EXECUTIVE ADVISORY GROUP ACTIVITY WITH REGARD TO PERSONNEL POLICY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80M00165A000800180001-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 10
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 6, 2004
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: July 11, 1977
• Content Type: MF

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Executive Registry
11 July 1977
MEMORANDUM FOR: Director of Central Intelligence
FROM E. H. Knoche
Deputy Director of Central Intelligence
SUBJECT Executive Advisory Group Activity with
Regard to Personnel Policy
1. Action Requested: None; for information only.
2. I mentioned to you late last week that the Executive
Advisory Group (EAG) beginning last October and particularly
during the last two months has been very actively involved
in reviewing, modifying and fine tuning the Agency's personnel
management system. Much of this activity resulted from an
Attitudinal Survey undertaken in August of 1976. This survey,
which was made from a carefully selected 25 percent sampling ILL
of our employees, was designed to measure employee perception
of the Agency's personnel management system which had been
drastically changed in January 1974. As a result, during the
past six months the EAG has reviewed in detail such aspects
of our personnel management policy as promotion criteria,
grievance ock-dures, inter- and intra-Directorate rotation,
letters of instruction from the supervisor to the employee,
use of the Quality Step Increase, separation procedures, the
state of morale in the Agency, the role of women in the Agenc
the selection of key operating officials, the mix and balance
of personnel in the Agency, the initial assignment and orient
tion of new employees, career development procedures, our
policy with regard to marriage to aliens, the length of the
probationary period for new employees, and supergrades.
Actions resulting from these reviews have caused us to revise
Agency regulations on promotion, grievance procedures,
separation procedures and alien marriage.
3. In addition, the EAG studied what we might call the
top executive positions in the Agency and selected some 40
of these for annual consideration to ensure that the Deputies
had the opportunity for putting forward the names of employees
in their respective career services who were either already
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able to fill any vacancies in these top positions, but also
to note those individuals who with proper further develop-
ment would be able to fill such jobs some three years hence.
4. Currently, the EAG is heavily involved with evaluating
the supergrade population. We are doing this in part against
the possibilit that at some point in the future the Agency's
ceiling of Iisupergrades, as imposed by the Office of Manage-
ment and Budget, may be cut either by OMB or the Congress.
Also, this is the time of year for our supergrade promotion
exercise, and since the number of recommendations to supergrade
status exceeded our ceiling, and since I am aware of your
desire for flexibility in bringing in individuals of your
choice with supergrade rank, this was obviously the time to
develop a policy with regard to the number of new supergrades
against the size of ceiling we should keep open. You have
in hand my recommendations on this subject. Last week we
completed our review of the GS-18's as ranked by the Deputies
and in fact discussed those falling in the upper and lower
20 percent. None of the latter fell in the low three percent
category since all were making a valuable contribution. This
week we will similarly look at the GS-17's, next week the
GS-16's and three weeks hence the GS-15's. I intend these
exercises to force a hard look at where we might be carrying
senior personnel whose separation would benefit the Agency.
5. Further, on the subject of desired personnel flow
in and out of the Agency, which, of course, also bears on
the supergrade problem, the Director of Personnel at my
direction and with the agreement of the EAG is presently
reviewing those employees who were evaluated by grade in the
bottom three percent in the five career services for the past
three years to make sure that appropriate action has or is
being taken to ou 1, reassign,, retrain or Terminate.
He is also reviewing those employees who are i-nersonal
Rank Assignment (PRA) status. As you remember, promotions
in this Agency are effected on the basis of excellence rather
than the grade of the job. This means that we always have a
certain number of employees graded above the position which
they momentarily occupy. Our policy is not to promote above
the grade of the position unless the career service has in
fact a plan to move the employee into a suitably graded
position within a two-year period. As a result of this year's
Annual Personnel Plan we found that the number of PRA's had
been increasing annually over the past several years to a
worrisome extent. We were particularly aware that much of
this increase was the result of the career services not
following the two-year procedure and we therefore directed
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the Office of Personnel to review the individual PRA's with
a view to correcting the current imbalance by 1 September.
We will of course be most interested in any employees who
might have been both PRA's and in the bottom three percent
category. You should understand that some of our employees
in the bottom three percent are competent individuals --
often specialists -- who are valuable contributors to our
day-to-day requirements even though they may have leveled
off at their present grade and are neither aspiring nor in
competition for higher level responsibility. To facilitate
the flow out by retirement, I will be instituting a voluntary/
i voluntary retirement exercise from 15 July through tiTe end"'
o e isca year. This management tool permits the Deputies
to "surplus" employees either across the board or in specific
categories depending on where there is indeed a surplus
situation as compared with ceiling. Thus, individuals who
desire to retire but have not attained the required age can
in fact leave through the surplus route during the prescribed
period. We have recently sough and received Civil Service
Commission approbation for this tool.
