(radio radio crackles) - Roger 48-07. Approaching runway Seven Bravo. - The Air Force has announced the creation of a new information pperations technical training school. - The First Command, simply we must arm our Airmen to outthink, outperform, out-partner, out-innovate any potential adversary. - Air Force basic military training has an updated curriculum with a new focus on readiness and lethality. - The First Command. The Air Force Starts Here. - Hey, hey everybody! Happy New Years and hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and welcome in to the pod. Thanks for the subscribe, stream or download, however you might be listening in. If you get a chance to throw some stars, even a review, we certainly would appreciate that as well. My name is Dan Hawkins from the Air Education and Training Command Public Affairs Office and your host for this professional development podcast dedicated to bringing total force, big A Airmen insight, tips, tricks and lessons learned from the recruiting, training and education worlds. So it's 2020, a new year and we're starting things off with a jolt here on the podcast. We've changed the name to the Air Force Starts Here podcast. And there's a couple of reasons for the change, but really at the end of the day the biggest one is every single Airmen is impacted by what we do here in the First Command, the Air Force truly does start here in AETC, Gen. Webb, Chief Gudgel, that's kind of one of the things that they're always noting is no matter where that starting point is AETC is a part of it and we wanted to have a name that really reflected that. And so we love the name Developing Mach-21 Airmen and it was great, but we're starting off 2020 with the Air Force Starts Here podcast. So we're 22 episodes in if you count today, but this was a change that we just made so we hope you like the name. And so that was the reasoning behind it, I just wanted to kinda give you some insight into that. So to kick things off for 2020 here on episode number 22 of the pod, we sat down with Col. Erica Rabe and Mr. David Crabtree from the A1 staff at Headquarters Air Force to talk about a lot of the talent management initiatives being worked as part of overall total force development. Col. Rabe is the chief of the Air Force Learning Division and Mr. Crabtree is the chief of the Force Development and Integration Division. Both of them were here in San Antonio attending AETC's Force Development Summit and they have a great presentation on the topic to representatives spanning every MAJCOM and the Headquarters staff, so we figured we'd pass on some of the great information from their briefing. Col. Rabe and Mr. Crabtree talk about the current talent management strategy which is designed to capture total force requirements and drive deliberate management that enables diversity and quality of the Air Force's collective expertise. So they talk about the current, a little bit of the past and of course the future of talent management. They also go in-depth on many of the programs being worked on right now regarding talent management for officers enlisted and civilian personnel. Tons of changes in the officer arena when it comes to the IDE and SDE processes. They've also worked on many of the programs surrounding the enlisted side of the house including the EPR changes, the elimination of EPR reports for A1Cs and below, promotion testing, and even STEP promotions, so you don't wanna miss that. Mr. Crabtree also talks to the expanded talent management work going on for civilians at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels as well as the things they're doing with the refreshed OPM curriculum, as well as Air Force sponsored associate degrees, so really just a spread across the entire big A Airmen experience. And there's also a bit of breaking news at the end so you don't wanna miss this on how to self-report joint experiences using MyVector. So Mr. Crabtree will talk to you a little bit about that as well towards the end so you definitely don't wanna miss that. So let's get started. For the first time in 2020, let's talk talent management and force development, episode 22 of the Air Force Starts Here get started right now. So, Mr. Crabtree, tell us a little bit about yourself. - Well, I'm Dave Crabtree, the Chief Air Force Development working up at Headquarters Air Force, A1DI is my office symbol. Been with the Air Force for about 35 years, prior enlisted and now DOD civilian for the last 15 years. - And Col. Rabe? - Yup, I am currently also in the A1D shop, the A1DL Learning Division, so I'm the division chief for that and I got there in October. And prior to that, I was on the OSD staff, so learning a lot in the Learning Division. - So you guys are here in town, in San Antonio, for the Force Development Summit and first day kicked off this morning and you guys spoke specifically around talent management and force development and the things that are going on at the half level. But what was the main thrust of your conversation this morning? And what really struck me is really understanding where our talent management needs come from and that is all of the National Defense Strategy and the things that drive our Air Force mission. - So, yes, obviously the National Defense Strategy and all of the pertaining documents drive our talent management strategy to develop the Airmen we need in the future. Talent management is a tough business because it's a people business. Identifying the right Airmen at the right place, the right time under the regularization is extremely challenging and difficult, especially when