OODA Loop

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Do you OODA Loop ?
Observe
Orient
Decide
Act
ImplicitGuidance Control
ImplicitGuidance Control
UnfoldingCircumstances
Observations
Action(Test)
FeedForward
OutsideInformation
UnfoldingInteractionWithEnvironment
UnfoldingInteractionWithEnvironment
Feedback
Welcome - this is a PowerPoint presentation on
Col. John Boyds OODA loop. All sources were
open and available for the public see last
slide for reference information. This slide
presentation was created by Michael Scaliatine,
V.P. Chief of Security for Atlas Security
Investigations, Houston, TX www.txasi.com
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Colonel John Richard Boyd was a United States Air
Force fighter pilot and Pentagon consultant of
the late 20th century, whose theories have been
highly influential in the military, sports,
business, and litigation.
(January 23, 1927 March 9, 1997)
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Boyd's key concept was that of the OODA loop, the
process by which an entity (either an individual
or an organization) reacts to an event. According
to this idea, the key to victory is to be able to
create situations wherein one can make
appropriate decisions more quickly than one's
opponent. The construct was originally a theory
of achieving success in air-to-air combat,
developed out of Boyd's Energy-Maneuverability
theory and his observations on air combat between
MiG-15s and North American F-86 Sabres in Korea.
Harry Hillaker (chief designer of the F-16) said
of the OODA theory, "Time is the dominant
parameter. The pilot who goes through the OODA
cycle in the shortest time prevails because his
opponent is caught responding to situations that
have already changed."
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• Boyd hypothesized that all intelligent organisms
  and organizations undergo a continuous cycle of
  interaction with their environment. Boyd breaks
  this cycle down to four interrelated and
  overlapping processes through which one cycles
  continuously
• Observation the collection of data by means of
  the senses
• Orientation the analysis and synthesis of data
  to form one's current mental perspective
• Decision the determination of a course of action
  based on one's current mental perspective
• Action the physical playing-out of decisions

The chart on slide one (and upcoming slides) is a
reproduction of the only OODA loop chart that Col
Boyd put into any of his briefings (1995).
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The OODA Loop
The word Loop is in hyphens because this entire
process is ever changing and each step will
directly change the next step. Observation might
be your first step, but if Orientation is not
factored, the Observation or Decision might be
wrong.
Observe
Orient
Decide
Act
ImplicitGuidance Control
ImplicitGuidance Control
UnfoldingCircumstances
Observations
Action(Test)
FeedForward
OutsideInformation
UnfoldingInteractionWithEnvironment
UnfoldingInteractionWithEnvironment
Feedback
If your Decision is based on faulty Observation
or Orientation, your Act might be wrong, BUT once
your decision is analyzed with newer
Observations, your Orientation will change and
your Decision/Act will be different, etc. etc.
etc.
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Observe
The first step in the OODA Loop is to
observe. This is the step that allows us to
overcome the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. The
2nd Law of Thermodynamics states (at a basic
level) Individuals or organizations that dont
communicate with the outside world by getting new
information about the environment or by creating
new mental models act like a closed system. And
just as a closed system in nature will have
increasing entropy, or disorder, so too will a
person or organization experience mental entropy
or disorder if theyre cut off from the outside
world and new information.
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Observe
As an open system, were positioned to overcome
confusion-inducing mental entropy. From a
tactical standpoint, to effectively observe you
need to have good situational awareness. You need
to always be in Condition Yellow this is best
described as relaxed alert. Theres no specific
threat situation, but you have your head up and
eyes open, and youre taking in your surroundings
in a relaxed, but alert manner.
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The OODA Loop
Observe
Orient
Decide
Act
ImplicitGuidance Control
ImplicitGuidance Control
UnfoldingCircumstances
Observations
Action(Test)
FeedForward
OutsideInformation
UnfoldingInteractionWithEnvironment
UnfoldingInteractionWithEnvironment
Feedback
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Observe

• Here are a few things you can do to help hone
  your observation skills. These points are not
  strictly for doing your job they are for daily
  living which will increase your observation
  skills and make your job much easier.
• Start keying in on where all the exits are
  whenever you enter a room (or building). If,
  heaven forbid, a person enters with guns blazing,
  you want to know where they might enter and/or
  exit, and you want to know where your closest
  exit is located.

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Observe

• Give the people around you the once over and be
  on the lookout for behavior that doesnt seem
  normal. Normal will depend on the situation and
  environment (having adequate mental models will
  be important in determining baseline behavior ),
  so just because someone is acting weird doesnt
  necessarily mean theyre a threat. Just keep them
  on your radar.
• At the same time you need to pay attention to
  people who are NOT reacting. One of the Boston
  Marathon bombers was seen on (on video) walking
  (upright straight) while everyone else was
  tucked down and frantically running.
• This observation of NOT reacting (an observation
  of normal actions in an abnormal situation)
  helped lead to their identification and arrest.

