Improving the Quality of Junior Commissioned Officers (Warrant Officers) in Combat Units

Here is a short post from an assignment that I recently submitted at MIT, looking at a real issue using System Dynamics. This post has been modified to cater to a diverse audience and is more of a statement of the problem. Hence JCOs are called Warrant Officers, and NCOs ranks have been given a more common nomenclature 

Background Indian Army units are organized so that soldiers and NCOs that join a combat unit on being recruited also retire from the same unit. That is, they serve most of their military career among the same 600 to 800 people. Senior NCOs (Sergeants) get promoted to a junior warrant officer rank, which has three levels that they can progressively achieve based on merit and seniority. Promotions that override seniority, based on merit alone are not popular, since relative standing is determined by seniority for the first half of a soldier’s career spanning almost ten years, upto the rank of Naik (Corporal). Officers commanding the soldiers are incentivized to train their soldiers well, and training levels are quantified by individual tests that soldiers and NCOs need to pass so they are eligible for promotion. Commanding Officers tend to play with testing standards, so that a higher percentage of soldiers and NCOs under their command quantitatively appear to be better trained, in turn improving their own ratings as leaders. Troops are in turn complacent and are not motivated enough to train well, and NCOs do not take initiative to train or lead their subordinates. This situation also results in promotion by seniority for soldiers and NCOs, since everyone is poorly trained but meets the criteria for promotions. As a result, there are no means to differentiate between the competent and incompetent.

Problem Definition Quality of Warrant Officers in Indian Army combat units is poor and needs to be improved to make them more effective in operations.

Qualitative Requirements for Warrant Officers: High quality of technical knowledge (eg. technical gunnery in artillery; telecommunication skills in signals units), skills to lead 30-100 soldiers, physical fitness and highly motivated, ability to handle basic administrative work, and knowledge of regulations.

All NCOs are certified on training and testing requirements for promotion; difficult to differentiate other than on seniority. If all else is same, select the senior most: he has the most experience.Issues with pipeline that feeds current stock of Warrant Officers:

• Officers are incentivized to inflate NCOs test results and performance assessment.
• Long term cultural resistance: Soldiers and NCOs accept promotion by seniority as the norm. 
• NCOs look at merit based promotion as ‘jumping the line’.
• Gaming the system leads to lack of motivation for pipeline: Since vacancies are limited, only some who are senior most in line for the next higher rank will get it. The next few in line will retire after some time in the same rank (because of an up or out with delay policy). As a result soldiers are able to project their own career prospects into the future and lose motivation (If they are senior in their group, they will get promoted and if not, they will retire, whether they work or not).
• As a result, NCOs are promoted on seniority, not merit.
• Short tenures of Commanding Officers of max 3 years - means they try to improve metrics that benefit them: maximize testing and promotion results, even if it is by compromising training standards and appraisals, with an aim to keep the pipeline populated. Any vacant Warrant Officer position at the top of the pipeline is seen as a reflection of poor management skills of the commanding officer, even if it is because of lack of suitable talent to fill up that position.

Here is a causal loop diagram of the situation made using Vensim PLE software:

Causal Loop Diagram: Factors Affecting Quality of Warrant Officers

Red curves indicate an inverse relationship, also shown by the - sign at the arrow head.

From experience, delays are on average 2 to 4 years.

Many other factors could be added to this model, but aim was to keep it simple and address most important factors.

From the diagram it appears that most factors that result in promotion of motivated NCOs include a delay of 2 to 4 years built into the process. This period is beyond the normal tenure of a commanding officer. 

Here is how the process plays out: 

• A CO initiates multiple processes to improve the quality of NCOs. Delays in Objective ACRs that lead to Promotions on Merit mean that motivated NCOs actually start getting promoted around 2 years after he takes over command of the unit, that is towards the end of his command tenure.
• A few good NCOs get promoted, also resulting in a few others getting superseded. This leads to a disturbance in the overall equilibrium in the system. Complaints against promotion policies, problems in functioning in the unit start, since status quo has been disturbed. 
• At the same time, positive effects on Admin and Training will take another two years after the number of motivated Warrant Officers crosses a threshold, when they actually start influencing processes. The overall effectiveness of the unit appears to have reduced. 
• The CO, who is heading towards his last few months of command of the unit has to now justify perceived drop in performance, and disturbance in functioning because of the disgruntled NCOs. Since organization is not geared to this change, the CO's superior officers attribute this situation to poor leadership.
• In most cases, the CO would complete his tenure at this stage, which would not influence his career positively. As a result, most COs would like to play it safe: do not change status quo and continue promoting by seniority or based on subjective parameters; continue to play with testing standards and produce good results in the short term: Everyone is qualified for promotion and meets all requirements.
• What would happen if the next CO continues with the process of objective promotions? The reinforcing loops of training and admin come into play (after a delay). As admin and training standards improve, so does the motivation level of NCOs. Over a 2 to 3 year period of the next COs tenure, the situation will improve and it becomes easier to sustain.

There are many other factors that influence the quality of Warrant Officers, but they are exogenous to this system, so I've not discussed them here.