you have outside influencers and, in some cases, archaic or legacy assignment processes. Bottom line is for the Airmen we need in our future we need to rethink how we develop our force as well as how we manage our force. - And you guys talked about a number that was really striking to me about the number of data systems and you threw out the number 117, but what makes that such a complex number? - It's basically what our entire human capital enterprises comprised of, roughly 117 systems. Some talk to one another, others don't. Many of them are legacy systems that probably need to go away and figure out a better way of doing business. But when you don't have data systems talking to one another, that's a challenge. And there's no way that we can pool today that mega data set that we need to identify the talent we have in our Air Force. We have to go to individual systems and basically pull that data and that's challenging. - Another area that you kind of went into this morning was the cross-functional authorities not really articulating requirements and you mentioned space specifically and that's such a huge area of interest right now, obviously space force about to be created when they sign the NDAA coming maybe later this week. But what did you mean by that? - We've got six cross-functional authorities in our Air Force today that have unique mission requirements that are derived from other AFSCs outside their core AFSC. For instance, space has 13 NASA space operators and one Charlie 6s for their enlisted force. Those are core to space but they rely on another 21 AFSCs to do their mission, 21 different skill sets to do their mission. And what we found recently is that we are failing to identity what those unique education training and experiences in those particular AFSCs needed in space. What is space looking for in order to do its mission? The same concept applies to nuclear enterprise as well as the cyber warfare enterprise and test and evaluation and even acquisition. When we can articulate in a talent management system or a talent management strategy, the skill sets the training, the education and the experience that we need to meet future missions, we have a gap and that's what we're trying to close. - And so in trying to close some of those talent management gaps, you guys had a wonderful presentation on a lot of things that have happened in force development and talent management at your level, but, Col. Rabe, could you talk to some of the initiatives that you guys have recently been working on when it comes to our officers and their talent management system? - Sure, we have instituted a lot of initiatives both on the officer and the enlisted talent management. Some more recent than others. But basically what they've been designed to do is to eliminate maybe some previous restrictions, save Airmen's time, increase opportunities for both enlisted and officer Airmen and all of those initiative are designed to better develop our Airmen for the changing environment that we face. Some examples of those specific to the officer talent management, the declination of in-residence PME selection without prejudice. So that's a new initiative basically selecting candidates can now decline to attend their school without prejudice and they can recompete the following year if they still have developmental eligibility. It's a personal choice obviously. People are at different points in their career or personal situation that may warrant, "Hey, maybe not this year, "but let's not penalize them and give that opportunity "for them to recompete the next year," so that's one example. We've also removed the IDE/SDE select from promotion process. So that was something that was instituted for years. And by doing so, we've actually increased our IDE/SDE candidate nomination percentage from 20% to 30%. So that certainly gives more individuals who weren't identified as a select in the promotion process, they now have a higher change of being selected in the DEDB process for school selection. We've also instituted the equivalency credit that has evolved into what we now call the deliberate development. And so what this is all officers at the IDE level who have been accepted or enrolled or completed an approved developmental program can now apply for in-residence credit per se. So basically it prevents them from having to do that school and then have to go to PME in-residence as well taking them out of the crew for an additional year. So as long as they, one of their, the course that they're in is on that approved list and they successfully complete that, then they can apply for the deliberate development and then they're gonna get in-residence PME for that experience. They'll certainly still have to do distance learning because of the joint PME piece to it, but it prevents them from having to go to an in-residence school for an additional 11 months out of their career field. We've also had a definitely attend policy. It was instituted last year. We've since fine-tuned it and made some adjustments to it. And what that does is the input that we got from the field was commanders know their Airmen better than anybody else. Not that the boards themselves, the DEDB, they do a fantastic job at selecting the high quality candidates to attend, PME in-residence, but there is some truth into saying that a commander knows, know their Airmen well. And so what we've instituted is there's quotas and it's based on particular senior raters, so examples are wing commanders, MAJCOM commanders, COCOMs, at the half level you got your two letters so there's various levels of