Presdo: Online Agenda Whiz for the Busy Diplomat

I once worked in an office where the secretary had no idea how to use the appointment option in Outlook, so setting up one meeting with the boss and a few other folks invariably generated a dozen or so email updates and cancellations in a span of a few hours, not to mention the migraines that came as bonus for the meeting participants trying to sort out which appointment is the correct one.

Given that experience, I was excited to discover Presdo, a quick online scheduler that easily works with the Outlook calendar (as well as Yahoo! Calendar, Google Calendar and Apple iCal). Since most FS users have Outlook loaded in their workstations, and Presdo is an accessible online tool for anyone with Internet connection, this has the potential of making your life easier when it comes to scheduling and tracking your busy schedule. I see particular value of this tool for FSOs who often have appointments and events after hours and during weekends, especially those overseas who do not have access to their Outlook calendars when they are out of the office. I’m looking at this as a weekend complement to Outlook, to ensure that whatever appointments you make outside of the normal workday can easily be integrated into your official appointment calendar at work without skipping a beat.

The company says that Presdo takes the hassle out of trying to find the best time to get together with people by minimizing the annoying ping pong of email, texting, and voicemail when organizing the next team lunch or when trying to grab coffee with a friend. And that’s true since this tool lets you propose one or more time when inviting your guests, making it easier to find the best time for everyone. So you start simply with “what” and with “whom” like -- “Meeting with John, OBC Saturday,” “Movie with Cindy Fri night,” “Coffee with Diplopundit next week” –see below. You can enter the email addresses of all the prospective attendees to your event and you can send the invitation with one click of a mouse (I would like to see an email address import functionality added here).

If you are in the US, you can use the map option, but I find that overseas it is easier to just enter the location for each appointment. A news update from the company did say that Presdo’s location features for those in Europe or Asia are working much better now, but I have not tried it after the new refinement.

Your invitees can accept your initial time, or they can pick from other times if the initial time is not good for them. Presdo keeps track of when everyone wants to get together. It shows you the other best times based on everyone’s input, and you decide if you should change the time of the event. Part of its beauty is you don’t have to switch screen to calendar or email, you can send the desired changes from the same window!

The two things I like best about Presdo are 1) simple, uncluttered interface and 2) it allows you to coordinate events with guests/attendees who are in other time zones. The time that you enter will be shown to them in their local time zone. For example, if you organize an event at 9am in the PST time zone with a guest in the EST time zone, your guest will see the time as 12pm. The same applies if you are a guest suggesting other times for an event. Any time that you enter is always based on the time zone setting of your computer, so you just have to make sure that your computer’s time zone setting has been set to the local time zone where you are and Presdo will do the rest. Neat, huh?

Presdo is founded by Eric Ly, who previously was a co-founder of LinkedIn and was its first chief technology officer. Tech Crunch reported that Ly wrote most of the code himself and bootsrapped the entire site with only $35,000 of his own money and was quoted as saying: “I left LinkedIn on a Friday, and started Presdo on Saturday.” Two years later - Presdo! In the company blog, Ly writes:

“Presdo was started not only to address a need that we all have but also to represent some important ideals about the way people build technology companies. All of us at Presdo use products we love and find indispensable. You and I probably agree on what many of these products are. The products that most excite us offer something refreshing while adding value to our lives. They make us feel good when we use them. When we began Presdo, we set for ourselves not a modest challenge: can we bring useful and interesting products to market that are even better than the best products we admire? And in doing so, can we build a profitable company that enables us to continue to create value for our customers? These are important goals for us.”

A grounded dreamer, what’s not to like? Let me know if this works for you! To read more, click here: http://www.presdo.com/help To sign up for a new account, click here: http://www.presdo.com/

To view a recent screencast on Presdo by Demogirl, click here.

Iraq's Unsafe Haven

Yesterday in a Newsweek web exclusive, Lennox Samuels has a piece about Baghdad 's Green Zone as the latest battleground in the struggle for Iraq and writes in part: "More than 1,000 State Department and military staffers work in the American Embassy, which is housed in Saddam Hussein's former Republican Palace. Most live in trailers on the palace grounds, and many of them began sleeping in the embassy when the bombardments began and have yet to return to their trailer beds. "There have been cots all over the embassy and people sleeping in stairwells and hallways," says a State Department analyst who would not be named discussing embassy matters. Many are afraid to sleep in their cramped metal containers, which are considered flimsy and inadequately protected. The trailers sit next to each other in rows of two, three or more. A rocket destroyed a row of trailers and people were "just freaked out," says the embassy staffer. "If somebody had given me a gun and told me 'five guys are coming to kill you,' that would have been preferable to going to sleep in this tin can not knowing if you're going to wake up," adds the embassy analyst. KBR, the engineering and construction contractor, is hiring more people to sandbag housing areas at the embassy in response to an embassy request, according to a company memo. The company asked for volunteers to help with the sandbagging and said that the project will now be completed by June rather than October. The number of heavy concrete barriers, called T-walls, will also be increased.

Meanwhile, diplomats are taking no chances. As the attacks continued into Monday afternoon, with a projectile apparently landing near the U.S. Embassy grounds, staffers there were issued a memo discouraging them from driving around the Zone and recommending that they keep "Personal Protective Equipment" readily available in living quarters. "Personnel should minimize time outside as much as possible," the memo said. "… It is recommended you spend as much time as possible in hardened facilities with overhead cover. It is also recommended that you sleep in hardened facilities with overhead cover … If you decide to sleep in your trailer, please remember that your ability to quickly react could save your life." Click here to read the entire article.

Boss Checklist: When Considering Your Next Foreign Service Assignment

A conversation this past weekend made me think about prospective bosses during assignment time and how little employees usually know about them. Unless you're plugged exceptionally well into the system, you won't really know what that next boss is like until you're at post. Your interest on boss-matters also largely depends on where you are in your career. Early on, with the excitement of going to one’s first assignment, there is that sense of great adventure and invincibility; later in one’s career after having earned a bit of wisdom and experience, one tends to be more adroit in asking specific questions about the person who will “own” you for a couple or so years.

It goes without saying that even if you're lucky to have a great boss during your tour, it is within the realm of possibility that the boss rotates out in the middle of your tour and is replaced by somebody who’s well, a train wreck, and you’d still spend part of your tour in a junkyard of sorts. There are only so many things we can control in this kind of life, of course, but having an “early warning system,” at least prepares us for it. The old “What’s the boss like?” question is often too generalized to be useful. So I’ve come up with a checklist that would help tell if the prospective boss is a, uh, jerk.

( ) Speedway Boss

Is the prospective boss perceived as focused on the current job or searching for the next big gig? The boss who is in a race to get ahead has limited patience in growing his/her people. This boss expects you to figure out everything for yourself – how to jump off planes without parachutes, or swim the great oceans from day one (zero consideration even if you come from a landlocked country) – you’ve got to figure it all out for yourself because he/she does not have time for coaching or mentoring; too busy to make pit stops while getting to the next job.

( ) Employees’ Reference

What do past employees say about working for the prospective boss? Would they want to work with him/her again? This is an excellent question to ask because in the small universe of the FS, you tend to bump on the same people throughout the span of your entire career. The desire to keep relationships on an even keel has its many returns especially when you consider possible future posts. So when past officers say they won’t work for this boss again, that means it must have been truly memorable.

