4 ms·

I'm unclear as to what's novel about OODA. Can someone give me an alternative model for context? It seems like all other permutations, e.g. DOAO or ADOO or DOO

by dheera 6y ago

I'm unclear as to what's novel about OODA. Can someone give me an alternative model for context? It seems like all other permutations, e.g. DOAO or ADOO or DOOA wouldn't make sense, so what is the "eureka" about OODA? Also, separately, it just sounds to me like perception (OO), planning (D), control (A) renamed so I'm still not seeing what's novel about it.

ghgdynb1 6y ago
I'm not sure, I'm not an expert in this and I've never been in the military. However, I bet there's little to nothing uniquely good about OODA over the alternatives you mention. My guess is that having a standardized rapid decision making framework is valuable compared to the frantic scramble that might take place otherwise.
- craftinator 6y ago
  > My guess is that having a standardized rapid decision making framework is valuable compared to the frantic scramble that might take place otherwise. Having been in the military and received specific training on tactical decision making, I can say that this is a pretty good take on why OODA is taught. When you're in any situation where you need to maintain positive control on the outcome, the biggest problem you can run into is when the situation changes in an unexpected way (insert classic Napoleon paraphrase "Plans are the first casualties in contact with the enemy"). The reason why the OODA loop is specifically used, rather than other permutations of the same idea, is that it's very efficient. For the classic HN crowd, a good analogy or application of OODA would be a PID loop, or any other event-driven feedback system. Observe: has the situation changed? If not, continue with the current plan, else orient. Orient: how can we change to match the situation, given who we are and what we're doing? If there are no positive changes to make, keep observing, else make a decision. Decide: can we make a decision based on our new orientation? If not, return to observe, else act. Act: perform the decision, then return to observing, paying special attention to the outcome of the actions. Using this loop properly, at each stage you're still ready to go back to observing, and less likely to get mired in back and forth decision making without a solid reassessment. This thought pattern is especially helpful in small team leaders, as they often have the flexibility and direct observational abilities to make full use of the information at hand. It tends not to work as well for single individuals and large organizations (in my experience), for individuals because of the incomplete information, and for organizations because of the signal delays in information and enactment.
- craftinator 6y ago
  A couple of additional benefits of OODA loops, not editing my original because I'm on mobile: It really helps prevent micromanaging, because it encourages the team leader to only change orders in response to a change in what they've observed. It's very useful in after action debriefing ("debugging" for the HN crowd), because specific questions can be asked about where in the OODA loop a fault occured. Did you observe something incorrectly, or miss noticing a key detail? Did you incorrectly orient yourself because you didn't understand the purpose of what you were doing? Did you make a bad decision, or the wrong decision? Did you do everything else right, but your team failed in taking action correctly? Utilizing this framework gives granularity and introspection to you decision making process. It prevents undermanagement, as you feel compelled (and justified) in responding to a changing situation, rather than fighting with yourself about taking action.
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    "after action debriefing" = retrospective. A critical part of agile processes that's often ignored. It permits not just the examination of the product under development, but the processes that are in use. It's a crucial difference between most organizations and proper "learning organizations". Most organizations (here I mean from team on up to large corporations) do not sufficiently introspect and retrospect to discover their own flaws (and we all have flaws). Learning organizations incorporate those two activities into their culture and methods in order to properly react to their competition and satisfy their customers.
karmakaze 6y ago
These two lines show how this is a dynamic interactive activity--like there are tight and loose loops continuously updating the decision making processes. Sort of like agile vs waterfall. > “Orientation isn’t just a state you’re in; it’s a process. You’re always orienting.” —John Boyd > The second stage of the OODA Loop, orient, is less intuitive than the other steps. [...]
- dheera 6y ago
  Ironically I never understood agile and waterfall either. I always thought that the entire universe operates by what people seem to call "waterfall", and "agile" was just a term that managers use when they're not happy with the way the universe works so they can bump up their own reputation.
Jtsummers 6y ago
