Quote Originally Posted by Eden View Post
Until you have some mechanism for accelerating promotion and less concern for 'fairness' or 'equity' in your officer personnel system, you will have a great deal of difficulty in either discerning, retaining, or managing talent.
I think a lot of this comes down to how you recruit your officers, and what criteria you use to select them. Armies that require all officers to have succeeded as NCOs first or rather to have risen well above the ranks historically produce highly motivated men.

A lot also depends on how do you detect talent. The bad officers getting promoted or staying in slots have all proved adept at working the system. There are ways for measuring who is generally smart, professional and adaptable, but very few armies seem to use them.