The OODA loop is the decision cycle of observe, orient, decide, and act, developed by military strategist and United States Air Force Colonel Joh Boyd. Boyd applied the concept to the combat operations process, often at the operational level during military campaigns. It is now also often applied to understand commercial operations and learning processes.
Remember that the Loop is not a concept by itself. It is mingled with everything else: Situational Awareness, Fight or Flight, your past experiences, and your personality.
The Loop is not normally noticed in everyday life with things that are not as stressful as a life threatening experience. We all do it over and over many times a day. Knowing this gives us an opportunity to see it for what it is and try to manipulate it to our advantage from a security standpoint. The Loop is used in business and many other aspects of life but we use it in a defense/security view.
Again, OODA is Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.
Here is a brief description of the process.
Act (Test)
Once you’ve decided on a mental concept to implement, you must act. In his final sketch of the OODA Loop, Boyd has “Test” next to “Act,” again indicating that the OODA Loop is not only a decision process, but a learning system; we are all like scientists perpetually testing our new hypotheses in the real world. We should all be constantly “experimenting,” and gaining new “data” that improves how we operate in every facet of our lives. As Osinga notes in Science, Strategy, and War, actions “feed back into the systems as validity checks on the correctness and adequacy of the existing orientation patterns.”
Action is how we find out if our mental models are correct. If they are, we win the battle; if they aren’t, then we start the OODA Loop again using our newly observed data.
Ideally, you’ll have multiple actions/tests/experiments going on at the same time so that you can quickly discover the best mental model for a particular situation. In war, this might mean having multiple attack points that are using different weapons systems. When the strategist discovers which targets and weapons are providing the best results, he’ll direct his attention to the winning mental model and exploit it to the max until it no longer works. Once he observes that it is no longer effective, he’ll orient more mental concepts, decide to use one or several of them, and quickly act to test them out. Over and over this process goes until the enemy is eliminated.
Preparation, practice and training are where we try out new “acts”. The more we do this realistically, the closer to reality your acting will be. Always be saying to yourself “If he does this then I’ll do that.” Planning the best you can will help in your OODA process. Having a strategy even partially planned out will put you further than you were before.
The OODA Loop makes explicit our implicit decision-making process. By making it explicit, Boyd offered an incomparable strategic tool to everyone from soldiers and militaries to businesses and sports teams to social movement leaders and political campaigners to better manage their own decision-making processes. It also allows the manipulation and control of the decision-making process of our competitors. Controlling both your own and your enemy’s OODA Loops allows you to come off conqueror. In addition to being a tool to vanquish your foe, the OODA Loop is a learning engine that allows an individual or organization to thrive in a changing environment.
Semper Paratus
Check 6
Burn
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