I have spent the last several days searching for a YouTube video, information that discusses the feedback loops that are contained in this drawing of the OODA Loop:
It seems when most people discuss OODA, they spend most of their time talking about Observe-Orient-Decide-Act. Often they compare the process to PDCA which I disagree with as I believe it is the process of CAP-Do. A brief summary from my past writings:
The OODA Loop when observed is actually the CAP-Do cycle when applied to Lean Language. The strength of OODA Loop is in the first two steps, Observe and Orientate. Just as Check and Act are in CAP-Do. In Boyd’s terminology, the D in the OODA Loop stands for Decision or formulating the Plan to carry out the Hypothesis. He uses A, act to perform the hypothesis or the Do cycle. I believe CAP-Do, the OODA Loop, is the best way to apply Lean in an external environment.
Through all the information, I plowed through maybe not so surprisingly a quote from John Boyd himself summed up the feedback loops better than anything else. An excerpt from the article, The Strategy of the Fighter Pilot written by: Keith H. Hammonds for Fast Company:
Systems like Toyota’s worked so well, Boyd argued, because of Schwerpunkt, a German term meaning organizational focus. Schwerpunkt, Boyd wrote, “represents a unifying medium that provides a directed way to tie initiative of many subordinate actions with superior intent as a basis to diminish friction and compress time.” Employees decide and act locally, but they are guided by a keen understanding of the bigger picture. In effective organizations, Schwerpunkt connects vibrant OODA loops that are operating concurrently at several levels. Workers close to the action stick to tactical loops, and their supervisors travel in operational loops while leaders navigate much broader strategic and political loops. The loops inform each other: If everything is clicking, feedback from the tactical loops will guide decisions at higher loops and vice versa.
I would assume from this article the idea of the most inner feedback loop contained in the diagram above would be the tactical loop, operational loops would be the middle feedback loop and outer loop the strategic and political loops. As I worked through the process of trying to find more information about the feedback loops I found a dissertation from Chet Richards on the Implicit Guidance & Control (IG & C) Box:
The primary reason for implicit guidance when engaged with opponents is that explicit instructions-written orders, for example-would take too much time. As Boyd (1987a) put it, “The key idea is to emphasize implicit over explicit in order to gain a favorable mismatch in friction and time (i.e, ours lower than any adversary’s) for superiority in shaping and adapting to circumstances” (p. 22). For the same reason, initiating actions via the circular OODA loop does not work well when one is engaged with an opponent. The need to go through stages before coming around to action is too slow, as Storr observed, and too easy to disrupt (Klein, 1999). If, on the other hand, action can flow rapidly from orientation directly via an implicit guidance and control (IG&C) link, then any pattern of actions becomes possible.
We’ve been discussing the IG&C link from orientation to action, but there’s another one, from orientation to observation. Orientation, whether we want it to or not, exerts strong control over what we observe.
Implicit Guidance & Control can only be effective if a team has the same orientation or as we might say “on the same page”. What made the OODA Loop effective is not adjusting the Orientation in the heat of battle but the ability of the unit/team to act within their understood boundaries. They had clarity surrounding their mission and purpose.
Boyd also said:
Successful organizations exploit the variety of experiences and perspectives found within their members, but they also harmonize them to accomplish common objectives. This is not as easy as it seems. Rigidly enforced organizational dogma, for example, can produce a type of harmony, but it rarely encourages subordinate initiative. There is a way, however, to achieve both harmony and initiative. Boyd (1986) asserted that “Without a common outlook, superiors cannot give subordinates freedom-of-action and maintain coherency of ongoing action.” Therefore, “A common outlook … represents a unifying theme that can be used to simultaneously encourage subordinate initiative yet realize superior intent” (p. 74).
If you have studied the Lean concept of Leader Standard Work things are much clearer. It is the ideas of boundaries or the common outlook that creates the speed within the loop. It is not about iterations, it is the idea of standard work that makes the OODA Loop effective.
There is also one other neglected area in most OODA Loop conversations. The use of the term Feed Forward. I doubt that John Boyd used that term loosely. I would like to think that Boyd thought of Feed Forward in a similar manner to how Marshall Goldsmith discusses it:
You can change the future. You can’t change the past. The Marshall Goldsmith FeedForward Tool helps you to envision and focus on a positive future, not a failed past. Athletes are often trained using feedforward. Basketball players are taught to envision the ball going in the hoop and to imagine the perfect shot. By giving you ideas on how you can be even more successful, the Marshall Goldsmith FeedForward Tool can increase your chances of achieving this success in the future.
We all tend to accept feedback that is consistent with the way we see ourselves. We also tend to reject or deny feedback that is inconsistent with the way we see ourselves.
When you review the FeedForward labels in the OODA Loop, you can easily envision them as being only a positive and futuristic hand-off. Since I have similar Orientation as my commander or supervisor, I would think of it as something I would want to do, not have to do. When thought of like this you can see how the rhythm of the loops increase and the amount of positive thinking taking place even in the most precarious positions.
I will end with one more quote and the conclusion to Chet Walker’s paper:
Boyd’s OODA “loop” provides an effective framework for igniting creativity and initiative throughout an organization and harmonizing them to achieve the organization’s goals. For the loop” to work, however, organizations must use the one Boyd actually drew and evolve their own practices suitable for their people and their competitive environments.
Chet Walker’s paper: BoydsRealOODA_Loop