversity of experience in our
Marine Corps leaders. Encouraging diversity among
our leaders is both a vehicle for improving service-
level problem solving and a way to gain a competitive
warghting advantage over our adversaries.
In 2022, we will begin developing policy options and
initiatives to encourage leaders to pursue career-
expanding opportunities. At a minimum, we will increase
TALENT MANAGEMENT 2030
13
visibility of the Career Intermission Program, adjust
promotion board precepts, and introduce a penalty-free,
promotion board “opt-out” option. Much like an ofcer’s
ability to remove their name by request (RBR) from a
command or other selection board, this opt-out option
would enable Marines to pursue opportunities otherwise
deemed too “risky,” including extended educational
programs. The Army and Air Force have instituted similar
policies based on Congressional changes to the law in
2019, and we will seek to benet from their experience.
We will also explore opportunities to implement a similar
system for enlisted Marines.
CREATING A PATH FOR TALENTED STAFF
OFFICERS
For ofcers in our industrial age personnel system, all
roads lead to command. By emphasizing, screening
for, and promoting to command leadership skills and
experiences, we necessarily deemphasize and deprioritize
the leadership skills and experiences required of good
staff ofcers, which are frequently more technical in
nature. Making all officers conform to fit industrial
age notions of leadership inefficiently matches
the talent of our officers with appropriate billets,
impacting the effectiveness of our commanders
and their staffs. It also results in the early separation
of talented ofcers who seek staff leadership roles but
see no opportunities for upward mobility.
Our personnel system and service culture must
recognize that superior performance and prociency
are not exclusive characteristics of commanders or
ofcers seeking command. Marine Corps units and
staffs will be most effective when led by ofcers with
the appropriate skills and experience, and who derive
personal satisfaction from their work. To that end, we will
begin exploring new ways to better value our diverse
human capital.
Possible changes may include: (1) adjustments to
tness reports for ofcers, to allow Marines to indicate
a preference for command or staff roles; (2) adjustments
to tness reports for majors and lieutenant colonels,
with reporting seniors and reviewing ofcers indicating
whether a Marine is better suited to serve in command
or staff leadership roles; (3) selection of some primary
staff ofcers (G1, G2, G3, etc.) and technically specialized
staff positions in conjunction with O5 and O6 command
selection boards; and (4) creation of a board-selected
professional staff ofcer track, modeled after the
acquisition ofcer pipeline. We will investigate these
and other options, study the experiences of the other
military services, and adopt a new model no later than
2023. The endstate is the creation of a career path for
talented ofcers who do not seek command.
LATERAL MOVE RETENTION INCENTIVE
Exit surveys suggest that some top performing Marines
leave service due to the lack of perceived opportunities
in uniform. Unable to pursue a new and different career
focus in the Marine Corps, they seek alternatives in the
private sector or through advanced education. We should
never fault a Marine for seeking new opportunities, but
rather encourage them to nd the most challenging
and enriching opportunities available – in uniform or
out. In my view, there are few vocations, if any, more
challenging, enriching, and meaningful than service as
a Marine, and I suspect that many Marines choosing to
leave the Corps hold similar opinions.
For the truly exceptional Marine who wants to continue
serving but who seeks a new career eld, we will begin
offering the option of a lateral move into another primary
MOS as a retention incentive, regardless of the health
of the Marine’s current MOS. Moreover, as long as the
Marine meets eligibility criteria, we will place few, if
any, restrictions on which MOS assignment they seek.
RETAINING HIGH PERFORMING OFFICERS
At present, company grade ofcers and majors are
automatically screened for resident professional military
education (PME), and at the rank of major, for recruiting
station commanding ofcer (RSCO). Ofcers selected
for PME or RSCO are among our best and their selection
indicative of their future potential to the Marine Corps.
Yet, if an ofcer chooses to decline the opportunity
because the timing is bad for their family, or because
they had alternate career goals, we require them to
resign. In other words, we have a zero tolerance policy
for our best young ofcers who decline this key career
opportunity.
A talent management system relies on incentives,
not coercion. While the needs of the Marine Corps
are always paramount, we cannot afford to push
the most talented young officers out the door after
investing years in their leadership development,
education, and training. We can do better. In 2022,
we will give our company grade ofcers and majors
the ability to remove their names from consideration
TALENT MANAGEMENT 2030
14
by the Commandant’s Career Level Education Board
(CCLEB), Commandant’s Professional Intermediate-Level
Education Board (CPIB), and the RSCO Board. In doing
so, we will extend to these ofcers the same opportunity
afforded to lieutenant colonels and colonels, who are
able to RBR from consideration by command and Top
Level School (TLS) boards without penalty.
