A Promotion and a Reckoning

I found out recently that I am getting promoted to Technical Sergeant. Seeing as this promotion comes with a decent pay bump, and thus an increase in my ability to make sure my family has what they need, I thought I would be proud. And I was proud. At least for a moment. But, as in design, you can't ignore the systems in which things operate. In this case, I couldn't ignore the greater underpinnings of my promotion.

I've said before that to align myself with meaningful work in a way where I felt psychologically healthy, I had to divorce myself from the idea of rank. Only when I divorced my identities from my rank (I am someone who has a rank, not I am a rank; a minor shift) was I able to hit my stride. Put another way, only when I separated myself from rank psychologically was I free. This has been a period where I have had largest impact, and the biggest sense of belonging. Getting promoted, though, means I have to again reckon with this concept of rank. This process is never ending. If I am a person with rank, I will seek to refine, or completely upend what rank means to me.

Before I grapple with calling this promotion a "success" I must thank a ton of people. I struggle with calling this promotion a success, as you'll see in the coming paragraphs, but those who support me often do see it as such. So, thank you to everyone who has supported me: thank you to my spouse, my son, my parents, and in-laws for the support and belief. Thank you to all my friends at Agitare, for whom I would not be what and where I am today without: Chris Williams, Daniel Hulter, Mike Harbin, Jer McKoy, Jordyn Fetter, Rob Montano, and Stephen Ohge. To the Meadow Garden, which has imprinted on my soul as much as it is a reflection of my own. To Air Force Gaming for opening themselves up to an still-unfinished experiment in narrative. And lastly, to the supervisors who have cheered me on along the way.

With that out of the way, I can now carry on with the critical work.

There is one person for whom I am grateful for, indebted to even, but will not mention by name. I dedicate the rest of this article to them. Without this person I would not be the Staff Sergeant I am, whatever that might mean to you. I would have floundered a million more times than I did. I would have been seen as incompetent much more often without them. This person is a much more capable leader than I am, and yet they did not make rank this year. In fact, they have been testing for Technical Sergeant for about as long as I've been in the military.

On the day results came out, I wanted to reach out to them, tell them I'm sorry. But that's not what they would have wanted. I knew from previous experience that they like to take the day to process their emotions after a promotion release. So I didn't say anything. Instead, they messaged me that evening, congratulating me, showing me yet again the grace of a good leader (since we are so set on leadership-followership dynamics).

If rank meant nothing to me, I wouldn't feel the sting of seeing someone more deserving than me not make rank. I wouldn’t feel the rising feeling of injustice borne out of an imperfect system (as all systems are doomed to be). But of course I did. How could I not?

I've noticed a trend lately of enlisted people in innovation saying they have a harder time getting promoted. I'm not refuting that claim, but a biproduct of this culture is interesting. You hear "the Air Force got one right" when someone does get promoted. (This phenomenon doesn't only happen in innovation circles). When I hear this, all I can think of are the people like my friend who has spent most of their career trying to make the next rank while being more competent than people at many tiers of rank higher. The common quote is a positive spin to the fact that we often feel like the Air Force gets promotion wrong. While hiding it in the positive construction, we lose sight of what exactly is happening.

For the times where the Air Force does get it "right", which it allegedly did with me, there are also times where that doesn't happen. What does our current system measure for leadership? The answer is easy to answer on the surface but more difficult as we dig deeper. On the surface, it measures performance of duties as measured by EPRs, prestige and accomplishment as measured by awards, job knowledge (in some career fields) as measured by the Specialty Knowledge Test (SKT), and knowledge of the Air Force and other items in the Air Force Handbook as measured in a “Promotion Fitness Examination” (PFE). Two portions of our assessment, of our competition with one another, is measured in our ability to take a test. While skills adjacent to test taking (memory skills, etc.) are useful skills to have, so is application of knowledge, which is virtually unmeasured within the current system, and to me would make a better leader than sheer accumulation of knowledge. More importantly, none of these measures highlight what has become a rally cry for many innovators “accelerate change or lose”. None of the above can accurately capture one’s ability to lead, inspire, collaborate in/co-create change.

It is time we start trying to get a better hold of what we want in leaders, and then actually put in the deliberate effort to design better systems to support that ideal. Instead, our rally cry is strong, while our systems still reek of stagnation.

Some of you might find me ungrateful. If you didn't get promoted this year, you might even think I'm being ridiculous in not celebrating. I am thankful for this promotion, but I am also critical of the system, this is an attempt to balance the two.

This is the context in which I reckon with my promotion. The context in which I look at rank and seek to find some meaning in it. My friend has been in the military long enough for their friends in Basic Military Training to have become Senior Master Sergeants. It's hard to maintain freedom from rank knowing the maelstrom that that fact might bring up in someone. Viktor Frankl, renown Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist, said in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, that freedom is only one aspect of a whole phenomenon where the other aspect is responsibility. He goes on to say that “freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness.”

So, I'm off to a new paradigm. I am still not my rank, but I do have a duty to those overlooked by the current system to bare this and potentially coming ranks responsibly and with sense of justice for them.