( ) Silent Signals

How do local employees interact with the prospective boss? Is he/she well-liked and respected that they find ways to engage, put extra efforts, share laughs, find excuses to celebrate at work or do they circumnavigate the office to get somewhere without passing by his/her office? Do they call in sick rather than have one-on-one meetings with the boss or get a stomachache rather than attend the boss’ birthday party? The locals have seen us come and go; they have seen the great, the good, the bad and the ugly, and they usually know more than they let on. Their silent signals are pretty much a guide post, it's worth paying attention before you bumped on it head-on.

( ) Tolerance Factor

How does the prospective boss react to mistakes and bad news? Does he/she suffers from the “shoot-the- messenger” syndrome or is he/she the kind that perceives mistakes as opportunities for learning. The boss whose office is littered with empty shells sinks sooner than later (no matter how tightly the ship is run) because the crew is often too afraid to report when there’s a hole in the stern. Beware, unless you’re a great swimmer!

( ) Dissenting Chair

How receptive is the prospective boss to criticisms and dissenting views? Does prospective boss encourage a diversity of ideas and give people with contrary views a seat in the table to understand all the issues or does he/she marginalized the people and ignore dissenting views? The boss intolerant to dissent is often proud of running a tight ship because, well, see - nobody sneezes without asking for permission first. (Note: Don’t get tempted even if post looks like paradise; remember that paradise can be hell if you work for a lout).

( ) Screaming Red Flag

Were there “nuggets of wisdom” that past employees passed around among themselves on how to deal with prospective boss? “Let the boss think your idea is really her own, she likes that.” Or “He does not like to be contradicted, so don't say anything; let him do the talking.” Or “She has an unbelievable photographic memory when it comes to mistakes.” The fact that the staff has developed informal guidelines in dealing with the boss is a screaming red flag that you should not ignore. As I write this item, I am reminded how parents sometimes exchange tips on what to do to avoid toddler meltdown. Kinda similar.

( ) A Sheep or Two

Does the prospective boss surround self with sheep? Are there a few employees who act as gatekeepers, confidants or friends to the exclusion of the larger group? Note that the shepherd boss tends to listen only to a few individuals tested for their loyalty. Employees who rat out on their co-workers to earn brownie points and follow the boss without question qualify as sheep. What’s wrong with being a sheep you might ask? Nothing - as long as you don’t care what boss feeds you with.

( ) Information Superhighway Filter

How does the prospective boss manage communication? Does the boss tend to hoard information to control the message (or for one-upmanship) or are communication lines open and straightforward? A lousy boss tends to impose a circuitous communication structure when dealing with the outside world and routes everything through his/her desk. This one acts as the information superhighway filter and as a consequence, is also quite adept at managing impression. Bottom line – you usually won’t see smoke even if boss is causing deadly havoc within the organization (survivors of course, are branded for life).

( ) Team of One

Does the prospective boss hug the limelight during work successes or does he/she shine the light on to his/her team? The boss who is in a team of one usually has little interest in the process, or the journey but focused solely on the results and the destination. Any project or initiative takes on a fixed deadline to ensure that the boss gets his/her brownie points in time for the EER or the bid cycle. Overworked and under appreciated, people working for this boss usually feel the blues once on Monday and twice on any given workday.

( ) Kiss and Kick Intelligence (KKQ)

How does the boss respond to feedback from people higher in rank and lower in rank? Bob Sutton and Guy Kawasaki called this the “kisses-up, kicks-down” item in their checklist. They described this as follows: the One characteristic of certified assholes is that they tend to demean those who are less powerful while brown-nosing their superiors. Oh golly, that’s blunt, need I say more? Do check out the Sutton-Kawasaki-LinkedIn checklist.

This is not to say that we do not have good managers at State, we do but - as in the larger world out there, we also have those that manifest part or all of the items in this checklist. And what bugs me is that they get rewarded with better assignments anyway, and some are politically savvy enough that they could even end up in the SFS.

In any case, perhaps nobody really needs a checklist like this except me (type A personality and all that). After all, one great thing about the FS is we move every couple or so years, which means, nobody get struck with a lousy boss forever. If that fact does not cheer you up, you can always buy a reverse clock like this one that can count backwards from any date out to 2024 (just replace the photo with the correct one, okay?). We'll have to think of some other cheerful prop in 2025; though I'm a "glass is full" kind of person and hope that by then, we won't have to.

Brief as Photos – 1: Lara’s Story

This is going to be totally off from what I've been blogging so far (I'll be back to regular programming on Monday). I just finished reading Paul Theroux’s Twenty-Two Stories in Harper’s and felt moved to write a brief story of no more than a thousand words. I have this crazy idea of writing one story a week; that's 52 stories or approximately 52,000 words in one year. The question is -- would I be able to keep it up? I will also be traveling this summer for six weeks, so that's an added twist. But I want to try and see if I can do this (and you will help keep me honest, won't you?). These would be short-short fictional stories with mostly a Foreign Service slant; I'm not sure there is a name for this genre - but I'm calling this haiku fiction. The working title for this series is “Brief as Photos,” after John Berger’s 1992 book, “And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos.” But as Yoda says "No. Try not. Do... or do not." So here's my first do at 460 words:

1: Lara’s Story

Lara was not a vengeful woman. She was raised to believe that a higher order would sort out all injustice in the next world. All sins would be paid in full. Turning your left cheek instead of hitting back had been drummed into her and she believed in it. After the attack on the World Council's headquarters, she was in church often; trying to find meaning to the destruction of lives, the purpose of suffering bravely, the necessity of good and evil coexisting in a fragile world such as hers. She wondered often if God was sleeping on his job, for how else could one explain the horrendous act that had invaded her small intimate world like a wooden mallet hitting glass.

Why she lived while they passed on still remained a mystery to her. The reel in her mind played on like a 24/7 show: She and Lisa sitting in a corner eating ice cream flakes; her husband, Jeremy, who was having a late morning meeting with the Pacific Sector diplomats was just coming down from the moving walkway. They smiled and waved at him. Her daughter dropped her doll and Lara quickly ducked under the table to retrieve it. There was a blinding light and then there was nothing. She thought about the woman in Hiroshima, a hundred years ago who had her daughter on her lap when the bomb was dropped. The Japanese mother lived to be an old woman but not the daughter who was on her lap, who perished that day. How do you explain something like that?

She had nothing else to live for after that. For two months she did nothing but stared at her family’s photographs and cried. Until one day, she discovered the well in her eyes had become completely dry. That was when Lara joined the World Intelligence Service as an operative. She was first assigned to the Eurasian Sector to track down some liquid metal smugglers. She was efficient and effective. She was dangerous to the enemy not because of her lethal skills but because the part of her brain that regulates fear had vanished like smoke with her husband and daughter in that fateful morning.

Lara was not a vengeful woman, and yet, when she learned that the mastermind of the World Council’s bombing was in Japan, that was where she went. She found him in Bonin Islands, south of the capital city, looking like a prosperous oriental business man. She told herself, all she wanted was to ask him why? But he laughed at her face and called them the collateral damage of war. So she fed him fugu liver and watched him slowly die. Then she went for a swim and was never heard of again.

