R/T 009 - Always be Snowmobiling
This week's radical thing is: Using the OODA loop and applying creative synthesis for success
What happens when you receive a piece of information that jars against your existing knowledge, experience or values?
When you experience a mismatch between the world as you expect it to be and the world as it is?
In this issue, we'll dive into the work of the American fighter pilot John Boyd, who shaped decades of military doctrine and created one of my favourite strategic models and most radical things - The OODA loop.
I'll also unpack how you can use Boyd's work to apply creativity in addressing the challenges you might be facing.
Colonel John Boyd stepping into his aircraft
Created by U.S. Air Force Colonel John Boyd after an illustrious military career, the OODA loop emerged from studying diverse approaches and disciplines, including thermodynamics and the Toyota Production System. Although gaining more attention recently, OODA remains relatively unknown outside military circles. Boyd was amazingly productive throughout his career, but there remained only a modest amount of information about his work after he died in 1997.
Much of what we know about Boyd and his work comes from military colleagues and small amounts of grainy video and audio footage, which continues to find its way onto Youtube. This is also supported by military veterans, strategists and intellectuals who continue to explore and build on what Boyd left behind.
These include people like Brian ‘Ponch’ Rivera, Chet Richards and Erik Schön through his excellent book The Art of Strategy. Erik does an excellent job connecting the ideas of John Boyd, Simon Wardley and Sun Tzu. It's certainly influenced my thinking, and his Medium articles provide a convenient place to find some of Boyd's citations, which I quote here.
Created in 1995, two years before his death, The OODA loop is the culmination of decades of experience, knowledge and praxis. Originally condensed onto a back-of-napkin sketch, it has now made its way into the minds of corporate executives and management consultants.
Every so often, a new silicon valley acolyte discovers the OODA loop and writes something asinine about it. Rarely do they do it justice - my conclusion when I received another such an article in my inbox last week - spurring me into writing RT/09!
The type of OODA loop that makes me write about OODA loops.
The OODA Loop
Often sold as a decision-making model, the OODA loop is really a model of human cognition.
The OODA loop is split into four phases - The 'Observe' phase is the first step in the OODA loop. It involves collecting data and information about the unfolding situation that concerns us. In this phase, it is important to pay attention to details and identify emerging patterns or trends.
A representation of the OODA loop drawn once on a napkin by Col. John Boyd
'Orient' is the second phase of OODA, which involves analysing and interpreting the information already observed. Here, our ability is framed by all our experiences, history and knowledge, which we bring to bear on the task.
'Decide' is phase three, where we way up multiple options to address the challenge and decide on the most preferable course of action.
The final phase of our OODA loop journey is 'Act'. This involves implementing the decision from our previous phase to take action. Depending on the context of the decision, this may include goals, metrics and approaches for measuring the progress of our choices and actions.
Many articles and interpretations of the OODA loop show the four phases as a circle. This representation can be accurate - we can cycle through all phases of the OODA loop in order. Yet to solely communicate it in such a way does the model a disservice.
There are multiple routes through the four phases of the OODA loop, and to simplify them as four words contradicts the richness the model holds (although I do admit how the more complex model is pretty hard on the eyes by modern design standards). It can also be preferable to start in different phases of OODA, depending on the challenge. In other cases, the connections and pathways between phases should be the main focus of attention.
Also, many misread the purpose of the loop as to cycle through it faster than opponents to win. This is another misunderstanding. Boyd only referred to the 'opponents OODA loops'. In this reference, he speaks to the aim of getting inside their decision-making ability, causing confusion and sowing disharmony. This could be done by speed, cadence changes, and surprise manoeuvres, which he called 'fast transients'.
It should be noted that OODA loops are both fractal and can happen at different scales and times. Passing through an OODA can be instantaneous when thinking about the visceral reactions of implicit guidance and control of manoeuvring a fighter jet or hammering a nail into a piece of timber.
Passing through all phases of an OODA loop may happen over a longer time when launching a new product or service and examining how competitors and customers react. Through the product development process, team members would also be experiencing the OODA loop hundreds of times in different contexts in their daily operations.
Analysis and Synthesis
Boyd wrote several seminal military papers, including "Patterns of Conflict", "Destruction and Creation", and "The strategic game of "? and ?". He delivered these hundreds of times in long, intense briefings using an overhead projector.
In these papers and briefings, Boyd developed his theses on analysing information and the synthesis of these observations into new ideas, approaches and experiments. Boyd's theory was that soldiers and armies (later businesses, and organisations) must constantly examine their environment from different perspectives and use this to create novelty to succeed in a complex and uncertain environment.
Through this constant engagement with the world, we encounter mismatches in our experience that confuse us. In each case, we must make sense of our observations and the information at hand and reconfigure this into new models to address the mismatch. Once we have done this, we empirically test this new hypothesis and start the process again.
Boyd explained this process as The Conceptual Spiral:
Since survival and growth are directly connected with the uncertain, ever-changing, unpredictable world of winning and losing, we will exploit this whirling (conceptual) spiral of orientation, mismatches, analyses/synthesis, reorientation, mismatches, analyses/synthesis … so that we can comprehend, cope with, and shape, as well as be shaped by that world and the novelty that arises out of it.
A Snowmobile is an analogy Boyd uses to explain the analysis and synthesis of information. In the briefing for 'The Strategic Game of "? and ?" Boyd asks participants to imagine themselves in different situations: alpine skiing; piloting a boat; riding a bicycle; playing with a children's toy tank. He then asks them to imagine that they keep pieces from each situation: skis, an outboard motor, handlebars and tank treads.
Combine these, and what do you have?
Always be Snowmobiling. Photo by Sebastian Arie Voortman on Pexels
Back to Boyd:
A winner is someone (individual or group) that can build snowmobiles, and employ them in an appropriate fashion, when facing uncertainty and unpredictable change.
In this slightly jarring, esoteric reference, Boyd doesn't mean everyone must build snowmobiles to survive in a complex and ambiguous world. Instead, that you can discover new ideas, unconventional solutions, and unique opportunities by exploring diverse perspectives in observing your environment to notice anomalies.
Then identify creative connections and relationships between them to innovate and succeed in the face of uncertainty.
The next time you engage in a familiar activity, use the OODA loop to break it down. Then identify the last time you experienced a conceptual mismatch.
How did you reorient to the challenge?
What action did you take to address it?
In part 2, I'll revisit the OODA loop to improve your situational awareness so potential mismatches become more apparent and you create increased opportunities for creative synthesis.