John Boyd and the four qualities of victorious organizations
jasonlefkowitz.net
jasonlefkowitz.net
I think what is really interesting about Boyd's formulation is that you can also use it as a diagnostic tool if you're having problems. There are various pathologies that appear if you drop one of the letters of OODA and still try to make work out of it. A lot of small startups get stuck in DA loops: they fail to come out for air every once in a while to Observe what is going on in the world and Orient themselves to that situation. A lot of big corporations get stuck in OO loops: they spend tons on meetings, on status reports, on market analysis, but decisions never get made and nobody has the authority to take any action.
By studying each of the pieces, how well you are doing in each, and how streamlined they are, you get a very good idea of how well you are executing work.
It's also very interesting that OODA is a fractal strategy. You have OODA loops inside of OODA loops. You can have a yearly OODA loop (project) with monthly OODA loops inside of it (sprints), and daily OODA loops inside of that (stand-ups and day-to-day operations).
OODA is essentially just another name for the scientific method, so its not really that surprising that it shows up under different names all over everywhere.
(Note: that I'm not intending to minimize the value of OODA by pointing out that it is just another name for the scientific method -- successfully explaining the scientific method in terms that get people to understand it and apply it effectively in specific domains -- particularly ones that have strong, established cultures that resist adaptation, is a significant accomplishment.)
> It's what Scrum is all about.
Well, its what Agile (and perhaps more to the point, Lean) is all about; Scrum is a tightly defined set of processes that comes with the caveat that if you aren't doing this exact set of processes as described, you aren't doing Scrum, and as such its somewhat in tension with OODA.
Basically, I contend that OODA is probably the best model of human cognition - how humans capture and process information into behavior. All behavior.
The scientific method is just one application of OODA. One designed to answer questions.
Strategic thinking is a method to make decisions in face of uncertainty. There is nothing scientific about it, though there are tactics in which a commander might make probing attacks to gain intelligence and test the adversary. Ultimately though, you are making decisions and taking action with inherently incomplete information.
One of the things that happen in adversarial dynamics is to use misinformation to screw around with someone else's OODA loop.
So no, OODA and strategic thinking in general are not essentially just another name for the scientific method, though it may employ science, or a skeptical stance as one of many tools to make decisions and take action. That frame of thinking exposes a limited understanding of OODA and strategy, one that is exploitable by an adversary.
It's also very interesting that OODA is a fractal strategy. You have OODA loops inside of OODA loops. You can have a yearly OODA loop (project) with monthly OODA loops inside of it (sprints), and daily OODA loops inside of that (stand-ups and day-to-day operations).
That's an excellent point and an interesting way of looking at it.
I wonder if many (most?) businesses could benefit from making the OODA loop more explicit in their operations and challenge people to think "What part of the loop am I operating in right now?" when they make decisions or take actions. Encoding the Boyd Loop right into business processes at the BPM level could be an interesting experiment...
But not only is OODA fractal, but it's concurrent. Hundreds running in parallel that comprise the enterprise. The takeaway is that the processes need a shared O for that kind of organization to work.
Here's a deck I put together a while ago on this: http://www.scribd.com/doc/97861801/OODA-Build-Measure-Learn-...
http://www.amazon.com/Science-Strategy-War-Strategic-History...
There are also audio recordings of one of his briefings on YouTube.
Many people come away with only the shallow surface message and end up worse off for it. (Also acts as a nice filter)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Wade_Bode
By the way, its true name is "negative feedback control".
No. That's like saying a car's true name is muffler.
Bode along with Harold Black, Harry Nyquist, all contributed parts to control theory while at Bell.
Boyd incorporated their work to formulate OODA, which is a distinct thing and very much his invention.
The really important thing about "feedback control" as developed by Black, Nyquist, et al. wasn't that they realized it's a good idea to check to see whether your plan is actually achieving its goal, and correct if it's not. That's just common sense, after all (although the usual disclaimer about common sense being uncommon applies).
The real technical contribution of "feedback control" is that true feedback, in the sense of a dynamic system, can control a system without having to build a model of it. I.e. if your control system is fast enough relative to the system it's controlling, it doesn't have to _predict_ anything, it can just _react_.
Which, if you think about it, is really the _opposite_ of what people usually mean when they say your manager gives you feedback in your performance review, customers give you feedback on your product, etc. When you get that kind of feedback, you still have to figure out what it means in order to do anything with it.