Both of these examples were implemented without any real regard to the long-term impacts on the officer corps. There are several problems that this short range view cause, however, that are poorly understood by the Army. First and foremost is that every policy has unintended consequences. Every single one. The second problem that is poorly understood is that no policy exists alone.
Every policy interacts over time with every other policy.
The unintended consequences of each policy combine with the unintended consequences of all of the other policies. The third problem is that the Army generally fails to monitor these impacts over time. Policies and people tend to exist within stovepipes. The people responsible for efficiency report development are not the same people responsible for investigating Gulf War syndrome yet both of these groups, and many others, have a part to play in the growth of risk aversion in the Army. Each group only focuses on their small area and no one is responsible for looking at long term unintended synergistic trends.