Ideally, what you do should be much less important than how you do it. There are all sorts of problems with basing promotion on what someone has done as much or more than their actual performance. I've known/run into a lot of sh!tbags on my deployments, so I can assure you that such metrics are not a reliable measure of ability to perform at a higher rank. A system which rewards such "check blocks," in my view, encourages careerism and not good officership. Good people may not get a "check" in certain boxes because of factors completely beyond their control, for example.

Regardless, retention problems are increasing promotion rates to levels that I think are too high. Even in the Air Force, which, I believe, currently has the fewest retention problems, there is a 94% selection rate for Major and 85% for Lt Col. My wife will be competing for Lt. Col this year and so the high selection rate is good on that account, but then I look at some of her peers that will likely join her and I shudder a little inside.