[hedgew]

OODA loop is often hyped, but really it is just a description of how humans (and animals) behave in almost any situation. "Look, Think, Decide, Act" in other words.

It's not valuable in the sense that you can "practice" or "apply" the loop and perform better. Your behavior already follows this model. Its real value probably came from presenting this common decision making process in a way that appealed to upper military management, which made it easier to develop processes and practices that help decision makers (like pilots) in critical situations.

[WJW]

While I agree that the OODA loop is most often presented as a (fairly obvious) decision model for individuals, the model itself is not the big idea. Rather, the primary value comes from the realization that in a competition (like war, or business, or sports, etc) between two or more individuals/groups the ones who can "cycle through" the OODA loop will be able to adapt faster and often gain the upper hand through superior decision making.

In the context of the military, there are ways of reorganizing your command structure to enable faster OODA loop cycling. For example, a major driver of the "slowness" of traditional armies is their centralization of command. Propagating new intel up the chain and orders down to the troops takes a lot of time, especially when intermediate nodes keep dropping out. If you can delegate your decision making to the lowest possible level, this will make the average decision slightly worse, but because you can make each decision much faster you can still come out ahead overall. This is one of the ways an organization can "practice" the loop. (And coincidentally, one that growing startups often struggle with since it is very difficult to transition from direct command to delegation based command)

I also don't agree with your claim that you can't "practice" the loop on an individual level. Anyone who suffers from indecision in the face of uncertainty and overwhelming options ("analysis paralysis") should know that it is something you get better at over time, especially when you need to be doing it under time pressure.

Source: Was a Navy officer for 14 years, we had tons of discussions of "how to get into the opponents loop" during briefings and trainings. Note that in the military it is sometimes possible to actively slow down the opponents OODA looping, something that is probably illegal for most civilian companies. (Though see https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/ for a legal example)

[EthanHeilman]

>I also don't agree with your claim that you can't "practice" the loop on an individual level.

To further agree with what you are saying...

In many sports: people put work in to run their OODA loop faster even they don't call it that. People watch videos of their opponents to learn how to more quickly orient their opponents actions with the context of the sport.

In engineering: unittests, debuggers and IDEs are all designed to provide information that allows a faster OODA loop.

The idea of rapid iteration is based on the idea in exploratory settings with low information a faster OODA loop is often better than a smarter but slower OODA loop.

[npatrick04]

One of the best ways to slow down an opponents OODA loop in soccer is to choose inconsistent actions from play to play. As a forward receiving the ball from defense: dribble (with speed changes), pass back, pass across, etc.

It was pretty awesome hearing my son's team making this type of observation on the field as the opposition repeated the same offensive play, and adapt their response.

[rramadass]

>If you can delegate your decision making to the lowest possible level, this will make the average decision slightly worse, but because you can make each decision much faster you can still come out ahead overall

This is insightful. Each node in the chain is a self-correcting loop. The trick is to make sure that information is sent up the chain more rapidly so that each node can use it to act on its own within the broader objective. Note that "information loss" is a function of both the number of nodes in the chain and time.

[yowlingcat]

Great point and part of why I've increasingly developed a preference for Kanban and optimizing cycle time at organizations I've worked at. There's a great blog post [1] that popped up in my network which I think does an excellent job of describing this in a very visual, tangible manner.

[1] https://erikbern.com/2019/10/16/buffet-lines-are-terrible.ht...

[mamon]

> delegate your decision making to the lowest possible level [...] this will make the average decision slightly worse.

I don't think that's necessarily true. Information going up the chain of command will always be a bit outdated, distorted, and incomplete (unless you can just live-stream video with sound to your command center). So with properly trained soldiers decisions made at lower level can actually be better than those made by higher-ups.

[WJW]

The soldiers on the ground can make better decisions about their own situation, yes. On the other hand, they will never know whether they could be even more useful 100 km further down south unless HQ tells them. Whether that kind of information actually matters changes from operation to operation.

[kirse]

That's a bit underselling it, like saying "E = mc^2 is just a description of how light behaves" and sweeping it under the rug as if the explanatory model provides no additional benefit.