Read: Brief as Photos Disclaimer

Wanted: Post Crisis of the Month Page

The May issue of State Magazine contains an account of a two-day siege in February that Chad (N’Djamena) endured as rebels battled government forces in an attempt to topple President Idriss Deby Itno. In February 2, U.S. Embassy family members and non-essential personnel were evacuated by the military but the ambassador and essential embassy staff remained. Below is an excerpt from Lucy Tamlyn's piece "Heat of Battle." You can read the entire piece here.

"An estimated 1,000 bullets rained on the compound every hour. An RPG exploded in a nearby tree, sending the Americans reeling and loosening the house’s corrugated tin roof. Soon, the first wave of rebels surged around the embassy compound. In addition to Ambassador Louis Nigro and 19 embassy employees, the chancery sheltered 20 local guards, a private American citizen and a Chadian-American child and his Chadian mother. As the battle advanced and retreated, looters swarmed behind the rebels. Embassy guards looked on helplessly as looters seized their treasured bicycles and motorcycles from the parking lot. The destruction of classified material picked up speed with embassy staff from all sections wielding sledgehammers and doing shredder duty. Elsewhere in the city, as security permitted, French forces ferried private American citizens and other expatriates from hotels and residences to the French base for onward passage to Libreville, Gabon.

A day later, the battle around the embassy became more fierce. An RPG round went through a second-story wall near the ambassador’s office, where an employee had been minutes before. The order came to abandon the embassy. At 3:15 p.m., Marine Detachment Commander Robert Sutton and Sgt. Patrick Shaw lowered the American flag, folded it and gave it and the embassy keys to the Ambassador. The last e-mail was sent to American citizens, urging them to seek shelter at the French base. A French helicopter landed on an improvised landing area behind the embassy to pick up the ambassador and his group during a lull in the fighting. They were joined at the French base by the Americans from the housing compound, who had endured another excruciating day in the crossfire before being picked up by French forces in armored personnel carriers. Government forces were slowly beating back the rebels. But the streets were filled with corpses. The stench of charred and burning vehicles filled the air.

The U.S. Embassy in N’Djamena never closed, however. The ambassador and key staff maintained a U.S. presence at the French base for the next two weeks, one of many French services that were greatly appreciated. On February 14, the chancery reopened and the flag was raised. The damage toll included six embassy houses that had been completely looted. Fortunately, there were no fatalities among the Chadian employees, but many experienced terror, lost household goods and were separated from their families. Employees can help them by contributing to the FSN Emergency Relief Fund."

If you are with State, please consider making a contribution to the FSN Emergency Relief Fund (check with your HRO or Management Office on how to do this). Our local employees help us overseas in so many ways, and are often caught in the middle because of their employment with the USG. I'm relieved that no embassy employees were injured during this crisis but vivid accounts like this also help bring to the "front page" the fact that hardship assignments exist outside of Iraq. I mean, of course, the people in the FS knew this but the general public is not really aware of what is life out there in the trenches for the Foreign Service people. Seventy percent of our embassy assignments worldwide are indeed considered "hardships." And yes, they were shooting bullets at our people and this was not Iraq. Here, our remaining embassy personnel were rescued by an allied military force but I hate to imagine what would happen if there was no one to call. This also made me start wondering -- in an "expeditionary" American Presence Post in the middle of nowhere, is State prepared to send a trained team to "extract" our man or woman on the ground?

I started writing this piece with the working title "Heat of Battle: Not in Baghdad," but I realized that what we really need is for State Magazine to tell the hard stories of the Foreign Service. In fact, I think State Magazine should do away (like bury for good) with its monthly "Post of the Month" page and replaced it with something called "Post Crisis of the Month," or something similar. There is nothing included in the "Post of the Month" entry that one can't possibly find in the official post reports, the Intranet or the web. The "Post of the Month" has tarried beyond its welcome, to put it nicely. To continue to give it such prominence in this day and age is incongruent with the realities of our times. Consider the following facts: 1) unaccompanied posts have more than quadrupled in recent years, 2) it's only April and we already have xx number of posts evacuated. If you think something as harmless as the "Post of the Month" is trivial, you can think again after reading this piece from the Weekly Standard, whose author accused FS people of Living in a Dream World. I'm not advocating this change to make the writer happy and have him become the FS's BFF, mind you, but I do think that the change is necessary to reflect the current realities within the Service and in the world where we are living. If State starts soliciting contribution to the "Post Crisis of the Month" page, I can't imagine it running out of material anytime soon. Please send this post to the Director General through DG Direct (internal channel) or write to statemagazine[at]state[dot]gov and make a personal plea that the "Post Crisis of the Month" page be added to the magazine. Or should I perhaps start an online petition?

The Truth About Living in the Diplomatic Cocktail Circuit

In a recent Kojo Nnamdi show focused on the future of the Foreign Service, Steven Kashkett, State Vice President for AFSA bemoaned the “persistent image of US diplomats as “cookie-pushers,” or debutantes living a cushy life on the cocktail circuit.” (You can listen to the NPR show here or read a quick write up from Foreign Policy Blogs here).

The Urban Dictionary contains two definitions for cookie-pushers: 1) Effete, unmasculine person with pretensions to social status; pejorative for a diplomat. (I went to a party in Georgetown with a bunch of cookie-pushers; some of them even were speaking in French. Time to leave town!), and 2) Psychotic serial killers disguised as little girls who peddle Thin Mints financing their bid for world domination. Often called "Girl Scouts". (I was stopped by a cookie pusher outside of Target, and felt obligated to buy a box of Thin Mints). Uh-oh… either way you look at this, it does not look nor sound good.

I wished it were not so, but the term "cookie-pusher" now lives in online perpetuity with its own entry in Wikipedia which says in part: “Ivor Evans in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (NY: Harper and Row, 1981) uses the term denoting a junior diplomat who functions as a roving waiter at an official reception, presumably "pushing" appetizers on people who don't really want them.”

I would have to take umbrage with Mr. Evan’s definition. With the dollar tanking these days and the Foreign Service budget shortfall the size of the Sahara, I’m not sure we would even have any appetizers for our junior diplomats to “push.” Still, we can’t afford the neighbors to think that we are “poor,” so money will be scraped to “splurge” on our guests and host nation contacts. But no one should be surprise if we start serving popcorn in the next diplomatic reception.

I’m not sure which is more annoying to me, the “cookie-pusher” or the askewed presumption that our diplomats lived in a perpetual happy hour in the service of this nation; or for that matter, lived in one unending banquet of Kobe beef, Belons oyster and the 1959 Château Mouton Rothschild.

So here’s the skinny on this for those not in the know: It is true that our diplomats do have to give dinner parties and attend dinner parties and cocktail receptions as part of their jobs. The more senior you are and the more important the portfolio you have, the more demanding is the social obligations. Attendance to these official functions is usually done after hours and could be as often as three times a week or as little as once or twice a month (which also means you don’t get to see your kids at bedtime 3x a week, as they’re asleep by the time you get home).

Cocktail receptions are more common across diplomatic missions, because it does not last as long as a full-course sit down dinner, but also because it cost less to provide appetizers and drinks, and you can invite more people. That and the added bonus of the diplomat’s spouse, unpaid representative of the United States or country X, not having to sweat in the wood kitchen. Of course, the type of “representation” event you give also depends on the purpose and the guest of honor. It might be that having a small dinner with a local official would be more useful to pin down a needed response, than having a large cocktail party.

