DRAFT DIRECTOR'S NOTE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01554R003200090015-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: January 4, 2017
• Document Release Date: July 5, 2005
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: October 19, 1979
• Content Type: NOTES

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19 Oct 79
DRAFT DIRECTOR'S NOTE
The Agency has two principal personnel policies:
(1) To provide the right number and quality of personnel
to accomplish our mission.
(2) To provide each employee the satisfaction of utilizing
his or her talents fully and the reward of reasonable promotion
opportunities and other recognitions.
The second policy has erroneously been dubbed "flow through"
(or "flush through"). The opposite of this policy is "stagnation" but
this is a policy of "Reasonable Promotion Opportunity (RPO)." RPO does
not require instability and insecurity.
Why do we need RPO? Without it, we will not obtain and retain the
personnel to meet our first objective of adequately staffing the Agency_
Without it, we cannot be fair to our employees.
How do we achieve RPO? We must avoid the problems of "humps and
valleys" and of "ossification."
When personnel management is not good, and ours has not been, there
are too many people with same grades and skills and, necessarily, too
few in others. For example, 27% of the DDO professionals today are 50
years of age and over and statistically will leave the Agency in the
next three years creating a large void. People just behind such humps
have little promotion opportunity; those behind the accompanying valleys,
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too much. To avoid "ossification" in areas like NFAC analysis and DDS&T
R&D, we need the occasional infusions of new people and new ideas--
enough to avoid the complacency and unwillingness to innovate that
characterize most bureaucracies. Avoiding either humps or ossification
should not require "flush throughs." What is required is: (1) good
personnel planning; (2) One Agency in which there is much more lateral
mobility than now exists. In short, if we identify the humps and valleys
we should be able to move personnel from areas of excess to those of
shortage when normal attrition won't do the job. (Of the DDO personnel
who were asked to leave in the past two years because of the DDO humps,
were placed elsewhere in the Agency.)
Occasionally there may be instances when attrition and transfer are
inadequate to meet the needs of RPO. Only then will forced attrition
be required. It will come from the appraisal of the bottom 3%. Today
we divide the bottom 3% into two categories: (1) those who are asked to
leave because their performance is inadequate; (2) those who are notified
that they are the least competitive but who are performing adequately.
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