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WASHINGTON - Talent management is essential for getting the right
people in the right place, at the right time, for any Army job - but
especially for cyber, an Army manpower leader said.
"Cyber
poses an existential threat to our existence. They've got to get
[talent management] right" since potential adversaries are really
good at cyber warfare," said Michael J. Colarusso, senior research
analyst for the U.S. Army Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis.
He and others spoke at the Association of the United States
Army's Institute of Land Warfare-sponsored Army Cyber Hot Topics
panel discussion: "Cyber Talent Management," November 10,
2015.
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Cyber warriors defend the network at the tactical operations center for 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, on Fort Bliss, Texas, during Network Integration Evaluation 16.1, which ran from Sept. 25 to Oct. 8, 2015. (U.S. Army photo by David Vergun)
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WHAT'S TALENT MANAGEMENT?
Colarusso said
there are different schools of thought regarding what talent and
talent management mean.
In his own view, he said "talent is
a force that liberates the unique abilities of every person." Each
individual has unique types of intelligence and abilities, so one
cannot say he or she is the most or least talented person because
there's no such thing. With training and good leadership, those
unique skillsets "can be expanded and liberated."
Talent
management, on the other hand, is an integration of four factors:
acquiring the right people, developing their talent, employing them
in the right places and retaining them. By doing those four things
right, it will alleviate "poaching" of those talented individuals by
outside agencies, he said.
FRAMING THE PROBLEM
Nearly everyone on the panel believed that the Army and the rest
of the Department of Defense have challenges hiring and retaining
talented cyber warriors.
Command Sgt. Maj. Rodney D. Harris,
Army Cyber Command and 2nd Army, talked with countless cyber
warriors over the years, trying to define what motivates them to
join and stay, or not. He shared anecdotes that he said are
representative.
A certain very talented master sergeant
serving in an analyst role "got QSP'd" out of the Army, Harris said.
QSP is the Qualitative Service Program Board. She wanted to stay in,
but she had not been promoted to E-9 because there was not an open
E-9 position to fill. "The board didn't consider her skills; they
just looked at the math."
She was so good, in fact, that
Google Inc. would have said her talents and abilities, if compared
with her peers, would have been "one in a thousand," he added.
One staff sergeant he spoke with said he and his entire cyber
team were planning to leave the Army. "People are hitting their
decision point. The Army has to figure out why they're leaving and
if it really wants to keep them."
In another instance, a
hugely talented graduate of the University of California at
Berkeley, who was working at Google, wanted to join the Army as an
officer in the Cyber Branch. Harris said she realized she'd be
taking a big pay cut, but she felt she wanted to give something back
to her country and she had a Family history of service.
Her
recruiter said she had too many tattoos to become an officer, but
she could go enlisted. She did in fact enlist and today, she's the
No. 1 person on her artillery team, serving on Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
The point is, Harris said, it's not just about money. The other
point is the Army has to look at better ways of attracting and
retaining talent.
Harris added that even if cyber warriors
do decide to leave, the Army should try to ensure they don't leave
with negative feelings.
While Harris sees opportunities to
improve policy and leadership, Colarusso had a different
perspective.
The Army is part of the American labor market,
Colarusso said, so competitive pressures from outside the Army are
at work. Those pressures are high because the labor market is tight
in cyber, meaning those with a cyber specialty are in high demand.
Other drivers are at work, Colarusso said, such as duty station
location, training offered, quality of work and work environment.
The current system "doesn't see people three dimensionally. We don't
know our people other than what's on their resume."
With more
than a million people in the Army, it's a very heterogeneous
population, he added. There are likely many in other military
occupational specialties, or MOSs, who would make a good cyber fit,
"but we can't see it and get people in the right seats."
FINDING THE MOTIVATORS
In the realm of
cyber, knowledge rapidly becomes dated, Colarusso said. A key to
hiring and keeping cyber talent, particularly for the millennials,
is providing quality training and education.
Millennials are
very different from baby boomers regarding what motivates them, he
said. "They value employability, not employment." For millennials,
having six jobs in several years is "not a red flag. It's the new
normal."
The reason they move around so much has to do less
with money and more with growth potential, he said. Besides
top-notch training, growth includes such things as having
opportunities to be engaged and have a lot of responsibilities and
the ability to influence outcomes. They won't go or stay where there
are toxic leaders.
Once talent is effectively matched with
those motivators, Colarusso said, "productivity goes way up."
To sum up what most of the panelists said, effective talent
management derives from the interaction of:
- Job
satisfaction
- Leadership
- Compensation
-
Training and education
BECOME A PIRATE
"Why join the Navy ... if you can be a pirate?" asked Karl F.
