TRAINING AND CAREER DEVELOPMENT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP81-00896R000100300013-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 10
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 27, 2001
• Sequence Number: 13
• Publication Date: April 17, 1972
• Content Type: MF

DTR-7403
,A I
MEMORANDUM FOR: Executive Director-Comptroller
THROUGH : Deputy Director for Support
SUBJECT : Training and Career Development
1. Introduction
This paper explores the relationship - past, present. and projected -
between training provided to Agency employees and its contribution both
to organizational effectiveness and the overall development of professional
officers.
By no means definitive and concentrating at this time almost exclu-
sively on those areas in which the Office of Training has been involved
directly, this review underscores the need for greater correlation between
training functions and actual operating responsibilities at all levels of
the organization. But it also indicates that there has, in fact, been a
movement toward increasingly precise use of training by operating com-
ponents to meet immediate job demands as well as to foster longer-term
employee development.
Z. Agency Training - A C> ging Focus
Conceived as a service-or support-oriented function within the Agency,
training for the most part has responded to needs expressed by operating
components.
Through perhaps its first decade and a half, the Agency was expanding.
its employee force was relatively young. Supervisory and managerial
personnel, as well as many officers performing specialized functions.
relied on pre-Agency experience and training in carrying out their
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responsibilities. Consequently, principal training attention was given
to newly arriving employees, introducing therm to the world of intelli-
gence and preparing them for their initial assignments as operations
officers, analysts, support officer, etc.
Such training as was given to experienced officers was geared to
particular job demand and, for the most part, did not pretend to pre-
pare them for broader range responsibilities or even to provide an
expanded perspective within which they performed their specified
tasks. Although a management training capability was developed in
the raid-1950s, as described in our paper on this subject prepared
for you earlier, enrollment in such training was neither extensive
nor on a systematic basis.
A marked break in this pattern occurred in 1963. Recognizing
that junior officers of the 1950s were by then midcareerists and the
likely source of a later generation of senior officers, the Office of
Training introduced the Midcareer Executive Development Program.
This program was twofold. It consisted, first, of a six-week
course designed to "open up" carefully chosen officers in all Directorates
to the totality of Agency missions: and functions; to develop their under-
standing of the role of intelligence in national security and foreign
relations; and to provide them with an appreciation for the policy-
making mechanisms of the government.
The second, longer range phase of the program required that a
five-year career development plan be established for each participating
officer, devised jointly by him and his career service. Such plans
failed to be implemented in too many instances, however, and this
phase subsequently was eliminated. Experience with this facet of
the nsidcareer program would appear to have important implication
for efforts to relate training to career development through use of
sanctions and will be treated later in this paper.
Despite abandonment of the "executive development" aspect of
midcareer training, the Midcareer Course nevertheless remains an
effective vehicle for achieving its initially stated goals. More than
1, 000 officers throughout the Agency have taken this course since its
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inception in 1963; moreover, it was the first of several courses developed
in response to changing needs, conditions, and personnel patterns with-
in the Agency.
Courses which have since been introduced include the Managerial
Grid (1964), taken by more than 2, 000 Agency officers; Chiefs of Station
Seminar (1964); Advanced Management (Planning) (1967). designed to
familiarize officers with the planning, programming and budgeting
process; Advanced Intelligence Seminar (1969); and Advanced Operations
Course (1970). The Senior Seminar, introduced in the fall of 1971, con-
stitutes a still further milestone by recognizing that midcareerists of
the 1960s are emerging as supergrade officers for this decade.
3. Establishing Training Patterns
There are now more than 60 different courses, not including foreign
language training courses, conducted or administered by the Office of
Training for the benefit of professional employees of the Agency. In
contrast to the former emphasis an training incoming junior officers,
these courses are designed to meet the needs of a wide sp. etrum of
professional personnel, depending on component affiliation and functional
duties, experience and grade level, and need for broadened outlook.