Why go through all this trouble anyway? I think it is best said by François de Calliéres in 1716: “A good table is the best and easiest way of keeping [oneself] well informed. The natural effect of good eating and drinking is the inauguration of friendships and the creation of familiarity and when people are a trifle warmed by wine they often disclose secrets of importance.” And here’s Abigail Adams in 1784: “More can be accomplished at one party than at twenty serious conversations.” I call this the “good table” diplomacy, and it’s here to stay as long as we believe that words are cheaper than swords, and ideas matter in this constantly changing world.

I can imagine you nodding your head as you read this and thinking, that’s not such a bad way to end one’s work day - good food and fine wine three times a week. What’s so bad about that? The qualifying words are “good” and “fine.” Let me explain. In the United States, if you visit the western region, you could get served prairie oysters, fried pork rinds or blood-rare steak; in the southern region, you could get grits, crawfish, hog maws and snouts, but - you could always decline to partake and no one would be offended if you walk away.

It’s a different matter when you are the representative of the United States overseas. You have no control over what’s on the menu (unless you’re giving the party) and walking away and throwing up on somebody's lap or carpet is not an option. Declining your host’s offer could be viewed as “undiplomatic,” or worse, an insult with possible repercussions to personal and bilateral relations. I do think that a good FSO needs a carbon steel type stomach, especially these days when they are expected to serve in “expeditionary assignments,” wherever that may be.

We can be grateful that we don’t have a U.S. Mission in Sardinia; at least we don’t have to politely decline an offer of casu marzu (aka: maggot cheese). But here are a few interesting offerings: pacha (sheep’s head with eyeballs), haggis (stuffed sheep's stomach), crispy grasshoppers, fried scorpions, yak meat, blood pudding, and roast pigeon brains. And least I forget - for drinks, there’s tea with yak butter, kumiss (fermented mare's milk), kvass (beer-like beverage made by fermenting old bread in water), and palm wine (created from sap of various palm trees) to name a few.

No, I'm not doing a cheese and whine here. This is just something to consider the next time you hear about the “cookie-pushers living cushy lives” - it’s not always as easy as it looks; and it’s not always as fun as its sounds.

Developing Strategic Leaders for the 21st Century: The Foreign Service

A couple of months ago, Jeffrey McClausland published a Strategic Studies Institute publication (funded by the U.S. War College) entitled Developing Strategic Leaders for the 21^st Century. He makes the case that our “new security environment requires better qualified civilian leaders to think in different patterns in order to accomplished daunting tasks.” He further writes that, “If America is to meet the multiple challenges of the 21^st century, it is crucial that we developed a system that places the right people in the right places in government at the right moment. The nation critically needs civilian policymakers who can manage change and deal with the here and now.”

The development of our people must include, according to this study, “the recruitment of quality personnel, experiential learning through a series of positions of increasing responsibility, training for specific tasks or missions, and continuous education that considers both policy and process. Consequently, it requires people who are not only substantively qualified and knowledgeable regarding policy issues but also possess the leadership abilities to direct large complex organizations.”

McClausland’s study provides a historical overview of the recruitment, retention and staff development in the last twenty years and examines the three primary agencies in the crafting of foreign and defense policies: the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. The study then outlines required changes to existing personnel management systems and development programs for all three agencies. I listed below McClausland’s eight recommended changes relevant to the Foreign Service but encourage you to read the entire report. You can find the summary and the link to the full document in my Thought Forum List under State: Future Challenges.

-» First, a successful Foreign Service requires officers who are consistently building new knowledge and skills. The State Department requires a 10-15 percent increase in personnel to allow for that proportion of the overall service to be in training or education at any given moment. This number must be rigorously fenced off solely for these purposes to allow for adequate training and development. Failure to do so will result in personnel being simply absorbed into ongoing operational efforts.

-» Second, expanding requirements and the pressing need to maintain a surge capacity require more flexibility for admission to the Foreign Service. Horizontal entry and exit should be considered whereby those with a particular background or linguistic skill could enter laterally at grades far above entry level. Furthermore, greater allowances should be made for career FSOs to take a leave of absence for personal reasons and subsequently return to duty.

-» Third, any use of “blindfolding” for selection to the Foreign Service should be ended, and overall recruiting practices reviewed.

-» Fourth, the Alternative Examination Program should be broadened to include those in the military (both active and reserve) or who complete graduate degrees in areas of particular need.

-» Fifth, control of the FSI should be passed from the Undersecretary of Management and placed directly under the Deputy Secretary. This shift would give FSI greater prominence, underscore the importance of FSO development, and allow the department leadership to better control course offerings and selection policies.

-» Sixth, opportunities for development assignments at think tanks, congressional staffs, military war colleges, etc., should be actively sought as part the department’s overall development programs.

-» Seventh, critical problems exist with respect to pay, allowances, and retirements. FSOs serving in Iraq and Afghanistan pay taxes while serving abroad, unlike uniformed military, and effectively take a pay cut during these assignments. Foreign Service retirement is capped, and, unlike the military or other government agencies, State Department retirees cannot accept another government position without forfeiting a significant portion of their retirement pay. These compensation issues must be addressed.

-» Finally, the Hart-Rudman Commission made one final internal recommendation for the State Department in 2001 that still deserves consideration. The report recommended changing the Foreign Service’s name to the United States Diplomatic Corps. Some might argue that this is superficial rhetoric mongering, but it could have a significantly beneficial impact. It would serve as a reminder that this group of people do not serve foreign interests but are rather central to U.S. national security. Such a change would further rationalize the value of diverse assignments in regional bureaus, abroad in an embassy, and in the functional components of the organization. This change might help to better depict a career pattern for young people considering diplomatic service as a possible profession. Finally, it would also serve to emphasize that the traditional mission of the State Department to provide national representation abroad has dramatically changed, as revealed in the recent report The Embassy of the Future. This report observes that diplomats of the future will need traits and skills that are different from those of diplomats a decade ago and even those hired today. A change in organizational culture is required, as the “new diplomat must be an active force in advancing U.S. interests, not just a gatherer and transmitter of information.”

A note on the author: Jeffrey McClausland graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1972 and was commissioned in field artillery. He is also a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. He holds both a Masters and Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. He was appointed Visiting Professor of International Law and Diplomacy at the Penn State Dickinson School of Law in January 2007.

I think these recommendations deserve real consideration. Funding will always be an issue, of course, but Congress must realize sooner or later that we usually get what we pay for (just as long as they won't scream their heads off when thing fall apart in the international arena). I do think that the State leadership and the WH must do more to get the needed resources for our country's arm in "soft power" (with 273 days left in office, I doubt anything would happen, but one can dream). The fact is - we can globally reposition the "red-headed stepchild" all we want, but that's not going to be enough nor would it make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things.

Transforming the Foreign Service into an effective diplomatic service prepared for the challenges of the new century does not come cheap; the strategy of shuffling human and fiscal resources to keep the tab down is not going to work because well, it's like a ship, you see - you can't save it, much less transform it, if you only plug the leak in one place but not the leaks in the rest of the vessel. By the time you get to pick a new color, a new engine or a new captain, that ship would be long under water.

