Why thought leaders might want to consider the OODA loop
Business is not the same as war, despite some of the clichés and military language used. However, there are some tools with a military origin that may be useful to businesses. One of those is the OODA loop, developed in the 1950s by US Air Force Colonel John Boyd to help fighter pilots make better decisions in combat.
A simple idea to apply thought leadership rhythm
OODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. In any situation, you should first observe what is going on, and take in all the available information. In business, of course, there is more than just seeing: the Observe phase also includes listening, and work such as gathering competitive intelligence from Twitter, or other social media. Basically, this phase is all about looking at your environment, and seeing what is happening that might affect you or your business.
The next step is to orient yourself within the situation. Effectively, this means analysing and interpreting the situation. This will be affected by your previous experience, personal biases, your culture, and your ability to analyse situations. It is therefore important to be aware of these issues, and how they may influence your interpretation of a situation. This is one reason why it is good to discuss events with other people, and make sure that they have the same interpretation. Your analysis should, of course, also be informed by new information that emerges during this phase.
The third stage is about decision-making. What are you going to do as a result of what you have seen and how you have interpreted it? Finally, you need to act, which should reflect your observations, interpretation and decisions.
This sounds long-winded, but can actually take place extremely quickly. Boyd developed OODA as a way to speed up decision-making, not slow it down. This is partly because awareness is the first step towards improvement. As the ‘Competence Cycle’ model of learning makes clear, you need to be aware of a problem before you can improve it.
OODA in thought leadership
OODA can be summarised as ‘think before you act’, which we can probably all agree is generally a good strategy in life, never mind business. However, for Boyd, the most crucial issue was the initial observation phase: the gathering of information. This informs everything that follows—and this is also crucial in business, and especially for thought leaders.
For example, consider the ‘jab, jab, jab, right hook’ technique. This states that you need both long-term engagement (the regular ‘jabs’) and a final push towards decisions (a single ‘knock-out blow’) for success in driving sales through social media activity. Both these require a good understanding of your audience, and gathering information that will enable you to both engage, and hit the right point to deliver a decision. You can only do this if you have observed and understood your audience.
Observation may be an essential first step, but your data then needs interpreting to develop first information, then insights. You will not be able to reach your audience effectively without this step. For example, perhaps you are considering writing a blog on a complex subject, and want a metaphor or analogy to help make your point. Metaphors certainly engage audiences—but you need to understand the context to choose the right metaphor. If you use one that is too complex, or outside the experience of your audience, it will not help.
The orientation phase is also important in considering how your thought leadership content might be used in different ways, and therefore give better value to the organisation. For example, much thought leadership content is useful for sales enablement—but it may need tweaking or supplementing to give maximum value for that purpose.
A continuous cycle to sharpen thought leadership
The OODA loop is very much an ongoing cycle. It is not something that you go through once, but a continuous process of taking in new information, interpreting it, and using the insights to inform your work. New information may not require you to change your strategic marketing plan completely, but it might just change how you approach a particular audience or issue. It might also affect your priorities, both short and long term. Crucially, using this approach should help you to adapt faster to changes in your environment, by surfacing the processes by which you take in and use information. It is hard to argue that this is not helpful in thought leadership.