Ooda Quotes

Understanding the OODA loop enables a commander to compress time - that is, the time between observing a situation and taking an action. A commander can use the temporal discrepancy (a form of fast transient) to select the least-expected action rather than what is predicted to be the most effective action. The enemy can also figure out what might be the most effective. To take the least-expected action disorients the enemy. It causes him to pause, wonder, to question.

Orientation, the big O in the OODA loop, is the schwerpunkt.

In his seminal paper ‘Destruction and Creation’, the military strategist John R. Boyd created a theory with direct applicability to a fast-changing environment. ‘To maintain an accurate or effective grasp of reality,’ he argued, ‘one must undergo a continuous cycle of interaction with the environment to assess its constant changes.’ He asked himself, ‘how do we create the mental concepts to support decision making activity?’ His answer was the Decision Cycle or OODA Loop. OODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide and Act. It is quick to apply, and useful for everyday decision-making.

Thinking about operating at a quicker tempo - not just moving faster - than the adversary was a new concept in waging war. Generating a rapidly changing environment - that is, engaging in activity that is 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.

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.

The briefing begins with what was to become Boyd’s most famous—and least understood—legacy: the Observe-Orient-Decide-Act cycle, or O-O-D-A Loop. Today, anyone can hook up to an Internet browser, type “OODA Loop,” and find more than one thousand references. The phrase has become a buzz word in the military and among business consultants who preach a time-based strategy. But few of those who speak so glibly about the OODA Loop have a true understanding of what it means and what it can do. (Boyd preferred “O-O-D-A Loop” but soon gave up and accepted “OODA” because most people wrote it that way.)

Boyd’s review of the literature on these approaches led him to the following impressions. It is advantageous to possess a variety of responses that can be applied rapidly to gain sustenance, avoid danger, and diminish an adversary’s capacity for independent action. Organisms must cooperate or, better yet, harmonize their activities in their endeavors to survive in an organic synthesis. To shape and adapt to change, one cannot be passive; indeed, one must take the initiative. The combination of variety, rapidity, harmony, and initiative—particularly their interaction—seems to be the key that permits one to shape and adapt to an ever-changing environment. These qualities aid in getting inside an adversary’s OODA loop. With these insights in mind, Boyd began his historical review of conflict, theorists, and practitioners of the art of war.

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.

A fighter pilot collects data on an enemy pilot by observing. He analyzes by orienting himself to the enemy. He decides what to do, then acts. When Boyd broke thinking into those steps, he discovered something interesting: Whichever pilot goes through the process quickest is the one who usually wins. He called going through the process and repeating it a loop. Boyd’s name for thinking: the OODA Loop. When you get to the end, you start the process again. You gather data on what you just did, analyze that data, and make another decision, followed by another action. Then you do it again. Whoever “loops” most quickly in a dogfight? They usually win. Because of Boyd’s OODA Loop, the U.S. Air Force made a change. They wanted planes to let a pilot go through the OODA Loop as quickly as possible. Planes that moved as quickly as a pilot could think. The process helped the Air Force think more clearly, too. As an organization. Thinking about how a pilot thinks, they made changes. Big changes. They ditched their old way of doing things. Approached the problem differently. Came up with a new plan for more maneuverable, responsive aircraft.

OODA loop.” The acronym, from military strategy, stands for “observe, orient, decide, act.

objetivo era moverse rápido, buscar defensas, aprovechar los éxitos, llevar la batalla hasta la retaguardia del enemigo.[18] El espíritu del manual era ofensivo, y estaba en línea con la determinación de Boyd de aplicar el bucle OODA: El propósito principal de todo enfrentamiento con el enemigo es maniatarlo o impedir que pueda actuar libremente. Para conseguir esto, debemos tomar decisiones y actuar más rápidamente que el enemigo, para desorganizar sus fuerzas y para desequilibrarlos.[19] En 1986 se redactó el Field Manual 90-8 Counterguerrilla Operations (Manual de Campo 90-8 Operaciones Contraguerrilla), que trataba de las acciones que deberían llevarse a cabo contra fuerzas armadas antigubernamentales. En él se decía que «el concepto básico de la doctrina batalla tierra-aire podía aplicarse también a la lucha contraguerrillera».[20] En 1989, los marines publicaron el FMFM-1, donde se insistía en que su doctrina estaba basada en la «guerra de alta maniobrabilidad», que podía proporcionar los medios para derrotar a «un enemigo físicamente superior» mediante operaciones que dejaran al enemigo «incapaz de resistir tras haber destrozado su moral y su cohesión física».[21]