ENHANCING PARENTAL LEAVE
The life of a Marine is demanding, and the stresses
it places on our Marine parents and their families is
considerable. Unfortunately, too many Marines starting
families – especially female Marines – decide to leave
service, fearing that parenthood will be incompatible
with their careers. The choice of a new parent to leave
the workforce is not unique to the Marine Corps, and
organizations across the private, public, and non-prot
sectors have taken years to develop smart policies that
both improve family outcomes and increase retention
of talented employees. Learning from the experience
of other high-performing organizations, beginning
in 2022, the Marine Corps will begin making several
key updates to our parental leave program.
First, we will seek to secure the necessary departmental
and statutory authorities to increase the duration of
parental leave for both primary and secondary caregivers.
For the primary caregiver, we will seek an expansion
of leave for up to one year in length. While I believe
such an extension would benet our Marine families, I
am also familiar with recent studies suggesting that a
shorter period of leave – 6 to 9 months – may be more
optimal for the primary caregiver and sufcient to meet
the wellbeing needs of infants. We will study the matter
further over the coming months to determine the ideal
length of leave, but remain committed to extending
its overall duration. For the secondary caregiver, we
will seek an expansion of up to 12 weeks of leave, in
keeping with the duration of leave currently afforded
other non-military federal employees.
Second, until those authorities are obtained, we will
authorize primary and secondary caregivers to take
additional parental leave when they agree to extend
their service contracts. For instance, suppose a Marine
mother who is also a primary caregiver elects to take
the maximum amount of parental leave – one year, or
52 weeks. She is currently afforded 6 weeks of caregiver
leave and 6 weeks of convalescent leave. So to take
the additional 40 weeks, she would agree to extend
her service obligation by 40 weeks.
For the secondary caregiver, we will expand caregiver
leave from 2 weeks to 3 weeks, in keeping with the
practices of the Army and Air Force. If the secondary
caregiver elects to take an extended leave period of
up to 12 weeks, he or she can do so by extending their
service obligation by the requisite number of weeks. As
a service, we will encourage Marine fathers and other
secondary caregivers to take leave to bond with their
newborns, a practice that research indicates results in
more stable marriages, better health outcomes for new
mothers, and improved educational attainment and
emotional stability for children.
Third, we will implement a phased return program for
the primary caregiver, allowing the caregiver to return
to work gradually. We will initiate a pilot program in
2022, whereby primary caregivers will have virtual or
in-person check-in days during their last two to three
weeks of parental leave. When their leave is complete,
they will return to work gradually over a four-week
period, ramping up from two-days per week to four-
days per week before returning to work full time in the
fth week. Based on the outcome of the pilot, we will
determine how to optimize the program for Corps-wide
adoption in 2023.
Finally, and most importantly, we won’t stop
learning. We will carefully study the best practices of
top performing American companies and institutions,
always with an eye to enhancing our service parental
leave programs as new research becomes available.
“Making all officers conform to fit industrial age notions of
leadership inefficiently matches the talent of our officers
with appropriate billets, impacting the effectiveness of our
commanders and their staffs.”
TALENT MANAGEMENT 2030
15
The emergence of big data, coupled with recent
advances in A.I. and machine learning, has changed
the analytical landscape. We can interrogate data
more easily and gain insights from it more readily than
ever before, enhancing our ability to make impactful
personnel and talent management decisions – both at
the institutional service level and the individual Marine
level.
Our personnel enterprise should be at the vanguard of
service efforts to operationalize artificial intelligence.
Further, enabling the change we seek will require
shedding or upgrading antiquated human resource
(HR) data systems and investing in information age tools
and processes consistent with industry standards. At
the same time, we must rene standard administrative
processes with the aim of simplifying and digitizing,
empowering the digital natives who make up the vast
majority of our Corps.
PRIORITIZING DATA AND EMPLOYING BETTER
ANALYTICS
Modern, successful organizations in the private and
public sectors prioritize data – both its collection and
analysis – to inform decision-making. The Marine Corps
is awash in personnel data, yet does very little to analyze
the data we do collect in meaningful ways. When it
comes to data analytics, we have barely scratched
the surface of the possible.