senior raters. And based on their category, they're going to earn a definitely attend quota and that is based on their eligibility pool size. So the larger their eligibility pool, the more definitely attends they're gonna get. So what that will allow is that senior rater commander will be able to say, "Okay, I have one definitely attend "that I can give to my 15 eligible officers "and they're gonna have their own kinda mini board "and they will determine what officer "is actually gonna get that definitely attend." And what that'll do is when they're selected then that officer definitely will attend school and all the rest of the candidates will compete at the DEDB and they will receive, they'll either gonna get the nod to go or not. And so this is our initiative based on feedback from the field saying commanders want a bigger role in that and that's exactly what we've done. So those are some pretty good efforts in the officer world of how we're trying to adapt and evolve to the changing environment to give officers a better chance at force developing them into the future. We're also doing some learn initiatives on the enlisted side. So some of the examples, excuse me, that we've instituted is command early assignment and promotion notifications. So we're trying to do that earlier than normal that folks are used to. We've also eliminated the EPRs for A1C and below. So that's certainly saving some Airmen time in those efforts. STEP promotion allocation increase. In 2018, we went from 96 to 180, so that's an 86% increase just in STEP promotion. So identifying talented young Airmen early and giving them that early promotion opportunity to continue to excel and lead in our Air Force. Certainly our enlisted development teams, just like the officer development teams, they meet, depending on their AFSC, they conduct it a little differently between their AFSCs but, in a nutshell, they all do the same thing where they're looking at their field and they're vectoring their Airmen to where they need to go at the right place at the right time. - I found it interesting too, you guys really took a long look at some of the senior NCO developmental opportunities or things that surround senior NCO's progression through the ranks, one of those senior rater endorsement for accredited degrees and also with the moving master sergeant to aboard as well as eliminating those tests for promotion. So kinda how long was that process and what was kinda the thought process behind really taking a hard look at the senior NCO developmental process? - Sure, it's similar to the officer world. You take a look and say do we really need to just limit senior rater endorsement to CCAF, Community College of the Air Force, when we have senior enlisted who are attending some pretty intense academic programs? And so the thought process behind that was just what we do with the officers in deliberate development. You're taking a look and saying, "Hey, they're in these accredited programs, "why not give them senior rater endorsement? It's only fair to recognize them for that talent that they have clearly shown. And then the removal of the promotion testing E-7 to E-9. You reach those senior NCO levels you've proven yourself in leadership and professionalism and you can only go up from there. So we don't really need to test you at that point, you've already shown what you can do and the potential is there for them to continue to do that. So eliminating that testing is another initiative in saving Airmen's time and letting senior raters take a look at these individuals and decide the promotion from that point forward based on performance and what they're gonna bring in the future fight. - Yeah, and I'm kinda going backwards a little bit. But on the officer side, you talked about directed diversity of developmental teams and right now diversity is such a hot topic across the Air Force. Here in AETC, we have a lot of thrust towards rated diversity. But really diversity as a whole, as Gen. Goldfein has said a war fighting imperative. So what have you guys done in that arena in terms of diversity? - Just making sure that it doesn't just look the same on those panels, that the fair way to do this is to have a proper representation. And so when you're talking whether it be race or gender you wanna cover all the bases to get a true picture of the entire talent board. And the only way to get to that is to have a diverse panel to take a look at, we already have a diverse population, and so when you have a diverse panel of, a team of folks taking a look at, "Here's our talent poll. "Let's see who in this talent poll "needs to get elevated to the next level "whether it be for promotion or assignment "or school whatever the case may be." When you have that ability to take a look at it from a diverse background, it's gonna make you that much more effective in the goal that you're trying to attain. - And lastly, and I definitely don't wanna miss this, is the civilian tiers because you talked a little bit about it this morning, three levels of deliberate development for civilians and I'm not sure, you'll probably tell me if that's kind of a, really a first when it comes to civilian development. Can you kinda talk to those deliberate levels? - Sure. It's not necessarily a first. We're just trying to clarify that we do have three levels. Operational, I'm sorry, strategic, operational, tactical. Strategic is obviously for the senior grades. We're talking the 14s and 15s and the higher SCSs. We actually have an Air Force Senior Leader Development Program that all those folks go through as part of their