Given the number of courses and the multiplicity of purposes they
serve, there is genuine need by managers and supervisors -- as well
as individual officers -- for guidance about training appropriate to
their purposes.
The Office of Training, consequently, has developed a "Profile
of Courses" (see attachment) to provide such guidance. Essentially,
it consists of a central core or ladder of six courses which, in our
opinion, should be an integral part of the successful officer's total
career development. These courses, four of a general nature and
two in the managerial field, are intended to broaden the individual
officer's scope while complementing and enhancing his training and
experience in specialized areas. Cognizant of your own thinking,
we are presently examining ways of incorporating management or
leadership training. ADP orientation, and information sciences and
technology into the core courses as well as into selected other courses.
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It should be emphasized here that each career service, or cer-
tainly each Directorate, ought to have a training profile for its own
officers which would mesh with OTR offerings so that the end result
would be an integrated training outline serving the needs of an israsrsedi-
office as well as broader Agency needs in terms of employee
development.
As a stop toward this end, OTR has now categorized its curricu-
lum in the forthcoming catalog so that officials in the respective
components and career services will be able to select appropriate
courses or training packages more quickly as well as more system-
atically than has been possible heretofore.
Next, we hope to designate. in consultation with appropriate
officials throughout the Agency, training packages or patterns which
would be regarded as standard, though not inflexibly so, for "lists"
officers in selected career services. Included in such packages
would be the entire range of training opportunities available from
OTR, other components. and externally.
4. Criteria fo
Admission to Core Courses
Concurrent with the development of the Profile and categorization
courses, we also are issuing revised descriptions of all OTR courses
in the forthcoming training catalog. The most salient new feature of
these course descriptions io/an enumeration of criteria by which officers
should be selected for enrollment.
In the case of core courses, the criteria relate primarily to age
and grade considerations, to coincide generally with an officer' a
progress and advancement in the Agency. Such criteria also indicate
that selection for these courses, after the initial five years of employ-
ment. should be weighed carefully, taking into account an officer's
formance record and potential for further professional growth.
Except for the Advanced Intelligence Seminar, whose nominees
are screened to assure an across-the-board "mix" among Agency
components, the Office of Training has not presumed to control the
selection of students for its courses. Nor, except in an occasional
case of clearly inappropriate enrollment, have we denied a training
opportunity to an officer whose component insisted on it.
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There have been, and are, instances in which we have stipulated
certain training or experience as prerequisite to a given course. Our
experience with this practice has not been satisfactory, however.
Operating components, especially the Clandestine Service for whom
large part of OTR training is conducted, frequently experience
problems in providing sufficient lead time for training an officer for
a projected assignment. Consequently. requests to waive prerequi-
sites are common and, rather than stand by while an officer proceeds
to an assignment without any appropriate training whatever, OTR
has been liberal in waiving the few prerequisites which have been
established.
Training initiatives and criteria are uneven throughout the Agency,
varying from Directorate to Directorate and from branch to branch.
In some cases, the individual officer acts as his own personnel and
officer by seeking enrollment; in others, a conscious manage
meant decision is made by supervisors; and in still others, an officer
is sent to training until a more definitive use of his time and services
is determined, We are neither empowered, nor sufficiently cog-
nizant of circumstances in every case, to pass judgment on the suit-
ability of a component's training selection practices. The combination
of decentralized personnel management and training's status as a
support activity are, of course, major factors in lack of planning
for training and uniform observance of selection criteria. This
diversity is not without its strong points, however, given the varied
occupational endeavors in any one career service and the opportunity
for individual officers to demonstrate both initiative and motivation
toward training as in other matters.
Training Sanctions
In general, we believe that imposition of training sanctions, insofar
as officer promotion is concerned, is an unwise and impracticable
course of action. A number of serious complications and inequities
would obtain, for example, if there were an Agency-wide stipulation
that officers lacking the Midcareer Course could not be promoted to
GS-14.