The potential for better analytics to improve institutional
decision-making cannot be overstated, and I am condent
it can be employed to improve any number of personnel
related functions. To maximize the vast potential of
artificial intelligence, we need both more data and
better data, structured in a format appropriate for
analysis. To that end, the Deputy Commandant for
Information (the service A.I. lead), working with the
USMC Chief Data Ofcer, M&RA, MCRC, Training and
Education Command (TECOM), and the Marine Corps
Directorate of Analysis and Performance Optimization
(MCDAPO), will develop a talent management data
strategy, which will formalize standards for the collection
and maintenance of personnel-related data, while
exploring new sources of information that could be
useful to talent managers and other analysts. Whereas
we have often purged “useless” data in the past,
we will now preserve data to the maximum extent
possible. For example, information from promotion
and selection boards (currently expunged at the board’s
conclusion) could provide invaluable insights on how a
Marine’s performance, physical tness, duty stations,
demographic information, or any other factor, affect
career outcomes. Further, while I am condent that overt,
conscious bias does not currently distort our promotion
and selection board processes, I am concerned about
the effects of unconscious biases - stereotypes and
beliefs that operate in the background, affecting our
decision-making without our awareness. An increased
emphasis on data analytics will help us identify, and root
out, potential biases in the promotion and selection
board processes, unconscious or otherwise.
DIGITIZATION OF THE REENLISTMENT PROCESS
Under our current system, when a Marine intends
to re-enlist, they are met with a burdensome, time
consuming, paper-driven process. Initiated by the
Marine in conjunction with the career planner, it begins
with Marines trekking from one program manager to
the next to acquire physical signatures – a process
required to overcome the deciencies of a web of
digital systems that do not share information. Once
complete, the Marine must route a paper copy of their
reenlistment package through their chain of command,
with each level of leadership providing hand-written
recommendations. The package is then routed back to
the career planner for manual entry into a digital system.
The Marine Corps gains nothing by adhering to a
cumbersome process that makes reenlistment difcult.
It is time to streamline and digitize to reduce
obstacles to reenlistment and save leaders’ time.
No later than 2023, we will adopt digital mechanisms
and tools to enhance the reenlistment process. At the
same time, we will explore options to increase rates
of reenlistment by reducing impediments to it (e.g.,
through automatic reenlistment for eligible Marines,
who would only be required to act if they sought an
EAS in lieu of reenlistment).
ADOPTING MODERN DIGITAL TOOLS, ANALYTICS, AND
PROCESSES
TALENT MANAGEMENT 2030
16
DECISION SUPPORT TOOLS FOR PROMOTION
AND SELECTION BOARDS
While today’s board members/”briefers” benet from
a digital boardroom, there are still too many aspects of
the board process that are analog, human dependent,
and prone to error – all challenges that can be mitigated
with technology. For example, during a staff sergeant
promotion board, a briefer might review the OMPFs
of 250 Marines, dedicating approximately 60 minutes
to each Marine’s record. Will a briefer reviewing their
250th OMFP see things in a Marine’s record that they
didn’t notice when reviewing their first OMFP? Might
a briefer reviewing a Marine’s record at the end of
the day miss something they would have seen in the
early morning? Would two briefers looking at the same
Marine’s record come to different conclusions based
on their different personal experiences?
Further, while board members have digital access to the
complete records of the Marines they are brieng, they
have limited ability to query available data on those
Marines and lack the decision support tools that could
empower them to make more complete assessments.
Today, a briefer cannot get answers to simple questions
like, “How does a Marine’s PFT score rank in comparison
to their peers?” or, “How does this Marine’s relative
value compare to others in their MOS?” Instead of
utilizing analytical tools that are ubiquitous today, we
put the onus almost entirely on the briefer to conduct
their own analysis.
Given the time constraints of the board process, the
result is that little data-driven analysis is conducted
during our boards.
While we will always value the judgment and experience
of our briefers, today’s process is too much ‘art’ and not
enough ‘science.’ It is time to equip our boardrooms with
decision support tools to aid briefers in the critical task
of choosing our future leaders. Powered by A.I., these
tools will offer a wide range of options for interrogating,
analyzing, and visualizing the tremendous data at our
ngertips. In addition to saving a briefer time, these tools
should enable board members to ask more sophisticated
questions than we have in the past, and receive answers
supported by data. Eventually, A.I.-enabled decision
support tools might even recommend which Marines
should be promoted, a useful baseline for a board
president to reference during deliberations.
EXPANSION OF VIRTUAL BOARDS
The rapid expansion and improvement of platforms for
virtual meetings, coupled with our recent experience
during the COVID-19 pandemic, portends new
possibilities for virtual promotion and selection
boards. The effectiveness of new communications
platforms should encourage us to ask fundamental
questions about our board processes. Must all boards
be executed in person over short periods (i.e., a few
weeks), or could a virtual board convene over a period
of months? Can we execute a hybrid board in which
some members participate remotely? Can the expansion
of virtual boards increase the diversity of participant
perspectives in the boardroom (e.g., distant MEF and
MARFOR leaders who are often unable to travel to
Quantico for extended periods due to operational and
fiscal constraints)?