«el bucle OODA». OODA siginifica: observación, orientación, decisión y acción.

responsable del producto. Este individuo debe conocer el terreno y tener autoridad para tomar decisiones definitivas. Debe estar disponible para responder a preguntas y estará a cargo del suministro de valor. Observa, Oriéntate, Decide, Actúa (OODA). Percibe el panorama estratégico total, pero actúa tácticamente con rapidez. Miedo, incertidumbre y duda. Es mejor dar que recibir. Entra en el ciclo OODA de la competencia y envuélvela en su confusión. Obtén dinero por nada y haz las modificaciones gratis. Crea cosas nuevas sólo en tanto produzcan valor. Accede a intercambiarlas por cosas que requieren un esfuerzo igual. Lo que al principio creíste necesitar no es nunca lo que en verdad precisas.

We should not discount the anecdotal evidence of the survivors or the past offenders of violence, nor should we ignore the perspectives of the participants and veterans of it who go on to become thinkers and developers in the business of violence training.

Simply developing physical capabilities, mental toughness and being “ready to fight” is not preparing you to make precise, effective and efficient decisions about very specific problems under force pressure.

intuition is always right in at least two important ways; It is always in response to something, it always has your best interest at heart.” Intuition is defined as the ability to understand, know or consider a thing likely without exclusively using conscious reasoning.

Boyd’s most influential idea, the OODA loop of “observe, orient, decide, act.” This

His first step in developing A Discourse is an attempt to discover how we develop knowledge, how we learn. His very starting premise is that the world is fundamentally uncertain, truth is an arena of combat, knowledge is a weapon, as is the capability to evolve one’s knowledge base. He warns against monochromatic views and argues that command organizations should consist of people with different frames of reference, thereby ensuring a variety of interpretations of one observation. Truth is dialogical, in postmodern terms; it arises from people in discourse. Assigning meaning to events, phenomena or objects is not just an individual process. The OODA loop itself indeed is an epistemological statement. It is an abstract and theoretical model of the way we derive knowledge from our environment.

As a model for postmodern strategy, the value of the OODA loop, and the arguments Boyd makes using it, lies in pointing towards the non-traditional tools for creating combat power and non-traditional targets in an enemy system. Language, doctrine, belief systems, experience, culture, symbols, schemata, dataflows, knowledge about itself and its opponent, perception, organizational ability for learning, the capability to change practices, all positioned in the temporal dimension, are at least as valuable as technology, weapons, numbers of soldiers in defining combat effectiveness.

Indeed, rapid OODA looping is merely one aspect of the process of adaptation. In the comprehensive OODA loop model Boyd’s attention to this broader theme comes most clearly to the fore. While the early presentations are clearly aimed at a military audience and pertain to operational art, by shifting his focus to a number of processes that in abstract are similar for a variety of organisms and social systems, Boyd steers A Discourse beyond military history and warfare. In particular during his later period Boyd approached and explained patterns for winning and losing from this more abstract point of view, suggesting patterns in the behavior of organisms and organizations when confronted with threats and challenges of an even more general nature.

Boyd got the idea for “O-O-D-A” loops (he used dashes indicate that the steps are not distinct, but flow into each other) from observing the effects of jerky, unexpected, and abrupt maneuvers in air-to-air combat. After deciding that it was his quick OODA loops that allowed him to fight this way, Boyd defined “agility” in these terms: A side in a conflict or competition is more agile than its opponent if it can execute its OODA loops more quickly. This generalizes the term agility from air-to-air combat and from warfare in general. It also turns out to be equivalent to the definition floated in chapter II, the ability to rapidly change one’s orientation, since it is orientation locking up under the stress of competition and conflict that causes OODA loops to slow and makes one predictable, rather than abrupt and unpredictable. Speed, that is physical velocity, may provide an important tactical option, but it is not The Way.77 In fact, speed increases momentum, which can make one more predictable.