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Observe

• In his presentations, Boyd notes that well
  encounter two problems in the Observation phase
• We often observe imperfect or incomplete
  information
• We can be inundated with so much information that
  separating the signal from the noise becomes
  difficult (IE Previous slide)
• Luckily, these two pitfalls are solved by
  developing our judgment. As John Boyd scholar
  Frans P.B. Osinga notes even if one has perfect
  information it is of no value if it is not
  coupled to a penetrating understanding of its
  meaning, if one does not see the patterns.
• Judgment is key. Without judgment, data means
  nothing. It is not necessarily the one with more
  information who will come out victorious, it is
  the one with better judgment, the one who is
  better at discerning patterns.

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Observe in the OODA Loop

• Other items noted in Col Boyds observation step
  include
• Unfolding Circumstances
• Can you adjust as things happen?
• Guidance Information
• What were you told to observe?
• Unfolding interaction w/environment
• IE Does daylight/nighttime change your
  observation? Can you adjust?
• Implicit Guidance Control
• What are your orders? Procedures?

ImplicitGuidance Control
UnfoldingCircumstances
Observations
OutsideInformation
UnfoldingInteractionWithEnvironment
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The OODA Loop
Observe
Orient
Decide
Act
ImplicitGuidance Control
ImplicitGuidance Control
UnfoldingCircumstances
Observations
Action(Test)
FeedForward
OutsideInformation
UnfoldingInteractionWithEnvironment
UnfoldingInteractionWithEnvironment
Feedback
19
Orient
The most important step in the OODA Loop, but one
that often gets overlooked, is Orient. Boyd
called this step the schwerpunkt (a word he
borrowed from the German Blitzkrieg), it means
focal point of the loop. The reason Orient is
the schwerpunkt of the OODA Loop is because
thats where our mental models exist, and it is
our mental models that shape how everything in
the OODA Loop works. 
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In the OODA Loop, what does Orient mean?
Dr. Frans P.B. Osinga (a scholar of all things
Boyd) notes, orientation shapes the way we
interact with the environmentit shapes the way
we observe, the way we decide, the way we act. In
this sense, orientation shapes the character of
present OODA loops, while the present loop shapes
the character of future orientation. So how
does one orient himself in a rapidly changing
environment? You constantly have to break apart
your old paradigms and put the resulting pieces
back together to create a new perspective that
better matches your current reality.
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Orient
What does this mean? Lets pretend for a moment.
Imagine that you are on a ski slope with other
skiersor that you are in Florida riding in an
outboard motorboat, maybe even towing
water-skiers. Imagine that you are riding a
bicycle on a nice spring day. Imagine that you
are a parent taking your son to a department
store and that you notice he is fascinated by the
toy tractor with rubber caterpillar treads.
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Orient
Now imagine that you pull the skis off but you
are still on the ski slope. Imagine also that you
remove the outboard motor from the motorboat, and
you are no longer in Florida. And from the
bicycle you remove the handle-bar and discard the
rest of the bike. Finally, you take off the
rubber treads from the toy tractor. This leaves
only the following separate pieces skis,
outboard motor, handlebars and rubber treads.
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Orient
Col Boyd would speak to groups and ask them to
imagine all these items and then pull the items
apart defining each part into a new definitive
element. He would then ask his audience to
imagine what emerges when you put these separated
particular parts together. So if you take the
Handle bars from the bike, the Engine from the
boat, the Skis, and the Track from the tractor
what would you have if you combined these parts.
Did you figure it
out?
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Its a Snow Mobile
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Orient
Boyd calls the first part of this process
destructive deduction. When we do this, we
analyze and pull apart our mental concepts into
discrete parts. Once we have these constitutive
elements, we can start the process of creative
induction using these old fragments to form
new mental concepts that more closely align with
what we have observed is really happening around
us.
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Orient
Orienting, in a nutshell, is the ability to make
figurative mental snowmobiles on the fly and in
the face of uncertainty. According to Boyd, the
ability to orient effectively is what separated
the winners from the losers in any conflict.
Lets try again with a different scenario.
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• You observe a vehicle pull up to the front door
  of the business you are protecting. The vehicle
  stops, the driver stays inside it.
• A man in a trench coat walks in the business. He
  came from across the street. It is mid July.
• A woman comes in the business in a low cut blouse
  and distracts the man behind the counter with
  flirtatious conversation. She came from the
  passenger side of the car out front.
• The man in the trench coat does not look for
  anything in the store, does not pick up anything
  in the store and is only watching the
  conversation taking place at the counter.
• Use creative destruction creative induction to
  explain how you are contemplating a possible
  decision based on observation and orientation.