In 2022, we will publish ndings on the potential
advantages and disadvantages – including a cost
analysis – of using virtual platforms to execute some
or all service promotion and selection boards.
“If Americans can apply for home loans and sign legal
contracts using their smartphones, we can streamline our
administrative requirements, use the types of standardized
digital forms that are ubiquitous today, and simplify our
Marines’ lives...”
TALENT MANAGEMENT 2030
17
Consider the example of a Marine applying for a special
program – the Marine Corps Enlisted Commissioning
Education Program (MECEP) for instance. Like they
would have 20 years ago, today’s Marine will type their
application, using the proper memorandum format,
combine it with various attachments, including hard
copies of records that are digitally available, and
route it for approval and endorsement, in hard copy.
With approximately 65 individual pieces of paper,
the opportunity for error and subsequent delays to
processing is considerable. When the package is nally
endorsed, by multiple levels of command, it is scanned
and sent for analog processing at headquarters. While
the MECEP application process is rightfully one of our
most comprehensive, the fact that it requires 61 pages
of instructions and templates highlights a problem in
the system – one we can x.
If Americans can apply for home loans and sign legal
contracts using their smartphones, we can streamline
our administrative requirements, use the types of
standardized digital forms that are ubiquitous today,
and simplify our Marines’ lives, allowing them to focus on
what matters most – preparing mentally and physically
for the rigors of combat.
UPGRADING HR SYSTEMS
Our uniformed and civilian human resource professionals
– those at headquarters, IPACs, and S1 shops across
the Corps – are managing the personnel enterprise
with outdated HR data systems. At the same time, our
individual Marines lack effective digital HR tools to access
and update critical career information, communicate
within their commands and to headquarters, and
manage their nances. At a time when most of us
manage our personal business on our smartphones,
the service is stuck using antiquated tools optimized
for desktop use and rarely updated. For example,
systems like MarineOnline, which may have been on
par with other digital HR platforms when released in
2001, has basically retained the same functionality since
its inception, with no mobile version, falling far behind
market standards.
Sophisticated, cloud-based, mobile-device accessible
HR software is the norm in the private sector. With
focused study and investments, the same will be true in
the Marine Corps. In 2022, we will commission a study
to better understand how to develop and implement
a modern HR data architecture, closely examining the
experience of our sister services, as well as the private
sector. We must be prepared to ask hard questions,
including whether the Marine Corps Total Force System
(MCTFS) – whose origins date to the 1960s and 1970s
– remains the best t for the current era.
REDUCING ONEROUS, PAPERWORK-HEAVY
ADMINISTRATIVE PROCESSES
Many of our standard administrative processes are stuck
in the analog industrial era, when paper was the key
vehicle for processing information. As a consequence,
Marines spend far too much time on administrative
actions and processing paperwork – time better spent
leading others and preparing for combat.
“A talent management system identifies an individual Marine’s
talents, helps them develop those talents through education,
training, mentorship, and experience, and assigns them to
positions where they can best contribute to the success of
their unit and the Corps.”
TALENT MANAGEMENT 2030
18
CONCLUSION
The operating environment has changed dramatically since the Marine Corps personnel system received its
last meaningful update in the 1980s, not just on the battleeld, but in the battle for talent. The Marine Corps
must recruit more talented individuals, trim end-strength in favor of quality, increase standards at every rank,
and develop more modern tools to compete in today’s economy. Our doctrine of maneuver warfare places a
premium on individual judgment and action, which also means we recognize all Marines of a given grade and
occupational specialty are not interchangeable. To compete at peak effectiveness, we must bring into the service
the right people with the right skill sets, measure their talents, and then match their skills to the duties they desire
and are suited to perform. Once we invest in these individuals, we need to incentivize the retention of the right
numbers of the most capable among them so they can continue to add value to our organization in ways that
are necessary to achieve the requirements of the future force. We must do so in a sufciently exible manner
that accommodates changing career aspirations over time. Organizations that do this well for a sustained period
gain a competitive advantage.
Our historical and legislatively mandated role as the Nation’s force-in-readiness remains a central requirement
in the design of our future force. The most important element of this requirement is the individual Marine.
Transitioning to a talent management system will enable us to better harness and develop the unique skills and
strengths of our Marines, improve the performance of our units in competition and combat, and ensure that we
remain “most ready when the Nation is least ready,” today and into the future.
Semper Fidelis,
David H. Berger
General, U.S. Marine Corps
Commandant of the Marine Corps