The eureka was giving it a name in order to articulate its importance in tactical and strategic thinking. That's really it. Other people, throughout history, have operated in the same fashion but either not described what they did or described it in different terms.
- dheera 6y ago
  Hmm interesting. Maybe I should give a name to shoveling dirt. Look, Align, Poke, Scoop. LAPS. The most efficient way to get the most dirt shoveled is the LAPS loop. It's revolutionary. Can I be famous?
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    Perhaps if it leads to a better way to discuss or perform the task itself. I mean, someone came up with PASS (pull, aim, squeeze, sweep) but I don't think they became famous for it.
  - blaser-waffle 6y ago
    Dig into this a little more, so to speak. If you can stretch the joke for 3-5 pages you could be an RFC.
- AlexCoventry 6y ago
  Yes, his "patterns of conflict" slide deck goes through something like a dozen examples of historical battles which illustrate his principles. Some of the battles were thousands of years ago.
jfarmer 6y ago
It seems like "perception, planning, control" is used for autonomous vehicles? That's all I see when I google it. Boyd outlined OODA in the 1970s, so it's "novel" in the sense that it came ~30 years earlier. From a human perspective, I think the novelty is that that it focuses attention on hard-to-see aspects of decision-making. It's not about the quality of any given decision, but about your ability to keep the song going and evolving in the right direction. If you read Boyd's original material, he doesn't reallllllly see it as a loop. Every "node" in the process can feed back into previous parts. The focus is more on rhythm, tempo, beats. He almost always writes "Loop" with quotes. A slide directly from him: https://share.getcloudapp.com/L1uN1RAJ https://share.getcloudapp.com/L1uN1RAJ It's really worth reading Boyd directly. His picture is way more interesting and nuanced than "just go through the OODA loop faster". It's more like: you want to make it hard for your opponent to keep the beat.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Boyd outlined OODA in the 1970s Every source I find says sometime in the mid-1950s. (The vagueness seems to be because he published very little, and the OODA loop was presented predominantly in oral brieifings; most of his writings that have been published or mined by other writers weren't intended for publication, but are briefing notes.)
  - jfarmer 6y ago
    He would've been 23 in 1950, so that seems unlikely. Nothing from the 50s listed here: https://www.colonelboyd.com/boydswork https://www.colonelboyd.com/boydswork AFAIK you first see the core concerns driven home here: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58a3add7e3df28d9fbff4501/t/58a4a32ce4fcb5d8f00b7243/1487184684871/Destruction+and+Creation_3+Sep+1976.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58a3add7e3df28d9fbff4...
  - AndrewKemendo 6y ago
    OODA was formalized in the 1960-70s with his destruction and creation briefing/seminar, and later EM theory work. However Boyd came up with the theory in the 1950s while he was a fighter instructor at Fighter Weapons School (TOP GUN for the Air Force).
dragonwriter 6y ago
> I'm unclear as to what's novel about OODA. Well, it's almost 70 years old, so, literally, nothing about it is novel. > It seems like all other permutations, e.g. DOAO or ADOO or DOOA wouldn't make sense But it didn't emerge in a context where the four stages were taken as given but people were just trying to figure out how to order them. Nor did it emerge as a novel thing people should do. OODA, at the level of the acronym and it's expansion, is a description of a fairly simple observation of what people inherently do. It's also the organizational outline for a body of work on how they ought to do each part of it (delivered by its originator, John Boyd, in in-person briefings that apparently ran up to 5 hours, and in quite large written works by people downstream from Boyd.)
mgarfias 6y ago
The novelty isn't in describing how people perceive the world/conflict. It was in codifying it, such that you could take preemptive action to make your opponent's world view change in mid decision phase, thus rendering them confused. Clausewitz taught that the way to victory in war was to reduce your friction in operation, so things go smoothly for you. Boyd showed that a better way was to not worry so much about your own friction, but to cause the friction in your opponent.
jasonra 6y ago
See here the original presentation on OODA Loop that has been given at Quantico Marine base dozens of times by John Boyd's associate of 20 years Chuck Spinney. It shows the thinking method behind the OODA Loop--Evolutionary Epistemology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdK4y6O-llE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdK4y6O-llE

by dheera 6y ago

ghgdynb1 6y ago

I'm not sure, I'm not an expert in this and I've never been in the military. However, I bet there's little to nothing uniquely good about OODA over the alternatives you mention. My guess is that having a standardized rapid decision making framework is valuable compared to the frantic scramble that might take place otherwise.

