Observe, Orient, Decide, Act - Boyd's Strategy System

Thinking strategically is an important skill for a leader.  If you are only a reactive thinker, then you will forever doom yourself to reacting to your competitors.  Or, if you are a military strategic thinker, you will constantly be putting your troops in increasingly vulnerable situations. 

One of the great contributors to the process of strategic thinking is John Boyd.  But he did more than that.  Here's Robert Coram, Boyd's biographer, describing him in an interview at TomPeters.com.

He did a number of things. He was the first man to codify the arcane and hitherto unwritten rules of aerial warfare. He reduced it to a mathematical formula. Then, as a student at Georgia Tech, where he went to get his second degree, he discovered Energy-Maneuverability, which forever changed aviation. Those things alone would have made him worth writing about. But his greatest contributions came after he retired, when he went into seclusion for a year or 18 months and adopted this daunting course of self study. Out of that emerged a briefing called "Patterns of Conflict. ... It made Boyd, in the eyes of many, the greatest military thinker since Sun Tzu."

Boyd's strategic system is simple. 

Observe, Orient, Decide, Act

 

See the PowerPoint of this slide at the Defense in the National Interest site.

What Boyd was trying to do originated in his experience as a fighter pilot.  His purpose was to develop a system of strategic thought that could be done quickly and lead to decisive action more effectively.

From his briefing book entitled Patterns of Conflict, an historical review of the patterns of battle that point his perspective.

Generalization:
· Need fighter that can both lose energy and gain energy more quickly while outturning an adversary.
· In other words, suggests a fighter that can pick and choose engagement opportunities - yet has fast transient (“buttonhook”) characteristics that can be used to either force an overshoot by an attacker or stay inside a hard turning defender.

Idea Expansion:
· Idea of fast transients suggests that, in order to win, we should operate at a faster tempo or rhythm than our adversaries - or, better yet, get inside adversary’s Observation, Orientation, Decision, Action time cycle or loop.
· Why?  Such activity will make us appear ambiguous (unpredictable) thereby generate confusion and disorder among our adversaries - since our adversaries will be unable to generate mental images or pictures that agree with the menacing as well as faster transient rhythm or patterns they are competing against.

The value of this perspective is two fold, as I see it.

1. It allows for more effective decisive judgments in the midst of high stress, pressured situations.  I don't know a leader of an organization that does live daily in a high stress environment.  It you are not, then you are either in denial or your are way underachieving what you can do.

2. It provides for a strategic advantage in being to better anticipate what your competitors and your clients are going to do.  When I began doing strategic visioning projects over ten years ago, they would take a long time to conclude.  I just did not know how to anticipate what was the next move.  I had some of the skills that I need to do good work, but not all of them. Over time, what I have found is that I've learned to think in ways similar to Boyd's system.

If as a leader, you want to be an industry leader, then you need to look into how to think as Col. John Boyd has outlined.  Read the Coram interview and then go here where you will not only find many of Boyd's briefings, but also strategists who are using Boyd's system to look at global issues.  It is fascinating material that will a bit of work will provide any leader a valuable method for strategic thinking. 

Technorati Tags: Col. John Boyd, OODA Loop, Tom Peters, Robert Coram, Strategic Thinking

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