6. You have mentioned the need for an Agency-wide
panel system to evaluate all of our professional employees.
his is a subject which the EAG will also address. I am
sure you are aware that the career services each have such
a panel/board system and indeed in some cases it extends to
our clerical service. I believe that this panel system works
well and to the advantage of our most talented employees.
There is merit to doing such evaluations on a career service
basis since the smaller numbers evaluated by career service
as opposed to Agency-wide panels permit a greater first-hand
knowledge of the individuals evaluated and also facilitate
the comparison of employees in similar types of positions,
such as Research Analysts in the Directorate of Intelligence,
Operations Officers in the Directorate of Operations, and
scientifically trained personnel in the Directorate of
Science and Technology.
7. We expect that this EAG concentration on personnel
policy will have salutary effects on the kinds of problems
raised by F_ I and also raised at your meetings
with various groups of employees. i think we should plan
another Office of Personnel Attitudinal Survey in early 1978
to give us a reading. /7 A -
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OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY DIRECTOR
For file.
Karen/2 Sep 77
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Date:23 July 1977
TO: A/bb'01 (Mr. Blake)
FROM: SA/DCI (DG)
SUBJECT: Scheduling of EAG Meeting with DCI,
and related matters.....
REMARKS:
In responding to the attached 11 July
memo to him from Mr. Knoche concerning the
EAG's consideration of Agency personnel
policy, the DCI noted Mr. Knoche's reference
to EAG reviews of various aspects of this
policy. He would like to see any paper that
may have been produced of these subjects in
the light of EAG discussions.
Also, the DC1 would like to be certain
that the EAG is not under the misapprehensio
that Mr. Knoche's description of the DCI's
interest in the promotion panel system is
entirely accurate. As he writes (re para 6
first sentence of the Knoche memo), he is no
proposing Agency-wide panels, bud only con-
sistency between career services regarding
their promotion systems.
Lastly, the DC1 believes it might be
useful for him to meet with the EAG sometime
soon for a general discussion on personnel
policy; it would be a good opportunity for
senior management to eurfand issues in a way
difficult to accomplish in memoranda, and fof
the DCI to provide to senior management some
of his philosophy and guidance.
Note that the DCI is meeting
wi with
t
he COlIdAG on Friday,2 Jul at 1430;
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makd an EAG meeting shortly afterward especi4
lv rewarding.
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MEMORANDUM FOR: ernie: ?_,
15 July tz/
"nclosed is a memo from ex-D/DCI describing
Executive Advisory Group activities over last few
months regarding personnel policy. DCI already is
aware of some of questions EAG is addressing; how
the#members are handling these questions will be of
interest to DCI - especially EAG view on benefits of
extending Promotion Panel system to entire Agency,
and. ex-D/DC1 recommendation that an employee
attitudinal survey be undertaken in early 1978.
Please note that the EAG is composed of the
senior managers and so its activities refl&ct
senior views - not just the ex-D/DCI's, even though
he established this group.
I do not know what Mr. Blake's views are on
continuing the LAG during the interiml the DCI may
have some views: also, it might be a useful vehicle
for DCl to use in discussing some of his ideas and
soliciting those of his senior management. Because
EAG usually discusses only one or two topics, it is
appropriate for "bull sessiq" in a way the Morning
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FORM USE 5.75 101 EDITI ON5 PREVIOUS
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MMORANDUM FOR: Bernie: is July 77
Appr
In connection with the EAG discussions on
personnel policy, the DCI might note the Diebold
article in the latest Newsweek. In a sense, many
of the letters DCI receives from some disillusioned
younger employees reflect the degree to which they
are affected by the general social changes d*--4-=
individual "value systems" etc. Diebold really is
writing about industrial workers, but when he
mentions "creativity" he touches on the major proble
for our management. That is, attracting and keeping
the self-starters. The best way to do this is by
giving the younger employee as much responsibility
as he or she can handle, and observing whether the
employee develops the personal discipline necessary
to discharge the increased responsibility.
I notice the EAG does not seem to have
addressed the question of general goals of the
personnel system, nor discussed the question of
what constitutes good (or bad) management by
the individual supervisor.
CJ
FORM 5.75 101 EU DIT IONSIOUS
 Why Things Don't Wor ', Any More
-The need for action on today's crises of
unemployment, urban decay, ener-
gy dependence, environmental pollu-
tion and. . you name it... is urgent. But
we had better recognize that crisis man-
agement is self-defeating when it ex-
cludes attention to what I think of as our
real problems. These problems are part
of the very machinery with which our
society manages itself and the processes
by which we cope with the you-name-it
rises as they come along.