craftinator 6y ago
> My guess is that having a standardized rapid decision making framework is valuable compared to the frantic scramble that might take place otherwise. Having been in the military and received specific training on tactical decision making, I can say that this is a pretty good take on why OODA is taught. When you're in any situation where you need to maintain positive control on the outcome, the biggest problem you can run into is when the situation changes in an unexpected way (insert classic Napoleon paraphrase "Plans are the first casualties in contact with the enemy"). The reason why the OODA loop is specifically used, rather than other permutations of the same idea, is that it's very efficient. For the classic HN crowd, a good analogy or application of OODA would be a PID loop, or any other event-driven feedback system. Observe: has the situation changed? If not, continue with the current plan, else orient. Orient: how can we change to match the situation, given who we are and what we're doing? If there are no positive changes to make, keep observing, else make a decision. Decide: can we make a decision based on our new orientation? If not, return to observe, else act. Act: perform the decision, then return to observing, paying special attention to the outcome of the actions. Using this loop properly, at each stage you're still ready to go back to observing, and less likely to get mired in back and forth decision making without a solid reassessment. This thought pattern is especially helpful in small team leaders, as they often have the flexibility and direct observational abilities to make full use of the information at hand. It tends not to work as well for single individuals and large organizations (in my experience), for individuals because of the incomplete information, and for organizations because of the signal delays in information and enactment.
craftinator 6y ago
A couple of additional benefits of OODA loops, not editing my original because I'm on mobile: It really helps prevent micromanaging, because it encourages the team leader to only change orders in response to a change in what they've observed. It's very useful in after action debriefing ("debugging" for the HN crowd), because specific questions can be asked about where in the OODA loop a fault occured. Did you observe something incorrectly, or miss noticing a key detail? Did you incorrectly orient yourself because you didn't understand the purpose of what you were doing? Did you make a bad decision, or the wrong decision? Did you do everything else right, but your team failed in taking action correctly? Utilizing this framework gives granularity and introspection to you decision making process. It prevents undermanagement, as you feel compelled (and justified) in responding to a changing situation, rather than fighting with yourself about taking action.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  "after action debriefing" = retrospective. A critical part of agile processes that's often ignored. It permits not just the examination of the product under development, but the processes that are in use. It's a crucial difference between most organizations and proper "learning organizations". Most organizations (here I mean from team on up to large corporations) do not sufficiently introspect and retrospect to discover their own flaws (and we all have flaws). Learning organizations incorporate those two activities into their culture and methods in order to properly react to their competition and satisfy their customers.

karmakaze 6y ago

These two lines show how this is a dynamic interactive activity--like there are tight and loose loops continuously updating the decision making processes. Sort of like agile vs waterfall. > “Orientation isn’t just a state you’re in; it’s a process. You’re always orienting.” —John Boyd > The second stage of the OODA Loop, orient, is less intuitive than the other steps. [...]

dheera 6y ago
Ironically I never understood agile and waterfall either. I always thought that the entire universe operates by what people seem to call "waterfall", and "agile" was just a term that managers use when they're not happy with the way the universe works so they can bump up their own reputation.