First, as presently constituted, the Midcareer Course could not
handle the large numbers of students such a requirement would in-
evitably generate. Currently, there are approximately 1900 Agency
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officers in the CS-13 category and a comparable number at the C5-12
level. These officers constitute the principal population from which
Midcareer Course students are drawn. Against this population, the
ehlee to accommodate 138 officers in PY 1971. rl ag the
&m e period, more than twice this many officers, approximately 295.
six* and duration - and quite probably require the allocation
drastic alteration in the entire character of the Midcareer Course -
mate this experience. imposition of this sanction would necessi-
promoted to GS-14. If promotions projected for the future even
of additional instructional and financial resources as well.
a Midcarcer Course is used exclusively as a vehicle
for executive development, functional or substantive specialists not
ed for supervisory or managerial responsibilities almost certainly
would be precluded from enrolling. For many officers in this category,
the course has been an opportunity for becoming updated and pro-
fessionally renewed. Though an intangible benefit, we believe the
Agency has gained much by enrolling this type of officer in the Mideareer
Course and, in our opinion, the practice should be continued.
are are significant numbers of Agency officers whose
availability for training, in the Midcareer Course or otherwise, is
circumscribed by frequent or indefinite assignment away from Head
Ile improved managerial planning and practice could
uity. the fact remains that officers whose assign-
tively longer periods' at Headquarters generally
ortutty for formal training.
25X1A
h no sanction is involved, the existing requirement (HR
: s sioual employees take what to now called the Intelligence
and World Affairs Course has mend with poor compliance. In FY 1971,
only about half the now profes stonal employees satisfied the require-
ment; in earlier years, the rate was poorer still, due lose to the
dual than to his component which deemed the course unnecessary
or the employee's services indispensable. In circumstances such as
and they apply to other courses as well, the question arises as
to whether the indiidual ought properly to bear the penalty of sanctions.
Moreover, the existence of sanctions, we think, would create a
high degree of expectation among officers who successfully complete
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training required for promotion. Many officers who had been selected
for participation in the Midcareer Executive Development Program
were severely disappointed when the five-year plans established for
isional development were not implemented. Many returned
:itions from which they had been selected or otherwise
o achieve any recognizable career "development". An mentioned
earlier, this critical phase of the midcareer program had to be aban-
doned.
The A:gencyl a experience with foreign language sanctions is probably
the most well-known case of a good idea gone awry. Waivers to foreign
language position requirements overseas have been used with such
variance as to make them meaningless. Officers failing to meet, say.
a foreign la guage competence level of 3 as demanded by a given position
have been assigned to the job, nevertheless, on the grounds that having
acme competence they would eventually achieve the level designated.
Sanctions are effective in selected circumstances, however, as
25X1A
e enrollment of CS officers in the Chiefs of Station Seminar prior
assuming such position overseas and in the cases of Agency
officers headed for high risk areas abroad taking the
Course beforehand.
acid tent of sanctions almost certainly is the demonstrated
in a very pragmatic way, to a particular function
Consequently, we are increasingly concerned about
me through which the applicability and validity of
be ascertained. "N e have begun a modest effort in develop-
using such mechanisms, but the program is still very much
abryonic stage. We intend to pursue this matter further.
le clearly established for a particular course or training
.estion of training sanctions in relation to particular
assignments can be entertained more seriously than we think is now
possible.
Although, the validity of many of our key courses has yet to be
established definitively, there is no question that several of them
have fostered considerable competition for enrollment. The Basic
Operations Course has been, and continues to be, regarded within
the Clandestine Service as absolutely essential training for the junior
operations officer. Enrollment regularly is oversubscribed.
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The selection process throughout the Agency for the Midcareer
Course is still such that with minor exception* components choose
the most highly qualified officers available. Competition for enroll-
=out in the Advanced Intelligence Seminar is similarly intense, forcing
components to make qualitative judgments about the suitability of their
candidates. We anticipate that as they become better known, the
Advanced Operations Course and the Senior Seminar will join those
courses whose reputations prompt a heavy flow of candidacies and
thus provoke a kind of winnowing process without the formal discipline
imposed by sanctions.