How Long Will It Take? You can’t blame people for wanting instant results. Time is money, and quickness, especially quick OODA loops, is good. But when it comes to adopting maneuver conflict / Boyd’s principles to your business, there is a lot to be learned and a lot to be done. Consider that: •   According to its principle creator, Taiichi Ohno, it took 28 years (1945-1973) to create and install the Toyota Production System, which is maneuver conflict applied to manufacturing. •   It takes roughly 15 years of experience—and recognition as a leader in one’s technical field—to qualify as a susha (development manager) for a new Toyota vehicle.150 •   Studies of people regarded as the top experts in a number of fields suggest that they practice about four hours a day, virtually every day, for 10 years before they achieve a recognized level of mastery.151 •   It takes a minimum of 8 years beyond a bachelor’s degree to train a surgeon (4 years medical school and 4 or more years of residency.) •   It takes four to six years on the average beyond a bachelor’s degree to complete a Ph.D. •   It takes three years or so to earn a black belt (first degree) in the martial arts and four to six years beyond that to earn third degree, assuming you are in good physical condition to begin with. •   It takes a bare minimum of five years military service to qualify for the Special Forces “Green Beret” (minimum rank of corporal / captain with airborne qualification, then a 1-2 year highly rigorous and selective training program.) •   It takes three years to achieve proficiency as a first level leader in an infantry unit—a squad leader.152 It is no less difficult to learn to fashion an elite, highly competitive company. Yet for some reason, otherwise intelligent people sometimes feel they should be able to attend a three-day seminar and return home experts in maneuver conflict as applied to business. An intensive orientation session may get you started, but successful leaders study their art for years—Patton, Rommel, and Grant were all known for the intensity with which they studied military history and current campaigns. Then-LTC David Hackworth had commanded 10 other units before taking over the 4th Battalion, 39th Infantry in Vietnam in 1969, as he described in Steel My Soldiers’ Hearts. You may also recall the scene in We Were Soldiers where LTC Hal Moore unloaded armfuls of strategy and history books as he was moving into his quarters at Ft. Benning. At that point, he had been in the Army 20 years and had commanded at every level from platoon to battalion.

Through this book we will introduce you to the works of COL John Boyd, USAF, whose brilliant work forms the basis of what we do.  Col. Boyd passed on in 1997, but his legacy continues to grow, particularly on how to develop leaders of character to out-perform their opponents. Fred and I have spent a good part of the last decade developing ways to teach people how to practice Boyd’s OODA loop (more on this in the book).

It doesn’t take much leadership ability to understand why mutual trust and competence are important. The next two aspects of this organizational climate for operational success may be less familiar. Both the concepts of mission and focus allow a superior to make sure that the intent of his subordinates harmonizes with his own, without stifling the subordinates’ initiative and in consequence, without slowing down the organization’s OODA loops. Between individuals, the device the Germans came up with is the mission, which we can consider as a contract, or Auftrag, between superior and subordinate. Back in chapter III, on agility, I described how this works in war. In today’s chaotic, ruthlessly competitive commercial environment, business needs such a device, and a little experimenting should convince

You will rapidly discover that a mutually agreed understanding—a contract of sorts—is a wonderful device for fostering a sense of responsibility among the people at your company. Because they have to consider, think, and agree, rather than acquiesce, you will sense increased morale and improved dedication. All of this, of course, reinforces mutual trust and implicit communication, which, as we have seen, are critical elements in increasing your OODA loop speed. Perhaps the greatest value of viewing responsibility as a contract is that it provides an alternative to over-control. Micromanaging is simply not allowed: Once he or she accepts the contract, the subordinate has total freedom within the constraints of the contract as to how to proceed. There is no place for the stack of reports that allow managers or headquarters staffers to second guess every decision.

Organizations that create a climate such as that described in this chapter will naturally experience an acceleration of their OODA loops. So the question becomes how to install it. Boyd suggested, in his briefing “Organic Design for Command and Control,” that it will grow naturally if the senior management sets the proper conditions. He defines the two essential elements necessary for running any human organization along maneuver conflict—rapid OODA loop—lines as: •   Leadership—implies the art of inspiring people to enthusiastically take action towards uncommon goals. It must interact with the system to shape the character or nature of that system in order to realize what is to be done. •   Appreciation—refers to the recognition of worth or value, clear perception, understanding, comprehension, discernment, etc. It must not interact nor interfere with the system, but must discern (not shape) the character / nature of what is being done or about to be done.

