How to block military reform: Step one

This passage in a
2007 essay by retired
Army Brig. Gen. Huba Wass de Czege seems to me to speak, perhaps, to the
Army's Five
Fingers controversy:

If you want to block
reforms, install a 'council of colonels' to guard the gates of change. No one
is as conservative or as arrogant as a staff colonel in the comfort zone of his
expertise.

(P. 10)