Jtsummers 6y ago

The eureka was giving it a name in order to articulate its importance in tactical and strategic thinking. That's really it. Other people, throughout history, have operated in the same fashion but either not described what they did or described it in different terms.

dheera 6y ago
Hmm interesting. Maybe I should give a name to shoveling dirt. Look, Align, Poke, Scoop. LAPS. The most efficient way to get the most dirt shoveled is the LAPS loop. It's revolutionary. Can I be famous?
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  Perhaps if it leads to a better way to discuss or perform the task itself. I mean, someone came up with PASS (pull, aim, squeeze, sweep) but I don't think they became famous for it.
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  Dig into this a little more, so to speak. If you can stretch the joke for 3-5 pages you could be an RFC.
AlexCoventry 6y ago
Yes, his "patterns of conflict" slide deck goes through something like a dozen examples of historical battles which illustrate his principles. Some of the battles were thousands of years ago.

jfarmer 6y ago

It seems like "perception, planning, control" is used for autonomous vehicles? That's all I see when I google it. Boyd outlined OODA in the 1970s, so it's "novel" in the sense that it came ~30 years earlier. From a human perspective, I think the novelty is that that it focuses attention on hard-to-see aspects of decision-making. It's not about the quality of any given decision, but about your ability to keep the song going and evolving in the right direction. If you read Boyd's original material, he doesn't reallllllly see it as a loop. Every "node" in the process can feed back into previous parts. The focus is more on rhythm, tempo, beats. He almost always writes "Loop" with quotes. A slide directly from him: https://share.getcloudapp.com/L1uN1RAJ https://share.getcloudapp.com/L1uN1RAJ It's really worth reading Boyd directly. His picture is way more interesting and nuanced than "just go through the OODA loop faster". It's more like: you want to make it hard for your opponent to keep the beat.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> Boyd outlined OODA in the 1970s Every source I find says sometime in the mid-1950s. (The vagueness seems to be because he published very little, and the OODA loop was presented predominantly in oral brieifings; most of his writings that have been published or mined by other writers weren't intended for publication, but are briefing notes.)
- jfarmer 6y ago
  He would've been 23 in 1950, so that seems unlikely. Nothing from the 50s listed here: https://www.colonelboyd.com/boydswork https://www.colonelboyd.com/boydswork AFAIK you first see the core concerns driven home here: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58a3add7e3df28d9fbff4501/t/58a4a32ce4fcb5d8f00b7243/1487184684871/Destruction+and+Creation_3+Sep+1976.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58a3add7e3df28d9fbff4...
- AndrewKemendo 6y ago
  OODA was formalized in the 1960-70s with his destruction and creation briefing/seminar, and later EM theory work. However Boyd came up with the theory in the 1950s while he was a fighter instructor at Fighter Weapons School (TOP GUN for the Air Force).

dragonwriter 6y ago

> I'm unclear as to what's novel about OODA. Well, it's almost 70 years old, so, literally, nothing about it is novel. > It seems like all other permutations, e.g. DOAO or ADOO or DOOA wouldn't make sense But it didn't emerge in a context where the four stages were taken as given but people were just trying to figure out how to order them. Nor did it emerge as a novel thing people should do. OODA, at the level of the acronym and it's expansion, is a description of a fairly simple observation of what people inherently do. It's also the organizational outline for a body of work on how they ought to do each part of it (delivered by its originator, John Boyd, in in-person briefings that apparently ran up to 5 hours, and in quite large written works by people downstream from Boyd.)

mgarfias 6y ago

The novelty isn't in describing how people perceive the world/conflict. It was in codifying it, such that you could take preemptive action to make your opponent's world view change in mid decision phase, thus rendering them confused. Clausewitz taught that the way to victory in war was to reduce your friction in operation, so things go smoothly for you. Boyd showed that a better way was to not worry so much about your own friction, but to cause the friction in your opponent.

jasonra 6y ago

See here the original presentation on OODA Loop that has been given at Quantico Marine base dozens of times by John Boyd's associate of 20 years Chuck Spinney. It shows the thinking method behind the OODA Loop--Evolutionary Epistemology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdK4y6O-llE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdK4y6O-llE