Now we begin to answer the question on how to use the OODA loop, more specifically, how to develop our cops to use it effectively in their every day missions. But using the OODA loop, like John Boyd himself, is about developing Strength of Character. Strength of Character denotes honesty and integrity. Strength of Character means doing what’s right based on our beliefs and a belief system set forth by society. Strength of Character is doing what is right when no one is looking, when there is possibility of receiving no credit or reward. Strength of Character is seeking responsibility and taking joy in making and standing by decisions.

The Boyd Cycle; a clear understanding of the observation, orientation, decision and action "OODA Loop" is a key first step. In the training we conduct through LESC or Adaptive-Leader when we conduct it with law enforcement and security professionals, this tactical decision making and threat assessment tool is a prerequisite that gives us the clear initiative in detecting crime and danger. The Boyd Cycle is a mental tool that helps us first understand how conflict unfolds, as well as, allows us to observe keenly through "all our senses" including intuition.

Accuracy. Going through the OODA loop (Observe-Orient-Decide-Act) faster than your enemies remains important, but accuracy of Observation and Orientation may be more important than speed.5 Because Fourth Generation forces are usually “flat,” networked organizations, state-armed forces must “flatten” their own hierarchical structures in order to remain competitive.

This suggestion is reinforced by the literature on the decision-making process. In the tactical world, this process is often explained using Boyd’s Cycle (Boyd, 1995). Boyd’s Cycle consists of four distinct steps that all people in competition with each other go through when taking action. The first is observe. The person must see or sense what is happening. The second is orientation. The person must put what she or he has seen into context. The third is decision. The person must choose the action the he or she will take. The fourth is the action. The person must do what he or she has decided to do. Together, the steps are referred to as the OODA loop. It is a loop because, after the action is taken, the process starts all over again. When people are opposing each other, this process is time competitive. The person who is able to maneuver through the loop the fastest will win.

When applied to room entries, the OODA loop suggests that the entering officer will be slower to act than a suspect who is already in the room. The entering officer must first scan the room to see if there are any potential threats. The officer must then put what he or she sees into context (e.g., There is a person with a gun. Are they behaving in a threatening manner? Are there other threats? Is it another police officer?). Then the officer must decide what action to take (e.g., shoot/ don’t shoot, give verbal commands, back out of the room, close distance). Finally, the officer must act. The suspect who has already committed to shooting people has a much shorter process to navigate. The suspect must simply observe the officers entering the room and then shoot. The suspect has already done all of the orientation that is needed and decided on his or her course of action. Therefore, the OODA loop predicts that the suspect will be able to move through the cycle faster than the officer. Given the reaction time and decision-making literature, we predict that officers will not generally be able to shoot before the suspects when conducting room entries. We test this hypothesis in the next chapter.

The centrality of orientation The narrow interpretation of the OODA loop also de-emphasizes another essential feature of Boyd’s theory: developing, maintaining and reshaping one’s orientation, the box around which the loop graphically revolves. Speed, brave decisions and heroic actions are pointless if the observation was inaccurate because of our inadequate orientation. Orientation shapes the way we interact with the environment. It is in a sense the ‘genetic code’ of an organism or organization.

For a time, Boyd and Spinney were reluctant to fully explain the OODA Loop; it was far too dangerous. If someone truly understands how to create menace and uncertainty and mistrust, then how to exploit and magnify the presence of these disconcerting elements, the Loop can be vicious, a terribly destructive force, virtually unstoppable in causing panic and confusion and—Boyd’s phrase is best—“unraveling the competition.” This is true whether the Loop is applied in combat, in competitive business practices, in sports, or in personal relationships. The most amazing aspect of the OODA Loop is that the losing side rarely understands what happened.

Implicit Guidance & Control” from “Orientation” with both “Observations” and “Action.” This is his way of pointing out that when one has developed the proper Fingerspitzengefuhl for a changing situation, the tempo picks up and it seems one is then able to bypass the explicit “Orientation” and “Decision” part of the loop, to “Observe” and “Act” almost simultaneously. The speed must come from a deep intuitive understanding of one’s relationship to the rapidly changing environment. This is what enables a commander seemingly to bypass parts of the loop. It is this adaptability that gives the OODA Loop its awesome power. Understanding the OODA Loop enables a commander to compress time—that is, the time between observing a situation and taking an action.