Xobni: The Smarter Inbox

Xobni is a Microsoft Outlook plug-in that makes Outlook, well, smart. For now it only works in Outlook and the Pine email client. But having used it for a couple of months now, I can't imagine going back to basic Outlook without it. And I can't wait until they roll out the plug ins for the popular web-based email service. The first time you run Xobni after installation, it takes a while to configure itself, and then ta-dah, you just get bowled over. It shows up as a third window in your inbox, to the farthest right of your screen (the version I downloaded actually had an organize tab which I really like, but the developers decided to take that away with the later versions). The Xobni box is divided into sender's info, sender's network, conversations and files exchanged. In the sender's info, you get a quick snap shot of the sender's rank in relation to your other senders, number of emails received, phone number and links to schedule time or email to sender. If you have ever exchanged email with somebody that also had the Secretary's email address, her email info would show up in the sender's network. No more hunting for that specific email that contained so and so's email address. The Conversations section tracks email similar to threading and includes people and files exchanged in the conversation. You navigate with forward and backward arrows but need not have to exit the page. The Files Exchange section tracks all the documents and files you swapped with email senders. The Xobni plug-in includes lightning fast email search (better than the native Outlook search), email analytics, ability to navigate inbox by people, quick attachment discovery, threaded conversations and extraction of phone numbers from emails. All true and works great, except for the phone extraction that still needs refining, I think. I see this as an effective productivity tool for FS employees especially as they keep up with contacts at home and abroad and keep track of numerous files exchanged within the organization. Imagine the work hours saved digging up your inbox trying to find that specific email from the Front Office; I'm not joking. But as you already know, we just cannot download plug-ins into work computers no matter how useful or intelligent they might be. So until IRM discovers this for organization-wide use, you just have to make do with this in your home computer for now. (Note: if you have not tried the home purchase program, now is the time to do it. The Microsoft Enterprise package cost only $19.95 under this program and it includes the main Office applications (check with your IPC folks on how to order). For FS bloggers: Word 2007 (included in the Enterprise pack) has a nifty option for composing your post in Word and publishing it directly to your blog account). Xobni is a San Francisco based startup that is revolutionizing the way we manage our email relationships (or that's what they say:-). According to its website, the name Xobni, which is the word "inbox" spelled backwards, is an affirmation of their mission: to "take back" the email inbox for their users. I'd say they're succeeding from my perspective, they just have not reached the "sticky" stage yet. The company is still in private beta but Bill Gates is apparently a fan and the company is rumored to be in talks with Microsoft. So better get your copy before it gets re-invented in Redmond. To get a beta invitation you can sign up directly here or get a priority invite here. Once you have Xobni, you also get 5 extra invites to spread email happiness around. Have fun!

Update: As of May 5th, Xobni has concluded its private beta and has now opened its doors to the general public. Click here to download your copy. Enjoy!

Sexing up the 360° Feedback

Anonymous FSO over at The Way I See Things recently posted Knowing Who You Worked With and writes that: “Supposedly all DCMs and CGs now have 360 reviews done of them before they're hired. But the candidate selects his reviewers, and the results are, of course, never made public.”

I think the 360° feedback has indeed become a rolling buzzword in Foggy Bottom and mission corridors. One of the bureau bees told me not too long ago that State takes very seriously the leadership qualities of its senior officers, most particularly those going to larger posts. As proof of this, she added, the bureau now routinely requires 360° feedback for all their DCM candidates (I have not heard that one about the CGs). Anecdotal evidence also shows that some posts are requesting “360° feedback” when bidding on some section chiefs positions. I must admit that I am not sure how much of the 360°s going on right now are done formally through FSI’s Leadership and Management School or HR but I have seen one-page documents that some posts are using as 360° questionnaires (apparently with questions excerpted from the guidance cable).

As much as I’m happy to see efforts invested in matching senior jobs with the right candidates, I have to say that this makes me feel like we’re flying on the seat of our pants. This is “corridor reputation” in Word documents – except that candidates, now get to pick which corridor you can walk into and which part of their reputation you can listen to. To me, the 360° feedback gives us two certainties: 1) that the top bird had at least 6-8 birds in the world who liked him/her and, 2) the “top bird is a jerk syndrome” had not been systematically ruled out because of #1. (Note: this image was forwarded to me and I could not locate the name of cartoonist; please tell me if you know).

I have very strong reservations about the use of the 360° feedback for purposes other than developmental. The main goal of the 360-degree process -- where you "go around" employees, asking supervisors, direct reports, peers and clients about their performance, is to raise the employees’ awareness of how they impact others and act as a catalyst for their change in behavior. Margaret Kubicek in Training Magazine also writes that:

“To have any genuine value or meaningful impact, 360-degree feedback must be far more than a standalone activity. It should involve managing the individual's expectations, aligning questionnaires to competency frameworks, setting goals to integrate the exercise into personal development plans and providing feedback from trained facilitators.”

Using the 360° feedback for evaluative purposes especially when a candidate’s next job is on the line can easily transform this useful learning tool into an inflated, useless material with real consequences for operational effectiveness. Inflated? Nah!! Below is my list of how to sexed up the 360° feedback:

A• Include people from my inner circle who can throw in harmless comments; this is needed to make feedback sound credible (e.g. “She works too darn hard for her own good at times.”)

B• Include people with whom I have excellent, solid relationships (no invites to ex-spouses or ex-bffs or those I head-banged with)

C• Include only those with excellent and effective communication skills who fits A & B

D• Include my junior protégées who thinks I’m Mother Teresa

E• Exclude peers who might be “borderline” raters; if I don’t know what you really think of me, you don’t make the list

F• Exclude FSN direct reports; if you have less than perfect English, you don’t make the list (see rule C)

Oops, pardon me - I think my cynical slip is showing here. But really, is it not that all you need is a carefully cultivated set of individuals, spread across the relevant rate groups, that you can then call on during the bid-time crunch?

I do realize that allowing employees to select their own raters increases the chance that the employees would internalize the feedback received and craft appropriate development plans. But since this is being used as a “placement” tool, allowing employees to select their own raters instead of randomizing raters from a larger pool almost certainly ensures that the Bureau only hears the upsides and almost none of the downsides of working with Mr. CG-to be or Ms. DCM-to be. My understanding is that in addition to the names that bidders propose as raters, the Bureaus can also ask additional individuals to provide reference input – the question is how often is that really done?

I think it is important that Bureaus have a good perspective of the bidders/candidates' people and leadership skills prior to sending them off to more responsible jobs. However, if State must use the 360 as a "review" or "reference" tool, it should refine the process as follows:

-» Randomize the rating pool to include the largest number of raters possible: the 6-8 raters should not be handpicked by the candidate. It is safe to assume that one can find 6-8 souls who would say Candidate X is fabulous even when Candidate X is a lousy boss. I do not have any argument with the number of raters required, more than eight feedback would probably be too much to handle; I just would like to see that the eight comes randomly selected from a realistic pool instead of a shallow tide pool.

-» Couple the “360” with the “lobby info” – almost all the individuals who have been lobbied to speak on behalf of the candidates are already positively inclined towards the candidates, or they won’t come calling, so balance this info with the randomized feedback to get a better view of each candidate.

