OODA, Say What?
You wouldn’t think that jet fighter combat had much to do with manufacturing efficiency, let alone with how we’re going to rework a university help center. OODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act; the OODA Loop was discovered/invented/proposed by Colonel John Boyd also known as “Genghis John”, the “Ghetto Colonel”, and “Forty Second Boyd” for his standing bet as an instructor pilot that beginning from a position of disadvantage, he could defeat any opposing pilot in air combat maneuvering in less than forty seconds, which if you think about it, brings new meaning to “Agile”. For our purposes the key to the OODA loop is the second “O”; Orientation covers our ability to get inside the mind of the other, what you might think of as the “enemy they”, and getting inside the mind of the our clients and colleagues is critical to our success. The key is what they think; the danger is what we think. Actually’ I’m just getting started with all this, and rather that go into how I think we can use the OODA-loop, I’m going to break off here and use it as an entry point to the Theory of Constraints.
Contextual digression: I’m not sure what it means that combat turns out to be the analogy of choice for business; first Miyamoto Musashi with The Book of Five Rings and now John Boyd. It’s particularly odd given that one of the fundamental precepts of constraint theory is that there are no conflicts in nature – only erroneous assumptions. It may be easier to sell this proposal to the lion pride than a herd of gazelle, but as long as the sun keeps coming up it’s an axiom that’s hard to argue with.
I’ve managed to talk to most of the staff, and in my effort to emphasize the need for (rapid and radical) change, I may have encouraged a depressing paranoia. People keep asking me what the Enemy They think we are doing wrong, followed by what the ET would count as doing right. In sense these aren’t bad questions, but we’ll get more traction by asking, “How can we kick butt?” As Musashi points out, “The warrior succeeds by finding the heart of battle.” Actually what he says is, “…by seeking death,” but that takes a lot of processing.
