I once had to walk back the way we grow our senior leadership. As Tom points out, war college is based primarily on completed bn command. ( I would say "successful" bn cmd, but frankly it was selection to bn cmd, not performance in that job, that defined success.) Every good combat arms job at the O-5 level and above is based on the same criterion of success.

Now here's the kicker -- the single greatest factor in selection for battalion command was performance in company command. By the transitive property of stuff, that means that we select our future senior leadership by their performance at the O-3 level (I am not making this up).

Then we wonder how we end up with tactical thinkers at the senior level.

Of course, all that doesn't address the other issues, but it is representative of the 20 cents (pair o' dimes) that needs to change.