force development. The operational is where we're getting down into the mid-level managers, the GS-9s through the 13s, to make sure that they're getting the right educational opportunities equal to their grades. And the tactical level is growing at young Air Force into our future leaders. One of the things that we recently did was we converted an organizational leadership course for our civilians that were usually attended by 12s and 13s to a GS-11-only course. This is, for many of them, their first opportunity at organizational leadership and preparing them for their next level responsibility. We also share a lot of resources. Primary example, when we're talking about managers, supervisors training, none of the things that we do in force development are done on isolation and we partner with AFMC, AETC, and a host of other stakeholders. So in order to get the messages out for managers and supervisors training, we're actually using ETMS from AFMC to go out and notify people when they're due for training for managers and supervisors training. They hadn't been done in the past. So that's an innovative approach as far as how we're sharing resources to let people know what the opportunities are as well as what mandatory training they need to take. Most recently, in the last year, was our first test case where we took the entire civilian developmental education portfolio and put the application process into MyVector. We had some naysayers out there, but at the end of the day we nearly doubled the amount of applications that we received and we boarded almost as double the amount of personnel that went through the Air Force level boards. So that was a huge effort. A lot of folks said that we could not do this in a one-week board at the Air Force level just because of the amount of candidates that were pushed to the Air Force Board. But because of technology and the capabilities that we have in MyVector today, the board actually finished early and had a high level of confidence that they made the right decisions on the future development of our civilian workforce. - I think another program for civilians that is really a great thing is the Air Force-sponsored associates degree program. - And we've actually expanded that to our non-appropriated funds employees. So now there are select candidates on the non-appropriated fund side. About 20 a year, they're gonna be identified by their career development teams for vectoring into a college associate degree program conducted at the Eaker Center. So again we're expanding our opportunities. Are we there across the total force? No, we have much more work to do but we're making headway. - So we've talked a little bit about some of the things that had been going on and you guys obviously working hard, but where do you see this movement and this need for deliberate development starting to move as you look ahead and still look at the things you guys need and want to do? - I see there's a lot of work that still needs to be done to make sure we've got all the stakeholders identified, we're able to articulate what the requirements are, we're able to capture the requirements and then do gap analysis on where we're meeting those requirements or not meeting those requirements and then lay down the foundation of how to address those requirements that we're not meeting to the gap analysis. Force development is a warfighting enabler to our talent management system. If we can't develop our force appropriately, there's no way we're gonna have the talent that we need to fight the future fights. - So when you look at the talent management and improvement across cross-functional and functional requirements, what does that mean? I saw an acronym this morning, it wasn't really an acronym, but it's capture, automate and report. So what are the challenges, what have you found there as you try to move forward here? - Capturing the information such as education training and experiences are too difficult across 117 data systems, collaborating those data set and understanding what that data set means. And the area that we're focusing on is also self-reporting. We have total Airmen out there, total Air Force Airmen out there today that have unique knowledge capabilities and skills that are not captured in military personnel systems, civilian personnel systems or the like. This is something that they've done on their own, whether it be they're attending their own schooling to develop themselves further or what have you. We want to be able to have them have the ability to self-report that data so we can capture that experience. It's critical and we're seeing some great rewards dealing with the computer learning initiative. Airmen today are able to identify their computer expertise and we're able to partner with them and work with them to harness that expertise and even improve it. - So we've talked a little bit about it, MyVector, but there's a lot going on right now in the MyVector arena. And you talked about self-reporting just a second ago and one of the things you mentioned in your briefing at the Force Development Summit was that a new joint experience self-reporting tool would be coming out in MyVector soon. - So the joint talent tracking management system, this was basically a strategic integration group initiative, that's where we're going to allow Airmen to self-report through joint experience. I'm not saying that we're gonna give them joint credit, that's not the intent of this. It's to identify their joint experiences so we can capture that joint experience and bring that to bear especially in our joint fights. That tool