Do you know what the OODA loop is?” Pace made a little face of annoyance. “Of course. It’s a paradigm of combat. Observe, orient, decide, act. The proper sequence of action to engage an enemy.

OODA loop?” “It’s how you deal with uncertainty. Observe, orient, decide, act,

thepsychchic chips clips ii If you think of yourself instead as an almost-victor who thought correctly and did everything possible but was foiled by crap variance? No matter: you will have other opportunities, and if you keep thinking correctly, eventually it will even out. These are the seeds of resilience, of being able to overcome the bad beats that you can’t avoid and mentally position yourself to be prepared for the next time. People share things with you: if you’ve lost your job, your social network thinks of you when new jobs come up; if you’re recently divorced or separated or bereaved, and someone single who may be a good match pops up, you’re top of mind. This attitude is what I think of as a luck amplifier. … you will feel a whole lot happier … and your ready mindset will prepare you for the change in variance that will come … 134-135 W. H. Auden: “Choice of attention—to pay attention to this and ignore that—is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences.” Pay attention, or accept the consequences of your failure. 142 Attention is a powerful mitigator to overconfidence: it forces you to constantly reevaluate your knowledge and your game plan, lest you become too tied to a certain course of action. And if you lose? Well, it allows you to admit when it’s actually your fault and not a bad beat. 147 Following up on Phil Galfond’s suggestion to be both a detective and a storyteller and figure out “what your opponent’s actions mean, and sometimes what they don’t mean.” [Like the dog that didn’t bark in the Sherlock Holmes “Silver Blaze” story.] 159 You don’t have to have studied the description-experience gap to understand, if you’re truly expert at something, that you need experience to balance out the descriptions. Otherwise, you’re left with the illusion of knowledge—knowledge without substance. You’re an armchair philosopher who thinks that just because she read an article about something she is a sudden expert. (David Dunning, a psychologist at the University of Michigan most famous for being one half of the Dunning-Kruger effect—the more incompetent you are, the less you’re aware of your incompetence—has found that people go quickly from being circumspect beginners, who are perfectly aware of their limitations, to “unconscious incompetents,” people who no longer realize how much they don’t know and instead fancy themselves quite proficient.) 161-162 Erik: Generally, the people who cash the most are actually losing players (Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan strategy, jp). You can’t be a winning player by min cashing. 190 The more you learn, the harder it gets; the better you get, the worse you are—because the flaws that you wouldn’t even think of looking at before are now visible and need to be addressed. 191 An edge, even a tiny one, is an edge worth pursuing if you have the time and energy. 208 Blake Eastman: “Before each action, stop, think about what you want to do, and execute.” … Streamlined decisions, no immediate actions, or reactions. A standard process. 217 John Boyd’s OODA: Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. The way to outmaneuver your opponent is to get inside their OODA loop. 224 Here’s a free life lesson: seek out situations where you’re a favorite; avoid those where you’re an underdog. 237 [on folding] No matter how good your starting hand, you have to be willing to read the signs and let it go. One thing Erik has stressed, over and over, is to never feel committed to playing an event, ever. “See how you feel in the morning.” Tilt makes you revert to your worst self. 257 Jared Tindler, psychologist, “It all comes down to confidence, self-esteem, identity, what some people call ego.” 251 JT: “As far as hope in poker, f#¢k it. … You need to think in terms of preparation. Don’t worry about hoping. Just Do.” 252

First, being trained to a highly proficient level does not guarantee that the individual will perform well under force pressure. Second, the lack of training does not guarantee that the individual will not perform well under force pressure.

Success in war requires seizing and maintaining the initiative—and the Marines had adopted Boyd’s OODA loop as the intellectual framework for maneuver warfare.

I learned that past performance in the absence of stress is NOT an indicator of performance under stress and that this is also heavily affected by orientation.

But make no mistake, there’s no human out there operating at normal cognitive and social levels that is not telling themselves a story about who they are and how they fit into the world around them.

