A 13M Career Philosophy: Priorities, Values, Open Communication, and Owning the Outcome

By Eric "RK" Roehrkasse

What does a 13M career look like? What opportunities are out there? Is there more to a 13M career than being an AOF/CC or being on staff? How do I get to do cool stuff? These are all questions I had as a CGO. With the benefit of hindsight, what follows is how I would answer my younger self.

As I begin my twentieth year in the Air Force, I look back with gratitude for my career. In addition to the typical AOF roles and deployments, I’ve held special duties, completed AFIT [Air Force Institute of Technology], lived overseas, served as a commander, and currently serve as an attaché. It’s a career I have loved but could not have planned in advance. While it would be arrogant to take credit for the good fortune in my career—God and the support of good leaders truly deserve the thanks—I commend to you a career philosophy that has allowed me to take advantage of some great opportunities. My philosophy has three parts: priorities and values, open communication, and owning the outcome.

Priorities and Values

You must first decide what you value, not what job you want. I’m not saying you shouldn’t pursue a job or have goals, but rarely can you set your sights on a specific job or location, then work toward that, especially long term. Instead, you must decide your personal and professional priorities and then make your decisions—assignment by assignment—based on those priorities. What drives you? Family, education, foreign affairs, relationships, strategic impact, etc.? When you are at decision points in your career, sticking to your values will help you choose between good and better (and know which is which), especially when conventional wisdom and advice are contrary to your needs and desires.

My priority is my family, but I also value education. Sometimes, those imperatives align, such as when I was teaching at USAFA (something my family and I wanted). But sometimes, they diverge. As a major on the VML, I was an IDE-select and also hot for a remote. While in-res IDE is the best school experience and allows you to compete for other opportunities like the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies [SAASS], I ultimately declined my slot. Knowing I would follow IDE with a remote, I saw four options: 1). move my family to Alabama for a year and leave them there while I went remote, or 2). move them to Alabama, then move them near family after IDE and then move again when I returned (3 moves in 3 years), or 3). be a geo-bachelor followed by a remote (2 years living apart), or 4). decline my IDE slot, which, at worst, meant stability for my family while I went away for a year. In the end, by declining my in-res slot, I was able to take a command sponsored remote to Qatar with my family as the EOSS/DO. Which was a better outcome than I could have hoped for.

Open Communication

Once you know your priorities, be willing to communicate that with our 13M DT and assignment team while being open to Air Force needs. Be honest but flexible—there may be some perfect options out there that you’re not aware of (for me, it was an accompanied remote to Al Udeid). Sometimes you won’t love any of the options available. In those cases, make your best choice and work hard in those jobs. You never know when that could be a set-up for an opportunity.

During my tour in Afghanistan, I was trying to line up my next assignment. Of the three options presented, McGuire was the best of three underwhelming options (no offense to those who love New Jersey). It was not my favorite assignment, but my family and I made the best of it, had a positive attitude, and worked hard. While there, I was selected by USAFA for an AFIT Civilian Institution sponsorship, and our location in South Jersey allowed me to PCA to Temple University in Philadelphia, one of the best Diplomatic History programs in the country. Being able to stay in our NJ home during 15 months of grad school minimized the disruption to my family and set us up for a much-desired follow-on at USAFA. By the way, this was before instructor duty was endorsed by the CSAF, and I was told teaching would be a career killer. But it’s what I wanted, and my family wanted to move back to Colorado.

Owning the Outcome

Third, own the outcome of your career choices. If you made a decision consistent with your values and priorities, then have no regrets. Don’t complain when you’re not selected for an opportunity just because “they” are looking for someone who did what you were unwilling or unable to do. You don’t know how a 13M’s individual experiences, timing, or life choices influenced their career trajectory.

Like many 13Ms, I wanted to command an OSS, but I did not have that privilege. When I applied for squadron command, I was only interested in an ops squadron, so I put my name in the hat for the 13M board and AMC’s Phoenix Eagle board and avoided the AETC list. Nevertheless, the only offer I received was from AETC for a recruiting squadron. I said yes because command is command. Did declining in-res IDE and being a USAFA instructor make me less attractive to hiring authorities for ops squadrons? Maybe or maybe not, but either way, I don’t regret my decisions. I made them consistent with my values and priorities, whatever might come. As for commanding a recruiting squadron, it was hands-down the best job I have ever had.

Final Thoughts

Ironically, both instructor and recruiting duty are now a boost to an officer’s record. I never saw that coming when I decided to pursue those assignments. You just don’t know how some decisions will impact you down the line, so instead of trying to set yourself up or play the game, you should make decisions based on values (not prestige or ego), with open communication to the DT and assignment team to understand their needs, and ultimately own the consequences of your value-based choices. Maybe that’s easy for me to say since I’ve had some really great assignments, but I do think they are at least partly a result of my career philosophy.

Bringing it all together, my current position in Brussels has been a cherry on top of my career so far. In a way, it represents the culmination of all three principles I’ve discussed. As the end of my command tour approached, I applied for a special duty that I had my eye on since 2013. I was certain (perhaps overconfident) that I was a shoo-in. It turns out that a leadership change altered what the ideal candidate looked like, and I was not selected (see principle 3). Failing to secure the job I wanted, I looked again at my values and priorities (principle 1). My family and I wanted to move overseas, so I applied for exec jobs in PACAF and USAFE. While our CFM [Career-field Functional Manager] supported these career advancement opportunities, he expressed a need for people to serve in core 13M roles. I leveled with him, saying that we just wanted to go overseas, no matter the job (principle 2). That’s when he told me about working at NATO, a core 13M job that wasn’t even on the vacancies list at the time. Talk about an unexpected opportunity coming on the heels of a disappointment. Sometimes, you don’t get what you think you want, then something else comes around.

I hope I haven’t given myself too much credit for the career I’ve had. Great leaders took the time to hear me and support my career. I also hope that my positive portrayal of things hasn’t obscured the fact I spent years in some less-desirable locations, and that I lost out on or turned down opportunities that others would sell a kidney for. Those were not easy choices. But following a career philosophy of values-based decisions, open communication, and owing outcomes has allowed me to accept closed doors, pursue options others might not see, and ultimately look back on a career that is uniquely mine. I couldn’t ask for better.

About the Author

Lt Col Eric Roehrkasse is the US Military Representative to EUROCONTROL and Aviation Action Officer to the US Mission to NATO. He served as a complex AOF/CC twice, deployed twice in support of OEF, and served two years as the EOSS/DO at Al Udeid. Outside the 13M career field, he has been an Assistant Professor of History at USAFA and was Commander of the 368th Recruiting Squadron at Hill AFB. He’s a 2002 graduate of USAFA, and someday hopes to return to academia.