Military combat often requires swift decision making. Decisions that could mean life or death
at any moment. This level of quick thinking and choice making is crucial to gaining a
competitive advantage on the battlefield and can even determine who ultimately ends up victorious.
In the Art of War, Sun Tzu wrote that “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war,
while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.” Now, I’m not necessarily
telling you to take a 2500 year old quote as gospel, but there is something to bear
in mind here. And that is success often manifests through diligent planning and effective action.
In other words, victory — whether it’s on the battlefield or in the marketplace
can truly depend on well defined insights and strategy before deciding to act on it.
So having said that, how can you start to make better decisions for yourself in your own life.
Well, allow me to introduce you to the OODA Loop.
The OODA loop was developed in the mid-20th century by military strategist and US Air Force
Colonel John Boyd. The goal of the strategy was to create a model for rational decision making
in order to make the best choices in the shortest time. While this was initially
developed for use during the Korean War, the OODA Loop has become a mainstay for decision
making from business to sport, and has often been depicted as a simple four-stage linear cycle.
The first is Observe: This is the data collection phase. It’s the point at which you attempt to
ingest all the information you can. At this stage, you aren’t really thinking about how to
assess or execute on that data. It’s simply about aggregating the available information as well as
separating the information which is relevant for a particular decision from that which is not.
The second stage is Orient: During the orient phase, you analyze the information you’ve
collected. So whatever observation you’ve made is transformed into insights. Your data is analyzed,
evaluated, and structured. Boyd believes this to be the most crucial stage because
it requires you to have an awareness about yourself as well as whatever you are working on.
The third stage is Decide: Once you’ve analyzed the information that you’ve collected,
you’re likely in a good place to decide whether you want to act on it. This decision stage is
about choosing which path or action would provide you with the most desirable outcome.
And the fourth stage is Act: This last stage of acting upon your decision consists of not just
executing, but also evaluating whether your approach to all the other stages of the loop
were right. This is what helps you make better decisions in the future and so
Acting is never really the final stage of the loop.
Instead it is critical to you making faster and more effective decisions in the future.
With the OODA loop, you can absorb information around you and interpret it within the parameters
of the objective that you want to achieve. By going through each step in the loop and
updating your decision based on real-time data, it becomes possible to identify structural issues,
develop effective strategies, and implement solutions faster than you would otherwise.
What I’ve learnt from implementing the OODA Loop is that great decisions are made not just
for effective action, but also as a learning practice so that you can get better with time.
And maybe that’s why this model is so great because it shows you that even if a choice you
made was less than perfect, you can use those lessons to become truly great in the future.
Now, what often happens in most cases is people tend to get stuck on observing and orienting
themselves over and over and never end up making that decision and going with it. So many of us
often get caught up in wanting to analyze as many observations as possible so that we can come to
an ideal decision before enacting it. But this theory states that one’s ability to act quickly
is what separates those who succeed from those who fail.
You’re not always going to have all the information you need, and so there
will be times when you need to decide how much information is acceptable before moving forward.
Mental models like this are simply a way of looking at and understanding the world.
They map out our expectations for how the world works. There are bound to be variables depending
on who is making the decision but I think that the OODA Loop does a decent job of considering that.
In this case, The Orient stage is also viewed as an aggregate of our genetic composition,
culture and past experiences, and so it has a strong influence on the way that we observe
things and it filters that information in order for us to decide and act accordingly,
which as I said earlier is exactly why John Boyd views this as the most important stage.
The OODA Loop has long been identified as a way to reduce reaction time and enable quicker
and more streamlined decision-making. This framework was initially created
to provide an advantage of speed in combat, so bear that in mind that in everyday life,
it may not always be the best to favor speed necessarily. Instead, I’ve used this method to
become more comfortable with uncertainty in the decisions that I make and have a process that I
can rely on if I need to act on something fast. So the next time you’re in a position where you
have to make a bunch of rapid decisions in order to give yourself a competitive advantage, try to
use this 4 step model to cover your bases and make the best decision possible in the shortest time.
Thanks for watching this video. I’m curious to know what your process is for making quick
decisions. How do you go about making tough calls? Leave your comments below the like
button right down below. I’m looking forward to seeing you there. Until next time. Peace