While I like the intent of this piece and maybe even the goal of feedback-first rationality, it is an incorrect understanding of OODA.
Most importantly, John Boyd did not consider the O-O-D-A Loop a simple cycle.
“The OODA Loop is often seen as a simple one-dimensional cycle, where one observes what the enemy is doing, becomes oriented to the enemy action, makes a decision, and then takes an action. This “dumbing down” of a highly complex concept is especially prevalent in the military, where only the explicit part of the Loop is understood. The military believes speed is the most important element of the cycle, that whoever can go through the cycle the fastest will prevail. It is true that speed is crucial, but not the speed of simply cycling through the Loop. By simplifying the cycle in this way, the military can make computer models. But computer models do not take into account the single most important part of the cycle—the orientation phase, especially the implicit part of the orientation phase.”
― Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War
The process is not a simple loop.
Below is a paper Boyd wrote about Destruction and Creation or Deduction and Induction. The idea is that continuous inward attempts to conceptualize the environment without feedback will lead to a mismatch.
https://www.coljohnboyd.com/static/documents/1976-09-03__Boyd_John_R__Destruction_and_Creation.pdf
Here is a summary taken from the paper linked below.
"Although the strategic ideas of John Boyd encompass much more than the well known OODA loop, the loop does provide a concise framework for improving competitive power throughout an organization. Much of this power will be lost, however, by regarding the loop as a simple, sequential, and circular pattern. The one sketch of the OODA loop that Boyd drew in any of his works, however, bears little resemblance to this popular misconception. That one is the key to his entire philosophy of conflict. This paper is intended primarily for those who lead teams in conflict, i.e., zerosum interactions against other groups where independence or even survival itself is at stake. The OODA loop provides them with a comprehensive, if highly condensed, framework for achieving Boyd’s strategic goal, which might be described as “creativity under fire” by their teams. The OODA loop is especially amenable to an ancient pattern of actions that Boyd developed as a fighter pilot and then discovered that it could be documented back to at least the time of Sun Tzu. This paper describes Boyd’s OODA loop and how it assists practitioners in employing this ancient pattern. It ends by suggesting actions organizations can take to improve their operations in the manner suggested by the OODA loop."
Also, an image from a Boyd slide is included from that paper.
The main goal of studying the OODA process should ultimately be to become more creative in whichever competitive domain. This entails explicitly using variety, rapidity, harmony, and initiative to generate uncertainty, confusion, etc, to bring about cognitive collapse in the adversary. Outside of competitive environments, learning to adapt to and maneuver rapidly in arbitrary environments creatively is the essence of OODA.
Thanks for giving this attention if you've made it this far!
Also, below are some more quotes for added context.
“Another important slide shows how the Blitzkrieg—or maneuver conflict—is the perfect tactical application of the OODA Loop. Boyd asks: How does a commander harmonize the numerous individual thrusts of a Blitzkrieg attack and maintain the cohesion of his larger effort? The answer is that the Blitzkrieg is far more than the lightning thrusts that most people think of when they hear the term; rather it was all about high operational tempo and the rapid exploitation of opportunity. In a Blitzkrieg situation, the commander is able to maintain a high operational tempo and rapidly exploit opportunity because he makes sure his subordinates know his intent, his Schwerpunkt. They are not micromanaged, that is, they are not told to seize and hold a certain hill; instead they are given “mission orders.” This means that they understand their commander’s overall intent and they know their job is to do whatever is necessary to fulfill that intent. The subordinate and the commander share a common outlook. They trust each other, and this trust is the glue that holds the apparently formless effort together. Trust emphasizes implicit over explicit communications. Trust is the unifying concept. This gives the subordinate great freedom of action. Trust is an example of a moral force that helps bind groups together in what Boyd called an “organic whole.”
― Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War
“Generating a rapidly changing environment--that is, engaging in actively that is so quick it is disorienting and appears uncertain or ambiguous to the enemy--inhibits the adversary's ability to adapt and causes confusion and disorder that, in turn, causes an adversary to overreact or underreact. Boyd closed the briefing by saying the message is that whoever can handle the quickest rate of change is the one who survives.”
