...I like that. When I was a battalion commander, my best company commanders ended up getting out, while the drudges remained. There were a lot of reasons for that, but the virtual impossibility of getting ahead of the pack during a typical career was certainly one of them. Two examples can illustrate:

I had several lieutenants who would have made better commanders than some of the captains I was forced to give command of companies. On at least one occasion I was forced to give a company to a man I knew, and my boss knew, was incompetent. Why? It was his turn. He commanded for 365 days and left with a bad OER, but he still ran the company into the ground. I assigned one of the best lieutenants as his XO in an attempt to alleviate some of the damage; this worked, but that lieutenant left the Army a year or two later, partly as a result of that experience.

In Afghanistan, I met several majors in the planning cell who were far more talented, innovative, and energetic than the lieutenant colonel who ran the cell. He was a drone and a negative influence: he quashed good ideas because he was afraid to run them by the boss, offered nothing in the way of inspiration, and couldn't even effectively manage the workload. Yet he stayed on, because the slot called for a lieutenant colonel. Everyone, including the commander and chief of staff simply worked around him, which was dysfunctional and wasted energy.

Until you reach general officer level, it is simply impossible to rise significantly faster than your peers. Even double-below-the-zone selectees only gain two years, and usually by getting [I][B]less[B][I] time in 'good' jobs as they are rushed through the BQ hoops. No budding Napoleon, Marshall, or Alexander gets any more time leading troops than someone who barely makes the command-cut.

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.