What is not so easy is knowing when you yourself are full of shit. Convincing yourself that you are among “the initiated” because you took some classes, ran a Spartan race, or did the Murph for the last three years, or because you have taken jiu-jitsu for eight years and can shoot really well is a mistake. The cool gear, the cool truck, the belt, the patches...it all screams badass. You are creating an image of the Instagram-friendly warrior, but maybe not so much real life.

Without personal experience or death-defying initiation, you are at a deficit here. Your performance is affected by your ability to have clarity concerning the incoming information and to not allow your biases and incestuous amplification to corrupt that information. I would argue that it all begins with acknowledging the reality that we do face the possibility of extreme violence and that violent people are present in every town and every city.

Observation and perception are two separate things; the observing eye is stronger, the perceiving eye is weaker.” What happens between observation and perception? A series of factors come into play where a person tries to interpret and understand what they see through the analysis and synthesis of information as it feeds into their orientation.

This is where mistakes are made, and our perceptions are colored by our fears, attachments, experience or lack thereof, and our cultural inputs and values. This is where incestuous amplification takes place.

Robbing students, police cadets and future soldiers of that process of analysis and synthesis through doing is a leading cause of inaccurate attitudes that graduates have about their own capabilities. It

Humans learn well by doing. The bad part is that street violence, prison, and war are high casualty environments that claim a lot of lives along the way.

stop looking for things and start looking at things.

Loop When we talk about mental aspects, or the survival mindset, it is important to look at the decision-making process. A concept that was applied to combat operations in the military, and is also applied to commercial operations and learning processes, is the OODA Loop. It’s a concept that is important when reacting to an active threat. The OODA Loop, also referred to as Boyd’s Law, was developed by military strategist Colonel John R. Boyd (USAF). OODA stands for Observation, Orientation, Decision, and Action (Sometimes Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act). This was Boyd’s way of quantifying reaction times in combat.

OODA loop,

OODA, stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. This is also called the Boyd Decision Cycle. This process, articulated by Colonel (Ret.) John Boyd, describes the four main steps that a person, group, or organization takes from observing a phenomenon to responding. This is a very helpful way to envision how people observe their surroundings (Observe), make sense of what they see (Orient), decide what to do (Decide), and then execute what they’ve decided (Act). However, just as BAMCIS simply tells a Marine to begin and complete a plan without teaching them how to plan, OODA states that a decision must be made without explaining how to make that decision or what Marines should be seeking to decide intelligently.

Getting to market fast allows you to start getting the feedback you need to improve it. Any product that you’ve carefully refined based on your instincts rather than real user reactions and data is likely to miss the mark and will require significant iteration anyway. The ideal is a tight OODA loop—observe, orient, decide, act—over and over again. Speed really matters, and launching early lets you climb the learning curve to a great product faster.

OODA loop.” The acronym, from military strategy, stands for “observe, orient, decide, act.” It comes into play whenever there are recurring cycles of action and information in a competitive landscape. Whoever can react more quickly (and wisely)—“get inside the other’s OODA loop”—will most likely win.

...remember the OODA Loop.” Slater’s voice rang in her head, his words as clear as if he was walking alongside her. “Observe. Orient. Decide. Act. These steps may save your life one day.

How they think. How they act. How it all determines who wins. His name was John Boyd. Boyd used different words for the first two steps. Instead of Data, he used Observe. Instead of Analysis, he used Orient. But he meant the same thing. A fighter pilot collects data on an enemy pilot by observing. He analyzes by orienting himself to the enemy. He decides what to do, then acts. When Boyd broke thinking into those steps, he discovered something interesting: Whichever pilot goes through the process quickest is the one who usually wins. He called going through the process and repeating it a loop. Boyd’s name for thinking: the OODA Loop. When you get to the end, you start the process again. You gather data on what you just did, analyze that data, and make another decision, followed by another action. Then you do it again. Whoever “loops” most quickly in a dogfight? They usually win. Because of Boyd’s OODA Loop, the U.S. Air Force made a change. They wanted planes to let a pilot go through the OODA Loop as quickly as possible. Planes that moved as quickly as a pilot could think. The process helped the Air Force think more clearly, too. As an organization. Thinking about how a pilot thinks, they made changes. Big changes. They ditched their old way of doing things. Approached the problem differently. Came up with a new plan for more maneuverable, responsive aircraft.