-» Every candidate not selected for the job should be strongly advised to start a development plan (with assistance from a trained facilitator or coach from FSI’s LMS). For every CG or DCM or Section Chief successfully assigned, there are others waiting in the wings. Those afflicted with "micromanagetitis" or ailing as “screamers,” should get a chance to improve themselves under competent guidance. I heard that unsuccessful bidders get their feedback from their CDOs (Career Development Officers) but unless CDOs have the specialized skills to assist these candidates, this part of the process is not going to contribute to any sustained momentum for development.

Brian Murphy writing for the Training Journal says that the 360-degree feedback as a tool harbors inherent dangers, particularly if the appropriate guidance and interventions are not readily available. I fully agree and that's why it's necessary in my view not only to have competent facilitators for this but to also to ensure that raters know how to provide effective feedback. Finally, I think Murphy provides wise insight when he writes, “The gathering of feedback data is simply the starting point in the development cycle. Raised awareness in isolation rarely leads to changed behavior."

Murphy's Law in Action

If anything can go wrong, it will. I've just switched to a new ISP today because the old one was bad for my self-esteem. Every time my connection goes down, I am told the problem is at my end. No, they don't actually utter the word "operator error," they just get cranky and says: "Well, everything is fine from our end, the problem must be on your side." It happens all the time, I kid you not. I am guessing that it's probably a line item in their tech support guide. Anyway, if the page is displaying oddly on your screen or if it's taking forever to download despite the refresh button, I would appreciate it if you can send me an email. I particularly seems to be having problem with my various feeds. Update: Pesky issues after switching ISP finally resolved; had to do with my outdated firmware that needed updating. All is well again in paradise :-)

Compulsory Iraq Duty - Rehashed News

I don't know why this is making headlines again. The threat of directed assignment to Iraq is not news; it happened last year and will continue to happen in 2010, 2011, 2012 and on and on regardless of who wins the White House in November. The mainstream media might as well put that in their news now, it'll save them ink and paper and online page in the foreseeable future. Consider the following for the next Jeopardy round: =>Our diplomats staff 260 embassies and consulates worldwide. Two-thirds are at posts categorized as “hardship” due to difficult living conditions including violent crime, extreme health risks or terrorist threats (e.g. Sana'a). =>The Foreign Service has 11,500 members; that is is less than one-half of 1 percent the size of the U.S. military. Only a small fraction of this number is trained as Arabic speakers or in reconstruction. Why? Because the FS was trained and prepared for engagement with the entire world not one specific area of the globe. =>The average U.S. embassy has only 79 percent of its authorized staffing; recent reports show a 1,015-position shortfall in the Foreign Service, plus an additional 1,079-position deficit in training and related staffing needs (can't send people to Arabic language training while they are also working in Anbar Province). =>Iraq is the largest U.S. Embassy in the world; short of shuttering 1/3 of this humongous building, we need people there; the place needs to be rightsized, IMHO, but that's not going to happen tomorrow. =>Over 2,000 FSOs have already volunteered for duty in Iraq, despite the fact that they are also working in close to 180 hardship locations worldwide. It's all in the numbers. Sooner or later this volunteer well would dry up, not because people refuses to go to Iraq but because we would run out of qualified people to send. The news should not be that the FS is under threat of compulsory assignment to Iraq (FSOs know they signed up for worldwide assignment). The real news is when we start compulsory assignment for employees who have already gone to Iraq to return there for their 2nd, 3rd, or nth tour in the future. That will break the Service that I love, irreparably - and that'll be news.

In Defense of Ryan Crocker

The number #1 most emailed article from the New York Times today is a blog entry by Dick Cavett posted three days ago entitled: “Memo to Petraeus & Crocker: More Laughs, Please.” Cavett writes in part:

“Back to poor Crocker. His brows are knitted. And he has a perpetually alarmed expression, as if, perhaps, he feels something crawling up his leg. Could it be he is being overtaken by the thought that an honorable career has been besmirched by his obediently doing the dirty work of the tinpot Genghis Khan of Crawford, Texas?”

I’ve never worked for Ambassador Crocker, nor have I ever meet the man but I take exception with the preceding comment because it shows an ignorance of what Foreign Service officers do in the service of this country. In 1983, François de Laboulaye and Jean Laloy had this to say about dissent and ambassadors (I’m quoting here from Charles Freeman, Jr.’s Diplomat’s Dictionary):

“There are strict limits, dictated by common sense and the realities of the situation, to how far an ambassador can go in opposing a position of his own government. If a compromise is not possible and once the final decision has been made, he must of course loyally and scrupulously implement it even if it goes against what he had recommended. But until the final decision is made an ambassador owes his government the frankest and most unvarnished advice.”

Whatever you might think of the “tinpot Genghis Khan of Crawford, Texas,” or how he got here, he is the elected president of this country. And whether you personally know Ambassador Crocker or not, you should know that all Foreign Service personnel like the Ambassador, not only must agree to worldwide availability -- that is, they may be called on to serve anywhere in the world, they must also agree to publicly support the policies of the United States Government regardless of their personal sentiments. That’s right! You’ve got to do the job even if you don’t agree with Uncle Sam.

And if you disagree with our Government’s policy, you have two options: 1) you use what is called the “Dissent Channel,” a serious policy channel reserved only for consideration of responsible dissenting and alternative views on substantive foreign policy issues (you can read more about that here) or 2) you quit and walk away (like what Brady Kiesling and two other officers did).

Sometime in 2002, prior to the Iraq invasion, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell reportedly tasked Ryan Crocker and Assistant Secretary of State William Burns with exploring the risks of military intervention. That resulted in the now famous six-page memo they entitled "The Perfect Storm," which, and I quote from WP’s Robin Wright, “bluntly predicted that toppling Hussein could unleash long-repressed sectarian and ethnic tensions, that the Sunni minority would not easily relinquish power, and that powerful neighbors such as Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia would try to move in to influence events. It also cautioned that the United States would have to start from scratch building a political and economic system because Iraq's infrastructure was in tatters (you can read the entire article here).”

I would argue that Ambassador Crocker had given his “frankest and most unvarnished advice” in 2002, and I think it would be unjust to fault him now for doing the best he could in what Mr. Cavett calls “dirty work.” Somebody’s gotta do this “dirty work,” and frankly, we’re better off having a professional on the ground who speaks the language, and understands the region than one who doesn't.

A Newsweek Exclusive asks: “No American diplomat seems better qualified than Ryan Crocker to turn Iraq around-but can he do it?” Honestly, I don’t know the answer to that question, but I do know this -- Ambassador Crocker deserves our respect for doing the difficult job he was tasked to do, not the public's scorn.

Bread and Butter Diplomacy

If you are in the AFSA listserve, you have already seen John Naland’s Straight Talk on Staffing and Resources. If you have not yet seen it, you can read it here. This latest update laments the bleak budget for this year and states in part:

“Not only does the FY08 budget leave State unable to create any of the 254 new Foreign Service positions that the President requested this year, but it cannot fund all existing operations at current levels (excluding Embassy Iraq which is funded mostly by supplemental appropriations). The inadequate FY08 budget follows disappointing FY07 and FY06 budgets which also failed to fund requested staffing increases (outside of consular and diplomatic security). These Congressional refusals came despite sharply increasing Foreign Service staffing needs in Iraq, Afghanistan, hard language training, and other emerging priority areas.”

