John Boyd was a USAF colonel, legendary military strategist and thinker.
He is perhaps best known for his OODA Loop (for Observation, Orientation, Decision, Action), a concept worth knowing about. Here is Wikipedia on the OODA Loop:
Boyd’s key concept was that of the decision cycle or 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.
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
This decision cycle is thus also known as the OODA loop. Boyd emphasized that this decision cycle is the central mechanism enabling adaptation (apart from natural selection) and is therefore critical to survival.
Boyd theorized that large organizations such as corporations, governments, or militaries possessed a hierarchy of OODA loops at tactical, grand-tactical (operational art), and strategic levels. In addition, he stated that most effective organizations have a highly decentralized chain of command that utilizes objective-driven orders, or directive control, rather than method-driven orders in order to harness the mental capacity and creative abilities of individual commanders at each level. In 2003, this power to the edge concept took the form of a DOD publication “Power to the Edge: Command…Control…in the Information Age” by Dr. David S. Alberts and Richard E. Hayes. Boyd argued that such a structure creates a flexible “organic whole” that is quicker to adapt to rapidly changing situations. He noted, however, that any such highly decentralized organization would necessitate a high degree of mutual trust and a common outlook that came from prior shared experiences. Headquarters needs to know that the troops are perfectly capable of forming a good plan for taking a specific objective, and the troops need to know that Headquarters does not direct them to achieve certain objectives without good reason.
In 2007, strategy writer Robert Greene discussed the loop in a post called OODA and You. He insisted that it was “deeply relevant to any kind of competitive environment: business, politics, sports, even the struggle of organisms to survive”, and claimed to have been initially “struck by its brilliance”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_(military_strategist)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_Loop
http://www.powerseductionandwar.com/archives/ooda_and_you.phtml
http://boyd2008.ning.com/video/video/show?id=2171602%3AVideo%3A23
