What are your thoughts on the Army Promotion System?

SFC Keith, timely post and you have some great points.

As far as the boards not selecting the right qualified people, it is my experience that a person with some bias makes this statement - personally I expected to see a sequence number by a few other NCOs on the list, bias exists in all of us however, I do believe we have a fair system and the right people are selected (only a few were privileged to be part of this board and saw all the records.) 

As far as excellence bullets, you can't go wrong with using a bullet that is measurable against a standard (e.g. a justified excellence bullet: all 9 Soldiers in his squad scored a 300 on record APFT).  Every senior enlisted leader has their own idea of the difference between a success and an excellence however, it is not that leader that will decide whether the NCO meets the cut for promotion, so my advice is to make it measurable against a standard and be as quantifiable as possible.

I often see Leadership bullets drifting into competence and training, I expect we will all see more of this in the future with the mandated SHARP bullets in the Leadership area soon.  It's very important that we keep on top of all these changes - and understand we will have a new NCOER within the next 18 months, it's coming - trust me.

Civilian education continues to be very important and is a discriminator showing who continues to self-improve.  Basically, it shows who is being stagnant and who continues to improve.  With some of our more technically skilled MOSs, there are technical certifications that can (and will) set our NCOs apart from one another.  And finally, a huge discriminator to set yourself apart (and more competitive) than your peers is to take the challenge to attend and become a member of those clubs like the Sergeant Audie Murphy Club or Sergeant Morales Club.  Special duty assignments (especially Drill Sergeant, recruiter and AIT Platoon Sergeant) helps as well.

I encourage you to get as many eyes on the report as possible, get it in front of the CSM before the rated NCO signs the report - constructive criticism is only valuable if you use it to make yourself and those around you better.

That has always being a touchy subject for me.

I have seeing an NCO get all excellences in his NCOER and he couldn't get to work on time once in over a year.

There is nobody that good.

That being said, the NCOER, according to my humble opinion, is the reflection of the rater. It is their opinion, and as such, right or wrong should be respected.

It is the job of the Senior Rater to point out whether they agree or not and why.

What irks me is when you are told to write your own NCOER. Got it, some raters cannot write. But, with the exception of fixing obvious grammatical and orthographic mistakes, you cannot tell me what my opinion of my NCO's should be. You can show me possible evidence, but, unless the evidence is overwhelming, my NCOER's stand.

Regarding the board, after 27 years active, I have no clue what they are looking for, and it changes from board to board. It is hard to hit a moving target.