― Robert Coram, Boyd : The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War
“Here Boyd says that to shape the environment, one must manifest four qualities: variety, rapidity, harmony, and initiative. A commander must have a series of responses that can be applied rapidly; he must harmonize his efforts and never be passive. To understand the briefing, one must keep these four qualities in mind.”
― Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War
I like having more historical context here.
Part of this sounds like either I didn't successfully communicate something about my goals, or I haven't successfully understood something you meant to say.
I'm not super well versed in the original military use of OODA, but I definitely didn't mean OODA was a simple cycle. I hadn't explicitly dwelled on how each part feeds into the other parts but I do think I was doing that implicitly.
I'm also not particularly using in a "competitive" domain so those aspects of it don't seem particularly relevant.
In addition to wanting to know if this ends up helping anyone, I'd also like to know...
- does anyone know any existing resources about intentionally improving your OODA loop (esp. if they seem better than this)
- if you bounce off this, do you have any sense of why, or what nearby thing might have been better for you?
An OODA loop is a repeating loop where you take in information, integrate it into your decision-making, use it to make more decisions, and then receive more information in response.
“OODA” is a particular structure referring to:
You are probably doing some kind of OODA-loop-like-thing already. But it’s worth reflecting on how you could do it better.
For my last workshop, partly because it was cute, and partly because it seemed like probably a good idea, I put together a worksheet for applying a deliberate, intentional OODA loop to your OODA loop.
I don't actually know if this worksheet turned out to be helpful (it was one thing among many, and the person who most intentionally updated their OODA loop did so before we even got to this worksheet).
But I figured I would put it here for easy reference.
I recommend copying this into a google-doc, or whatever your preferred notetaking system.
Then, I recommend first skimming all the prompts, and focusing on the prompts that feel intuitively useful to you.
(If you bounce off this doc but it feels like a nearby thing would be useful, please let me know in the comments)
Observation
Empirically, how do you seem to observe, orient, decide, and act right now? Think of concrete specific moments when you…
These might come bundled together in a “loop”, or haphazardly over a long period of time. Whatever the way you actually do each of these things, write down as much concrete detail as you can about how you did it.
Write down those details for OODAing on at least two timescales (i.e. how you respond to information in the middle of the day, quickly, and how you orient to your overall life over months or years)
Write details about some short-timeframe examples of…
Observing
Orienting
Deciding
Acting
(acting has tons of detail that isn’t that useful here, but maybe focus on the particular moment you shift from deciding, to acting)
Write details about some longer-timeframe examples of…
Observing
Orienting
Deciding
Acting
Orient
Orienting tends to include two aspects:
In this case, we’re organizing information about “how does your OODA loop work”.
Some prompts:
What seems important to track about OODA loops?
Write a short 1-2 paragraphs or bullet list describing your high level OODA loop processes.
(i.e consolidate observations from the previous section into a short schema that fits easily in your working memory)
How would you know if you had a good one?
What (if anything) are you dissatisfied with about your current OODA loops?
What are some ways your OODA loops could be better? (including quick fixes and deeper effortful fixes)
What’s hard or confusing about improving your OODA loop?
Deciding
Okay, now you’re going to decide whether to make any kind of intentional changes to your OODA-loop-ish processes.
“I don’t want to change anything, it’s fine” is a possible option.
List out some possible plans or actions you could take, to improve your observations, orienting, deciding, or acting. These can be:
List of plans or actions
For each “plan”, what’s a next-action you could take right now, to get the ball rolling on it?
Act
Do all the next actions that make sense right now. (This might be 0, 1, or several that you can fit into ~5 minutes)
(We’re only going to do quick actions for right now, but, often this part takes much longer than the other parts)
Let me know in the comments if this was helpful to you (or, if particular prompts are helpful, unhelpful, or confusing)