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Orient
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Orient
Combining all the elements while using creative
destruction creative induction will most likely
prepare you to decide to act upon the pending
robbery or theft. Most all of the parts are
normal and mundane within their own context. With
skilled orientation you may quickly deduce the
true nature of events about to unfold. The person
who does this faster will prevail in any
conflict.
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Orient
You constantly have to break apart your old
paradigms and put the resulting pieces back
together to create a new perspective that better
matches your current reality.
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• Other items in Boyds Orient step of the OODA
  Loop include
• Cultural Traditions
• Is it a hood or a Burka?
• Genetic Heritage
• Col Boyd never clarified the details of this
  portion. We can only assume its in reference to
  differences in heritage.
• New Information
• As information changes, the OODA loop responds
  accordingly.

Orient
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• Other items in Boyds Orient step of the OODA
  Loop include
• Analyses Synthesis
• ANALYSIS is breaking down the problem that you
  are examining in order to understand each
  individual part.
• SYNTHESIS is combining multiple sources or ideas
  into a whole, in order to understand Shared
  qualities between each individual part.

Orient
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• Other items in Boyds Orient step of the OODA
  Loop include
• Previous Experiences
• It is our natural instinct to react to stimulus
  with the same actions that were taken when
  identical stimulus required us to react in the
  past.
• This is often involuntary.
• Training helps overcome this reaction.

Orient
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Orient
Is it possible to react against natural instinct?
This Secret Service agent was protecting
president Reagan when shots rang out. He
instantly made his body bigger, he stayed
standing, he directly faced the gunfire, and he
got shot in the process, possibly saving the
president. Both lived.
Most people will react to gunfire by ducking
down, facing away from the gunfire, and doing
whatever they can to not get shot. Why did this
agent respond against his natural instinct?
Training is the answer.
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The OODA Loop
Observe
Orient
Decide
Act
ImplicitGuidance Control
ImplicitGuidance Control
UnfoldingCircumstances
Observations
Action(Test)
FeedForward
OutsideInformation
UnfoldingInteractionWithEnvironment
UnfoldingInteractionWithEnvironment
Feedback
37
Decide (Hypothesis)

• Boyd doesnt articulate much about the decision
  step except that its the component in
  which actors decide among action alternatives
  generated in the Orientation phase.
• For Boyd, its impossible to select a perfectly
  matching mental model because
• We often have imperfect information of our
  environment
• Even if we had perfect information, Heisenbergs
  Uncertainty Principle prevents us from attaining
  a perfect match-up between our environment and
  our mental model
• Consequently, when we decide which mental
  model(s) to use, were forced to settle for ones
  that arent perfect, but good enough.

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Decide (Hypothesis)
Its interesting to note that in his sketch of
the OODA Loop, Boyd put Hypothesis in
parentheses next to Decide, suggesting the
uncertain nature of our decisions.  When we
decide, were essentially moving forward with our
best hypothesis our best educated guess
about which mental model will work. To find out
if our hypothesis is correct, we then have to
test it, which takes us to our next step ACT
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The OODA Loop
Decide
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The OODA Loop
Observe
Orient
Decide
Act
ImplicitGuidance Control
ImplicitGuidance Control
UnfoldingCircumstances
Observations
Action(Test)
FeedForward
OutsideInformation
UnfoldingInteractionWithEnvironment
UnfoldingInteractionWithEnvironment
Feedback
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Act
The question, of course, is, What action? A
thinking opponent doesnt provide us with a
laundry list of his tactics so we can work out
responses in advance. The mechanism which handles
this uncertainty and makes the loop function in a
real world situation is Orientation. As we suck
in information via the Observe gateway, and
particularly mismatches between what we predict
and what actually happens, we have to change our
orientation (and hence the implicit guidance and
control flowing from orientation.)
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Act
Note that OODA speed is quite different from
the speed of our actions. Doing something dumb,
but doing it at high speed, may not provide much
of a competitive advantage.
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• Key Points
• When youre doing OODA loops right, accuracy
  and speed improve together they dont trade off.
• An essential task of leadership is to create
  mainly by example an organization that gets
  better and better (and better) at these things.

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SourcesScience, Strategy, and War by Frans
P.B. Osinga, 2005, paperbackThe Mind of War
John Boyd and American Security by Grant Hammond,
2001, eBookBoyd The Fighter Pilot Who Changed
the Art of War by Robert Coram, 2004,
paperbackA Vision So Noble by Daniel Ford,
2010, paperbackCurtis Sprague of Dark Horse
Tactical, 2016, InternetThe Kettle Creek
Corporation, 2006Brett Kate McKay September
15, 2014, A Man's Life, Personal Development, The
Tao of Boyd How to Master the OODA Loop, Internet