The value comes from the ability to consciously influence the various stages of the process instead of it simply being subconsciously driven. In fact, you can practice and apply the stages of the loop better - for example, making a list of questions you'd like to ask yourself during the observe phase in a given scenario. You practice consciously asking yourself observation questions enough and in time the brain integrates that into the subconscious processing loop.

[Y_Y]

It not a description of how light behaves at all.

[arethuza]

Pretty sure I have met people who tended to do "Act, Look, Think, Decide" in that order!

i.e. Do something daft, look at what they had done, think about the consequences and decide whether to admit to the mistake ;-)

[fluidcruft]

It's the same when run as a loop though, so it's just a difference in opinion about where the loop started.

...), (Act, Look, Think, Decide, (Act, Look, Think, Decide), (Act, Look, ...

..., Act), (Look, Think, Decide, Act), (Look, Think, Decide, Act), (Look, ...

[JshWright]

As long as you keep the "act" small in scale (and you continue to loop through the steps), this is probably the best approach in most circumstances. If for no other reason than is break you out of the initial tendency many people have to freeze when confronted with crisis.

[arethuza]

I'm sure I've been told by someone who had been trained as an officer in the British army that they were very much trained to have a "Bias for Action" - i.e. the worst thing you could in most situations would be to get caught in their version of "analysis paralysis". Of course, he told me this with impeccable self deprecating humour (presumably also part of their training) - so difficult to tell how serious he was being.

[JshWright]

Yeah, my take also comes from prior training (as a firefighter/paramedic). Start moving towards/away from the problem (which direction depends on your own personal defaults and risk tolerance). You don't need to figure everything out before you start moving.

[touisteur]

I heard the same from an ebola containment expert. Can't locate the interview now but it felt borne from hard-earned experience.

[g_sch]

The reason the OODA loop was useful, though, is because it took a decision-making process that was normally used by individuals and brought it into organizations. It seeks to answer the question: how do we minimize the overhead cost of making decisions in large organizations without compromising on effectiveness? Given that it originated in the military, the lack of a "wait for orders" step is what's notable.

[gpm]

I've never been in an organization that needs this sort of model, but my assumption was it was more about what not to do. Don't second guess yourself endlessly, don't panic, don't reminisce about what could have been, don't blindly repeat your last action, don't freeze, etc. In high stress situations people tend to do dumb things, this sounds to me like an attempt to say "don't do that" without saying the word "don't" or specifying the "that".

[beckingz]

Sufficiently large organizations easily panic, second guess themselves, etc.

Formalizing the decision making process helps get to the point where you can make a decision. In risk averse organizations, this is extremely valuable.

[1123581321]

The loop is not (usually) executed sequentially, in nature or in human tactical training.

Boyd’s thinking was useful in the military bureaucracy to make the right types of aircraft that would support high maneuverability and rapid decision making. Training to excel in use of new aircraft only came naturally to the pilots to a certain point, and this is still true today.

However, it’s true that OODA skills like rapid re-orientation are often best taught to humans by putting the right kind of pressure on them so that their instincts will be honed in a useful way, although mastery requires thinking about and tuning those instincts as well.

[sjwest]

I agree that the OODA theory is in line with what any behaviour is. I think the real value of it is with its implementation : "Fail fast, fail often" and agile mentality is born from this original theory, and I think these tactics are invaluable for rapid progress.

I think this also makes OODA an effective strategy: being able to conceptualise the whole system/problem in a holistic manner, and being able to quickly ascertain what are the important variables/factors, and therefore what you need do to to achieve the greatest impact/effect in line with your goal. This is, in my view, the whole point of OODA, and this takes a shrewd intellect and a lot of practice to get good at!

This kind of goes beyond the basic OODA acronym, but consideration of approach through each of the OODA stages is where the value of this theory resides. Indeed I try to implement this approach in my work as a scientist each day!

[chrisseaton]

People were doing manoeuvre warfare for thousands of years before Boyd, as well. People think nobody had any idea what they were doing before OODA. And don't get me started on people who think manoeuvre warfare was invented by Ender...

[elethon]

It might be overhyped but that doesn't mean there's nothing valuable in the model. While it might describe how the world works, it is also intended to bring your attention to specifics. For instance, maybe you don't do a great job of actually looking (observing as it's called in the model). If you have this model in your head to refer to, you can stop and think "Wait, I need to make sure that I'm considering all the relevant evidence before acting".