Unleash the power of the OODA Loop, a decision-making strategy employed by fighter pilots. Discover how this method can enhance your ability to make swift, accurate decisions, transforming your personal and professional life.
What is strategy?
A mental tapestry of changing intentions for harmonizing and focusing our efforts as a basis for realizing some aim or purpose in an unfolding and often unforeseen world of many bewildering events and many contending interests
- Military leaders and strategists invest a great deal of time in developing and teaching decision-making processes
- The OODA loop is a practical concept designed to be the foundation of rational thinking in confusing or chaotic situations
- For example, fighter pilots have to work fast because taking a second too long to make a decision can cost them their lives
Why the OODA Loop Works
Speed
- Fighter pilots must make many decisions in fast succession
- Growth hackers can observe and orient themselves before making a decision and then act
- The final step serves to test their ideas and they have the agility to switch tactics if the desired outcome is not achieved
- Three key principles supported Boyd’s ideas: Gödel’s Proof, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics
Applying the OODA Loop
Before jumping to conclusions, pause to consider your biases, take in additional information, and be more thoughtful of consequences.
- The more you practice, the more you do it right, the better you will get at making better decisions and making rapid progress.
Forty-Second Boyd Boyd
Boyd was no armchair strategist
- He developed his ideas during his own time as a fighter pilot
- Dogmatic, rigid theories are unsuitable for chaotic situations
- How do people and organizations adapt to changeable environments in conflicts, business, and other situations?
The Four Parts of the OODA Loop
Observe
- Build a comprehensive picture of the situation with as much accuracy as possible
- The observation stage requires awareness of the overarching meaning of the information
- Orientation
- Recognize the barriers that might interfere with the other parts of the process
- Without an awareness of these barriers, the subsequent decision cannot be a fully rational one
- Boyd believed in “destructive deduction” – taking note of incorrect assumptions and biases and then replacing them with fundamental, versatile mental models
- For Western nations, cyber-crime is a huge threat – mostly because for the first time ever, they can’t outsmart, outspend, or out-resource the competition