How did it come to this? State's relations with Congress dates back to the Continental Congress. A bit of a historical perspective here from U.S. Diplomacy: “In 1775 Congress established the Committee of Secret Correspondence (later named the Committee for Foreign Affairs), which among other actions appointed Benjamin Franklin as Commissioner to France. In 1781 that committee ceased being a part of Congress and was established as a separate executive entity called the Department of Foreign Affairs. In 1789 it was renamed the Department of State. Reflecting the high status enjoyed by the Department, Congress in its Presidential Succession Act of 1792 placed the Secretary of State fourth in the line of succession, ahead of all other cabinet secretaries.”

So how did it come to be that we’re so stripped to the bone these days -- not only do we have a huge staffing problem (19% vacancies in both domestic and overseas operations), in some U.S. missions, we walk down dimly lit corridors because we can’t afford to pay normal electric consumption in our offices, we slash down local employees’ benefits, we eliminate overtime, EFM jobs and more -- there are even talks of furloughs and shortened work weeks, etc. and we better not have anything break, because frankly, there’s no money for repairs or anything else. How did we come down so low in Congress’ estimation that it can afford to let us operate in this manner?

It is true that the Foreign Service is a small organization. We have about 11,500 people with 6,500 commissioned officers (e.g. consular officers, political officers) and 5,000 support staff (like HR officers, IT, financial officers). DOD apparently has more full colonels/Navy captains and more band members than the State Department has diplomats according to Michael Cotter.

It is also true that we do not have a natural constituency and with all politics being local, we’d be lucky if we even appear as a blip in congressional screens beyond the committees where we are considered somewhat relevant.

But what is also true is the fact that we have so poorly managed our relationships with Congress, we have no cushion to fall back on. With perhaps the exception of Secretary Powell’s tenure, we have missed many opportunities to get Congress on our side and to help them understand how we work. As one mid-level Democratic House aide said:

“The military has realized a little bit better where their bread is buttered. They work with us; they talk to us. State Department is really an entity unto itself. It' s a different culture and they live in that world.”

Another mid-level Senate aide had this to say:

“(State) doesn't explain itself very well, and it doesn't spend a lot of time talking to the Hill. In fact, in my experience, we have a devil of a time just getting State Department folks to come up and talk on the record. And then when we do get them, we have this legislative shop person in the middle, making sure they don't say anything out of the box.”

Overseas, we tend to send our most junior officers to work in Congressional delegation visits. I remember one time when we sent one junior officer who arrived at post a week earlier, to be control officer. Heck, he could barely find his way around the Chancery. This should not be a “find a warm body” exercise because, y’see, we pay the price for it. In fact, FSI, if it does not yet have one, should have a training module for all entry level folks on how to further congressional relations and supporting congressional visits as well as a refresher training on the same subject for all mid-level and SFS employees.

Here’s an excerpt from a congressional staffer’s vignette:

“The next morning our control officer arrived. He turned out to be an innocent young third secretary on his first assignment abroad. He had never before been assigned to a CODEL and was substituting for the administrative officer, who allegedly had a scheduling conflict…”

Sounds familiar? If I were that congressional staffer, I probably would not have a very positive memory of that encounter either. But more importantly, by sending a junior officer to attend to these visitors, an experienced officer missed a real chance to engage them in our turf and missed an opportunity to help them understand our many challenges in operating overseas. Here is a paper written by Thomas Melia on Congressional Staff Attitudes Toward the Department of State and FSOs. This should be required reading for everyone at State because it gives us a window from which to see ourselves -- from the perspectives of folks who wield great influence over our bread and butter issues (and consequently over how we live and operate at home and overseas). I think we forget at times that visitors in congressional or staff delegations represents a core block of our stakeholders and mishandling or ignoring them can come back to bite us. Not in big chomps enough to disable usually, but in nips and snips over a long period with consequences that we see playing out now.

I don't want to sound pedantic but I think it also bears repeating that building organizational relationships is as much about the people as it is about the work. This should be the first tenet in bread and butter diplomacy. The Hill like State has a long memory; it gets rebooted every few years or so (perhaps a bit differently from how we reboot ourselves) but even with politics being what it is, nobody goes away forever here. In cyberspace, a basic rule says it simply: Remember the human. Real life is not altogether different. 

Staffing the Foreign Service - Part II

This is a follow-up post to the Foreign Service staffing piece I did previously here. I'm just thinking that even if State obtains funding for 700 positions requested under FY09 or 3500 positions to address the cumulative staffing deficit, the fact remains that we cannot leapfrog these new officers from FS-06 to the mid-level ranks (FS-03-FS-01) overnight. Training them and allowing them to build experience takes time. And the world is not going to pause for us while we do all these things. So what can be done in the meantime? Here are a couple of ideas to chew on …

# Allow Officers to Identify Secondary Cones

Foreign Service Officers have to select a “cone” or career track upon joining the State Department. There are five tracks in the Foreign Service: political, economic, public diplomacy, consular and management. Officers who serve out of cone can sometimes see their careers suffer in terms of promotion potential. With the midlevel staffing deficit, we see consular managers overseeing whole sections populated by entry level officers and few mid-career peers in between. We see management officers who become the default HR and Financial Management officers in our embassies and consulates. Although I have seen consular and management coned officers managed budget and projects as a matter of course, you don’t see a lot of that among political and economic officers, the tracks that are more reporting and policy driven.

One DCM told me that his managerial experience prior to becoming number #2 at a U.S. mission was 15 years earlier when he was a junior officer supervising local employees at a Consular Section and one prior post where he was political counselor directly supervising his deputy. I’m not saying that folks who came up the ranks like this could not do the job, but I’m saying that the learning curve is pretty steep when you leap from supervising a small office to supervising section chiefs and managing interagency issues.

If there is one thing this past decade has taught us, it is that we are more interconnected than ever before; the world’s walls and borders continue to fall down demanding from us all a new way of seeing and doing things. To limit the real possibility of developing “conal specialists,” I think it is time for State to give officers the option of selecting a secondary cone that would complement each primary career track (e.g. Political officer with PD as secondary cone, or a Management officer with Political as secondary cone).

This strategy would address several things:

1) to mitigate midlevel staffing deficit in the foreseeable future by allowing the sharing of the staffing burden across cones 2) enable officers to gain needed skills and experience necessary for functioning effectively at the next step in their careers 3) help break down the barrier between cones and minimize stovepiping

#Obtain Temporary Hiring Authority

State should also work with Congress to obtain temporary hiring authority to intake mid-level personnel (I suspect that AFSA may not like this). Anyway, the Federal Times reported last month that in 2005, 33 percent of the government’s new hires were for jobs that ranged from GS-12 to GS-15; that compares with 25 percent in 1990. The Defense Department alone hired 47 percent of the new upper-level employees in fiscal 2005. The report cited six other agencies — "the Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, Agriculture and Treasury departments and the Social Security Administration — accounted for another 33 percent of the new upper-level hires that year." I’m sure somebody would disagree with this - but there is no reason why a retired military colonel has to start as an FS-5 when entering the FS or why a candidate with substantial international experience and a ready language capability should come in as a junior officer.