Schneider, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for
manpower and Reserve affairs. He was quoting the late Steve Jobs,
who reportedly made that remark when he was CEO of Apple Computer
Inc. in 1982.
The point Jobs was making was pirates get to
chart their own course and reap rewards, albeit with risk, while
Sailors don't get to decide where they'll sail - unless they're the
skipper. Jobs put a good team together that stayed and brought
success to the company, Schneider said.
Schneider said it
might pay for the Army to look at other successful models of
organizations that have been really good at building
highly-effective teams and retained their skilled workers. The Army
could then pirate some of those ideas.
He then tossed out a
few examples.
The Navy's nuclear program is one such effort
that's grown over the last half century, he said. The program has
managed to grow and retain a highly-skilled enlisted force. Adm.
Hyman George Rickover was the prime architect of that program for
over three decades.
Another exemplar, Schneider said, is Lt.
Gen. Leslie Richard Groves Jr., who oversaw the construction of the
Pentagon and directed the Manhattan Project, a project that
developed the atomic bomb. Groves built and nurtured an effective
team, which included J. Robert Oppenheimer and a number of eccentric
personalities.
Schneider also cited Skunk Works as being a
successful talent management model. Skunk Works, a nickname for
Lockheed Advanced Development Projects, was responsible for creating
innovative and effective aircraft, such as the U-2 and SR-71.
Skunk Works was so successful that the name has become
synonymous for organizations that allow their employees to be
creative and innovative in a less restrictive environment.
The warrant officer program can even be thought of as a model where
highly-skilled employees are provided increased compensation without
necessarily placing them in command positions, he said.
Yet
another is the Canadian military system, which has a blended
retirement system for both military and civilians, thus easily
facilitating career moves between the two. That gives personnel more
options, he said.
"Do I really care if the cyber operator or
developer is military or civilian?" he said. "Isn't it more
important to get the needed skills? We should have a rucksack full
of options. Recruiters should be able to ask, 'what would it take
you to join our organization?' Then offer them options and let them
join, right then and there."
Schneider's last comment sparked
a question from the audience: "If there are not enough Soldiers or
Army civilians in cyber, why not just hire more contractors?"
Harris fielded that question. "When we default to contractors,
it's because we couldn't train our own people, or they didn't fit
our model" of what a cyber warrior is perceived to be. "We can't
just default to contractors. We have to ask why we can't develop and
retain our own folks."
It's also important, Harris noted, to
"focus on who we want in our force. Should it just be someone who
can pass a security clearance?" Besides clearances, Soldiers and
Army civilians are instilled with Army values; not that contractors
don't have them. Contractors can poise an unknown risk if their work
ethic is not based on the same values driven environment.
WHAT THE ARMY IS DOING
Col. Jon Brickey,
National Capital Region partner director, Army Cyber Institute at
West Point, didn't paint as bleak a picture regarding talent
management for cyber.
While conceding a need for improvement,
he said the Army is becoming more effective at identifying and
fostering cyber talent. Efforts and results will improve over time,
he said.
The Army is now providing a cyber test to
initial-entry recruits that could help identify talent early, he
said. That effort should expand over the next few years.
The
Army is also evaluating a number of aptitude and cognitive
assessment tools that could further identify cyber talent, he said.
ROTC and West Point are identifying cyber talent early in their
cadets, Brickey said. Those in cyber tracks are assigned mentors who
monitor their progress and assign them tasks and encourage
extracurricular activities such as cyber internships and joining
cyber clubs.
As for retention, Brickey said the Army and the
other services are collaborating with universities to get Soldiers
scholarships, cyber degrees, advanced training and certificates.
Besides universities, the National Security Agency, U.S. Cyber
Command and National Intelligence University are offering their own
courses of learning.
Finally, Brickey said now that cyber has
become a branch, career progression is better facilitated and this
should be a plus for retention.
ARMY VALUES MATTER
Although the topic of values may seem tangential to talent
management, Colarusso said he felt it important enough to bring up.
Junior leaders and Soldiers are just starting to apply the Army
values they acquired, he said. When young leaders make mistakes in
judgment or character in other MOSs, there's often a period of time
where they can be redeemed. But making those kinds of mistakes in
cyber could have national security implications. "There are no peaks
and valleys in cyber. You're in contact with the enemy 24/7, 365
days a year. There's no room for error."
By U.S. Army David Vergun
Provided
through DVIDS
Copyright 2015
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