Energy, unemployment and welfare
are real and pressing enough problems to
demand our best efforts. But we need too
to make the institutions of our society
capable of dealing with life in the ad-
vanced industrial world in which we
live, or we are going to expend increas-
ing resources in coping with a stream of
ever more demanding crises. The risk in
this situation is not so much that we
trying to push a string-but to see if we
can't find ways to create the kind of
demand that stimulates innovation and
high productivity in the private sector.
The problem is to learn how to define
the-results we want and then create in-
centives to achieve them. The natural
ingenuity of our people, one of America's
greatest strengths, will do the rest, just as
it has in the things we are best at.
There are isolated examples-in var-
ious U.S. cities and towns-of privately
run "public" services that reflect lower-
cost, better service in response to compe-
tition and the incentive of profit. For
example, a private, for-profit fire depart-
ment in Scottsdale, Ariz., costs citizens
substantially less than the nationwide
average for similar communities. If such
trendlets mean the creation in the public
sector of the kind of demand-pull for
science and technology that has pro-
duced such success in industrial and
consumer products, we may have found
the key to a wholly new approach to
higher-quality public services.
? We do not have "distant early warning
systems" to anticipate future conse-
quences of current and past decisions, to
foresee the problems they may pose, and
to identify the trade-offs in priority that
we may have to make among alterna-
.' gs work but
won't be able to make thinFsingly more
that we will turn to increato do so.
authoritarian governments bore because
Things don't work any n'solutions for
we rely upon brute-force Ithe crises by
crisis instead of heading offi.h which we
changing the processes wide processes
cope with public issues. T and to make
we use to handle problems equate in to-
public decisions are not ade.ng world.
day's complex and demand
DECLINE IN QUALITY
nk of as
Some examples of-what
our real problems: ize things to
a lV,o matter how we reor a iency, nosh
produce management e}ficingly unpro-
ing is going to keep increas blic services
ductive, labor-intensive pu mdeclining.
in important areas of life fro y that many
It is a paradox of our societinally taken
public services were orrg'
tives right now. Many problems don't
lend themselves to forecastir}rg---no mid-
1950s projection would have.included an
overnight quadrupling of old prices, the
social divisiveness of Vietna-n, or Water-
gate. But there is a great deal we could
know that we don't really consider. We
avoid that very act of conside{ration, oth-
erwise known as "planning.',
PRIORITIES FOR RESOURCES
While strong emotions &ind proper
skepticism surround the tenn "national
planning," we do need some imaginative
over by the govern-
ment precisely be-
cause they were so
important we want-
ed them available to
as many citizens as
possible at uniform
quality. Yet today,
the modern, broadly available and de-
pendable items are consumer goods-
portable color TV's, computer-driven
sewing machines or cheap pocket calcu-
lators with the capability of yesterday's
giant computers. Most of our really im-
portant activities-education, public
transport, medical-service distribution,
the running of cities-don't rely on ad-
vanced technology and therefore decline
in quality and their costs spiral up.,
The real problem here is not to try to
force technology and modem manage-
ment through the system-which is like
is declining. We need large organiza-
tions; we also need our creative younger
people. Yet, the way we handle people in
business and government agencies has
not kept up with the changes in their
values. Imaginative innovation in adapt-
ing job hours and pay to today's realities
could go a long way toward unleashing
the energies and creativity of many
members of our society who are. "turned
off' by yesterday's organization con-
cepts and practices.
Innovative approaches to manpower
used abroad have proved highly success-
political inventing to allow. us to corn- ful. The key in these cases seems to be
pare the alternative demands on our the effective identification of the em-
limited resources, to assign priorities to ployees' interests with that of industry.
those ends and to create incentives and- In japan, employees see themselves as
disincentives so that the play of forces in
the marketplace occurs wits iin a frame-
work of politically agreed-upon direc-
tion. The recent creation of the Congres-
sional Budget Office was a good step, but
we need many more.
.Attitudes toward work arid personal
value systems have change d radically,
but few large organizations have altered
their systems for managing promoting
part of a. vital working community. In
Germany, they have and feel as great. an
economic stake in productivity and prof-
itability as does "management" We
shouldbe ableto combine the possibility
of self-fulfillment with the fact of work-
ing in large organizations, building on
our own traditions of individual initia-
tive and the recognition of talent;
and paying people. Coupl ed with the Diebold, chairman arf the Dithold
alienation from authority and regimenta- Group, Inc., an international marwga-
tion that characterizes current changing rnent consulting fain., is a business lead-
values, the productivity of our economy er and innovator.
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