Greetings from your Personnel Service Center! I am now one full year into this job—my first HR gig after two decades in the field. One of my biggest surprises in this past year has been the consistently strong sense of purpose and altruistic desire to provide a service to those in the field that is universal across members serving in PSC and the Deputy Commandant for Mission Support as a whole. Most service members at HQ came from the field and will be returning to the field and, while here, they are truly working hard to make things better. I don’t need to tell this audience how much change is coming or has recently come to the Reserve workforce. The governance structure that moved the Assistant Commandant for Reserve under the Deputy Commandant for Operations, the introduction and expansion of FlexPAL, and the convening of the first joint active duty and Reserve Command Senior Enlisted Leader screening panel are just a few of the dynamic and exciting changes of late. One more big change on the not-too-distant horizon is the Reserve Master Chief Advancement Panel. 

I am a strong believer in the philosophy of YOGOWYPI: You only get out what you put in. With this kind of thinking, you have to define what you want and then what you are willing to put forth in order to get it. Like the active duty MCAP and other panels, R-MCAP enables and supports that philosophy. Members who want to advance to E9 will put in the time and effort to achieve a high level of sustained performance and professionalism required under MCAP to be selected. 

The inaugural R-MCAP comes on the heels of two successful iterations of the active duty MCAP to use a tried and true panel process to select our best senior chief petty officers for E9. While the servicewide exam process is not broken, when it comes to selecting the top 1% of our enlisted workforce, we needed to find a better way: a panel process that takes into account more qualitative factors to enable priority selection of those members with sustained performance and professionalism. YOGOWYPI. We know that not all 7s are created the same, and, in a panel process, the comments that accompany those 7s are taken into account. A member’s Future Potential comments are taken into account. Choosing these leaders requires a holistic illustration of their career. 

On the Reserve side of the house, the move to R-MCAP is even more beneficial as it helps alleviate rated stovepipes. While the established panel process will largely remain the same as the MCAP, there will be one significant difference: R-MCAP will have all senior chief petty officers competing, regardless of rating. All Reserve master chief petty officer billets have dropped their rating designators; in the system, they will now reflect as “MCPO.” For the several ratings on the Reserve side that only have one E9 billet in the entire CG, that rating will no longer be stalled out. If we have two great ETCSs in the Reserve, they should have the same opportunity to advance to E9 as a boatswain’s mate. Bottom line, we want, and the workforce deserves, the best senior chiefs advancing and serving in those key leadership roles. The removal of rating designations for E9 billets, done in conjunction with implementation of R-MCAP, will also help to increase the percentage of master chiefs in those E9 key leadership billets. 

As with any big change, I know there is some anxiety on this, and that’s good—that means people are thinking and talking about it, and they’re challenging us to ensure we get the process and decisions right. From my vantage point at PSC, I can tell you: we have. A lot of great people have worked hard to get it right, striving to provide the best care for our most important resource—our people. I am truly honored by the opportunity to serve in this capacity surrounded by good, hard-working people.

Semper Paratus!!

Master Chief Petty Officer A.J. Pulkkinen
Command Master Chief
Personnel Service Center