6. Alternate Approaches
Once the Agency agrees on a profile of courses and we are able
to compose training prototypes for representative officers within the
various Directorates, we believe there will not be serious need for
training sanctions. Agency management would have typical profiles
against which to judge whether at a given level an officer had been
properly trained. Moreover, we believe that distinct allowance must
de for an officer' a development through experience in ways which
formal training cannot hope to provide.
It may be possible, and we are pursuing this proposition, to prove
by an audit of personnel and training records that officers who are
w*11-trained move ahead more quickly than ones who are not. While
such advancement might be due equally to other factors, such as an
officer's own abilities and ambitions, realization among his colleagues
that he is well-trained will nevertheless arouse more constructive
interest in training than is likely to be achieved by sanctions. A case
in point is the decision by the Agency, in 1956. to end the Junior
Officer Training Program's exclusive reliance on external applicants
as a source of manpower. This decision resulted not only from the
Program's reputation of recruiting highly qualified people, but also
from the belief widely held in the Agency that training provided JOTss
(and later Career Trainees) enhanced their career prospects.
?'. Com neat Tr. Officers
A key improvement, in our estimation. would be the integration
of training with personnel management within the several career services
and operating components. Basically, aside from the obvious- need to
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make senior managers more training conscious, this should consist
f an upgrading of the role and qualifications of component training
officers and their inclusion as members of career service boards.
This is already much the case in the DDI.
There are few full-time training officers in Agency components,
but where they exist, as in the Office of Communications, Technical
es Division, Office of Logistics, and National Photographic
Interpretation Center, among others, they perform an invaluable
service and carry considerable weight in terms of personnel manage-
ment.
At present, there are approximately 50 component training officers
plus five Senior Training Officers. These individuals range in grade
from GS-08 to GS-16, hold varying types of jobs, with wide arcs of
responsibility, with extremely different "charters" from the office
director or division chief as the case may be.
Not only are most of them part-time training officers, but they
tend to be administrative or support personnel with neither substan-
tive experience in the components in which they are serving nor
with firsthand knowledge of training functions and curriculum. The
Office of Training briefs newly-appointed training officers and con-
ducts annual orientation programs for all of them, but such procedures
really are not sufficient to overcome the built-in inadequacies of
the system cited above. Consequently, we believe a very basic
change of managerial philosophy and practice is essential in this
area if training is to become a significant tool of personnel manage-
ment and development.
A less sweeping, but nevertheless important step would be increased
emphasis on the training section of the Field Reassignment Questionnaire.
Additional stimulus is needed for supervisors and affected officers to
give considered thought to training requirements and opportunities when
planning reassignments. This would necessitate the availability of
some version of the training catalog overseas, presumably in an
abbreviated and sterilized edition. The need for this was emphasized
time and again to the DTR in his recent visit to 11 stations in the Far
East.
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ew of the circumstances described in this paper, we believe
there are a number of steps which already have been taken to promote
a cogent integration of training with career development. Primarily.
these consist of a system of care or ladder courses intended to com-
plement and enhance training which a professional officer receive
in specialized fields. It includes also a more precise statement of
selection criteria and a categorization of 0TR courses which ought
make easier the selection of appropriate training for a given officer.
which are contemplated or recommended are the
type training packages for "line" officers in the
~s; an audit of personnel and training records to
determine if well-trained officers do In fact advance more quickly
the Agency; efforts to establish validity of training programs by
use of Improved feedback mechanisms; strengthening the role of
it training officer; and giving increased attention to
eneiderations as part of career service board deliberations
and completion of the Field Reassignment Questionnaire.
We believe that with constructive progress in these areas there
would be little need for training sanctions.
STATINTL
UGH T. CUNNINGH, M
Director of Training
Atts Profile of Courses
lc~ AIX- /_C~
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