will be released in MyVector, we're looking at the end of December, next week, early January. So members that have that joint experience can go in and self-nominate and we will go to the process of validating those requirements or that nomination process and making sure it's captured somewhere in our talent management system for future use. - So MyVector, when you look at it holistically, seems to be growing. I know there's a lot of things that you're looking forward to in the future, but what are some of the improvements that are happening right now in MyVector? - There's several improvements that we're making into MyVector. Again MyVector is developed as an agile development concept. What does that mean? We constantly improve the development of what's happening in MyVector. It's not a one-shot, a one-stop and done mentality. We constantly look at a continuous process improvement lens to see what we can do better in MyVector. So we are doing how washes on our officer enlisted and civilian developmental education boards as well as DT vectoring, developmental team vectoring, in MyVector today to make sure that we've got that right. We're gonna also migrate over to some new capabilities in MyVector. For those of you that don't know out there, there's 140 capabilities in MyVector today. I've just touched on a few at the Force Development Summit but there's 140 capabilities in MyVector today that many Airmen don't realize, because they're not utilizing the tool. They think that the tool is available to them for developmental education. It's not, it's much more than that. So in the future, we're gonna have individual development plans for civilians in MyVector, Airmen development plans for our military members in MyVector. We're looking at designated special duty for enlisted to be placed into MyVector as a board opportunity similar to the DE process where you can nominate yourselves for a developmental, I'm sorry, designated special duty assignment whether it be a first sergeant duty or the like. A lot of capability is going into MyVector and it needs to go into MyVector, 'cause again MyVector is an interface with all of the official data systems that are out there. And as those data systems get reconfigured, MyVector will remain an interface to the official records. So if we can capture it in an official record, we can manage that talent. - It's really, really exciting time in the force development and talent management world right now. So as you look even two to five years in the future, what would be your vision or hope for talent management and force development? Where do you see the Air Force heading in that regards? - I mean, I see them continuing to partner amongst the different, all the MAJCOMs and HAF, and AFPC. It truly is a partnership effort continually evaluating and looking to see where adjustments need to be made because as we go forward, the Air Force is just gonna continue to evolve as the world will. And if we continue to do this, remain in the same pattern, then we've set ourselves up for failure. And so I think the Air Force has done a really good job of recognizing where we need to go and we've instituted these things to get there, but to be mindful that you're under a constant loop of evaluation and adjustment. And so I see that's where we're going and I'm confident that that's where we're headed because the leadership is all talking that way. And so to truly do that in a partnership world, I think the Air Force is definitely headed in the right direction for that. - And in my perspective, and I'll kind of indicate some A1 marching orders that we have in our talent management system. It needs to be responsive, especially to our, what the Air Force needs in the future. It has to be agile. It's got to be flexible as the environment changes. It also has to be transparent and it has to be simple for the users. A lot of things behind the scenes will happen. I'm not gonna go into the technical aspects of all of that, but the user, whether it's an individual user or it's a developmental team or it's a cross-functional authority or even a functional authority, the system has to meet their needs from a user interface perspective. We don't wanna make it difficult, we wanna make it very transparent and very simple for them to use that information whether they're pulling reports for a developmental team, whether they're making selections for promotions we want to make sure that the interface that we're creating in MyVector today meets their needs. - Well, I certainly appreciate you guys taking time out to, of your schedule to talk about force development today. - Yeah, you bet. - Thank you. - So there you have it, episode 22 is a wrap. The first episode here in 2020. Great conversation with Col. Rabe and Mr. Crabtree. Big takeaway here. Airmen should take the time to get into MyVector and check out the changes. You can even set up notifications which I found to be a great add, so get into MyVector and check it out. A big thank you to both Col. Rabe and Mr. Crabtree for taking some time out and spending it with us to talk all about talent management and force development. As a reminder, you can follow both Air Education and Training Command and the AETC Command Team Chief Gudgel and Gen. Webb on social media, on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, as well as on the web at www.aetc.af.mil. Thanks for checking out the podcast as we dive into the world of recruiting, training and education. For our entire AETC Public Affairs Team, I'm Dan Hawkins. So long, we'll talk to you next time on the Air Force Starts Here.