Yes, I realized that we need to staff those ever growing Consular Sections, but we don’t use mid-level officers for visa interviews normally, so this should not even be an argument. Unless the argument is based more on organizational culture and the notion that everyone must “pay their dues.”

Non-fed employees with experience in mid-level management can fill the gaps in our staffing deficit now, while we are “growing” the next crop of diplomats. State could identify the needed skills across the mid-level jobs, then hire with those skills in mind for an excepted appointment in the FS. People with outside experience are used to being managed by the results and the bottom line. And new blood - by virtue of being newcomers also have the gumption of saying ‘Here’s another way to do this...,’ of looking at things in a different light. With budget funds shrinking more than ever, and workloads going off the roof, we need to reinvent our systems now; now, before an external force reinvents it for us.

Of course change, any change, by its nature is a gain/loss proposition. Stephen Barr recently wrote about the trouble brewing at the Marshals Service which "demonstrates the ill feelings that can develop in federal agencies when officials change hiring and promotion practices to fill gaps in staffing or meet the demands of increased workloads." A cautionary tale for sure, but I don't think we have a lot of good choices left in our case.

Meeting the Deployment Challenge in the Foreign Service

I just read FSO Marjorie Phillips' piece on meeting the deployment challenge in the Foreign Service. The paper was written last year as a strategy research project for the U.S. Army War College and talks about the challenges of FS staffing in this era of stabilization and reconstruction.

She writes that "the current administration has designated the Department of State as the lead agency in coordinating U.S. government efforts in stabilization and reconstruction. In order to complete this mission, the Department will need to deploy personnel into areas of severe hardship and potential military conflict, as we do today in our embassies and provincial reconstruction teams in Iraq and Afghanistan. In order to fill the jobs in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Department has put in place some compensation, promotion and assignment incentives. Still, it remains a struggle, both in hardship and non-hardship posts, to fill the positions with qualified personnel."

In the later part of her piece she emphasized that "no number of incentives will change the fact that the Department is not resourced to meet the current global staffing requirements. The problem is not that Foreign Service officers are not willing to accept challenging assignments, rather that there simply are not enough Foreign Service officers to do the jobs. Furthermore, the increasing recognition of the role of the State Department in reconstruction and stabilization requires an additional number of Department personnel be available for immediate deployment on these assignments. If the worldwide patterns of instability continue, and all indications are that they will, it is critical that the State Department be equipped to fill its positions."

The paper is brief (about 20 pages) and I wished the 12 suggestions included were more fully delineated. Still, I think this piece helps a bit more in understanding the resource requirement and funding realities that has hounded the State Department for many years now.

Ms. Phillips was most recently overseas as Management Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait (2006) , and was to assume the position as State Department Administrative Liaison to the CIA in June of last year. If you want to read the entire paper, click the link below; the document is hosted online in pdf format by the Defense Technical Information Center:

Foreign Service: Meeting the Deployment Challenge Marjorie Phillips (2007)

Staffing the Foreign Service

A recent Federal Times report indicates that State has about 3,000 mid career Foreign Service generalist officers — grades FS-03 to FS-01 — and needs about 3,800. The Department is reportedly asking Congress for enough money to hire about 700 Foreign Service officers in fiscal year 2009. That’s not even a quarter of our cumulative staffing deficit but hey, there must be a good reason for a good round number like that – let’s see:

A) 700 is the Secretary’s favorite number

B) 700 is the reverse of Bond 007 (our expeditionary force, get it?)

C) 700 from Remington Model 700 – the Foreign Service version

D) 700 is the max word for the Meaning of Life

E) All of the above

But seriously -- the same report quoted Linda Taglialatela, State’s deputy assistant secretary for human resources as saying that, “About 19 percent of Foreign Service employees today are “stretching” to do jobs above their pay grade […] and that “When State relies on employees working above their pay grades, embassies and consulates aren’t running at peak efficiency. Most of them are very bright and capable, and they can do 70 percent of the job,” Taglialatela said. “But they need more supervision, they need more time, more direction; and they can’t hit the ground running like a more senior person would be able to.” Amen to that (when the stretch assignment works, it's fantastic; but when it does not work, it's a train wreck with the next person having to deal with morale issues and the % of the job that did not get done).

So from decades of underfunding and downsizing, here is the law of unintended consequences playing out now. Even if Congress approves the FY09 funding request, this is not going to ease the pain in Foreign Service posts worldwide in the immediate future. Writing for the Foreign Service Journal, FSO Mark Johnsen in One Hand Clapping: The Sound of Staffing the Foreign Service writes:

Developing a trained, professional force takes time — an average of 10 years of experience and training to reach mid-level proficiency. Even if the hiring of entry-level officers were doubled or tripled tomorrow, it will take as long as it takes the average Foreign Service officer to advance to senior ranks —between 20 and 30 years — to raise staffing by a third at all levels of the Foreign Service.

This is clear as night and day, even if we’re going to start hiring fast and furious, tomorrow, the mid-career staffing deficit is not going away very soon. Which means – we’ll see more mid-level Foreign Service officers holding, no - juggling the demands of 2-3 other jobs at a given post. The result is either we’ll have a spike in officer burnout or things are going to fall into the cracks. This is just not sustainable.

Mark Johnsen writes that the "actual shortfall for Foreign Service staffing was not 700 positions — the number commonly accepted at the time as the deficit and the target for the subsequent Diplomatic Readiness Initiative. Because of the additional, cumulative deficits that were never addressed... it was actually more like 2,000 to 3,500 positions." Although I must admit that 700 is better than 0, in the whole system scheme of things, I'm not sure how much of an impact this would have to our diplomatic readiness in the 21^st century.

Almost with certainty, 2019 would be a more challenging time than where we are now. Ten years from now, there will be approximately 7.5 billion people in the world. The countries with the highest population growth rate are either in the Middle East or are listed as developing nations. Robert Kaplan writing for the Atlantic Monthly describes our "map of the future:"

"a cartography in three dimensions... [with] overlapping sediments of group and other identities atop the merely two-dimensional color markings of city-states and the remaining nations, themselves confused in places by shadowy tentacles, hovering overhead, indicating the power of drug cartels, mafias, and private security agencies. Instead of borders, there would be moving "centers" of power, as in the Middle Ages. ...To this protean cartographic hologram one must add other factors, such as migrations of populations, explosions of birth rates, vectors of disease. Henceforward the map of the world will never be static. This future map—in a sense, the "Last Map"—will be an ever-mutating representation of chaos."

He wrote this in 1994; we'd be hard pressed not to recognize that this is where we are living now. Imagine then years from now, with all this and the reality of diminishing resources hitting us. More than ever, now and in the future, we need seasoned diplomats who knows how to negotiate, engage, influence and build partnerships in this interconnected, chaotic world; because as long as they are working, the guns will be silent, and the world in a perpetual war would not be a sitting in our doorsteps.

So, I would hazard a prediction that the 7th Floor must already know but Congress may not: Unless the Foreign Service is funded fully now to address the cumulative staffing deficits we currently have, transformational diplomacy would be nothing more than a footnote in the history books and we'd be ill-equipped to confront the challenges of our future map.