“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.” —John Boyd
The OODA Loop is a four-step decision-making process for high-stakes scenarios. The OODA Loop, created by strategist and US Air Force Colonel John Boyd, is a practical idea designed to serve as the cornerstone of rational thought in confused or chaotic situations. "OODA" is an acronym that stands for "Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act."
Decide
1) Observe. Develop robust, acute, and discriminating situational awareness.
As Frans Osinga notes in Science, Strategy, and War, "even if one has perfect information it is of no value if it is not coupled to a penetrating understanding of its meaning, if one does not see the patterns. Judgment is key. Without judgment, data means nothing. It is not necessarily the one with more information who will come out victorious, it is the one with better judgment, the one who is better at discerning patterns."
How can we improve our judgment in order to better grasp our observations in a quickly changing environment?
2) Orient. You must constantly disassemble your old paradigms and reassemble the resulting bits to build a fresh perspective that is more in line with your present reality. This is referred to as "destructive deduction" by Boyd. When we do this, we evaluate and separate our mental concepts into discrete bits. Once we have these essential parts, we may begin the process of "creative induction," which involves leveraging these old fragments to construct new mental conceptions that are more closely aligned with what we have noticed is actually happening around us.
To demonstrate this process, Boyd proposed the following thought experiment:
Imagine you're on a ski slope with other people. Imagine you're in an outboard motorboat. Imagine you're on a bicycle on a beautiful spring day. Imagine you're taking your son to a department store and you notice he's attracted by the toy tractors or tanks with rubber caterpillar treads.
Imagine removing the skis. Imagine removing the outboard motor from the boat. And from the bicycle, you remove the handlebars and dump the rest of the bike. Finally, you remove the rubber treads from the toy truck or tanks. This leaves only the skis, outboard engine, handlebars, and rubber treads.
What happens when you bring these specific elements together?
It's a snowmobile.
In a word, orientation is the ability to make symbolic mental snowmobiles on the go and in the face of uncertainty.
According to Boyd, the ability to orient effectively is what separates the winners from the losers in any conflict: a loser is someone who cannot build snowmobiles when faced with uncertainty and unpredictable change; a winner is someone who can build snowmobiles and employ them appropriately when faced with uncertainty and unpredictable change.
3) Decide. The previous two steps provide the groundwork you need to make an informed decision. If there are multiple options at hand, you need to use your observation and orientation to select one.
4) Act. There is a distinction between making decisions and putting them into action. When you've made up your mind, it's time to act. By acting, you put your decision to the test. The results should show whether it was a good one or not, providing information for when you return to the beginning of the OODA Loop and start observing again.
Loop
Don’t forget the “Loop” part. The process is intended to be repeated again and again until a conflict finishes. Each repetition provides more information to inform the next one, making it a feedback loop.
“We gotta get an image or picture in our head, which we call orientation. Then we have to make a decision as to what we’re going to do, and then implement the decision. . . . Then we look at the [resulting] action, plus our observation, and we drag in new data, new orientation, new decision, new action, ad infinitum.” —John Boyd
Speed
When applying OODA, speed is critical. Those who can complete consecutive OODA loops faster than their opponent will win. This is because your quick OODA Looping "resets" your opponent's OODA Loop by producing bewilderment — it sends them back to square one; back to the observation phase; back to determining how to proceed. This delay gives you additional time to finish your OODA Loop before your opponent.
Imagine what you would do if a man with a gun came in through the door.
You're dead if you hesitated. You got stuck during the orientation phase. You must have a plan that you are confident will work in that situation and put it into action right away. Remember, you must complete your Loop before the bad guy.
According to previous active shooter study, the optimum response is not to leave or hide from the gunman, but to immediately narrow the distance between you and him and incapacitate him. What makes this work? When you rush after the gunman, you disrupt his strategy and his perspective on the world. You're entering his OODA Loop, or "resetting it":
Most dangerous gunmen believe that just because they have a gun, people will do what they say and simply hide. They don't anticipate anyone to chase them down. You're resetting your adversary's Loop by closing the distance since they now have to re-orient themselves to an unexpected shift in the surroundings. You've slowed him down, even if just by a few seconds, which gives you more time to complete your OODA Loop and win the war.
To execute a mental model with this level of speed, you must train and imagine yourself closing the distance in an active shooter situation before it occurs in real life. You'll end up freezing if you don't.
So quick cycling of your OODA Loop can allow you to get inside, or reset, your opponent's, allowing you to finish your Loop first and win the fight. In the OODA Loop, speed is relative.
You just have to loop faster than the person you’re competing against.