Outside Of The Box & OODA Looping

So, times are tough and things are hard – and will probably get a bit harder in business before the pressure comes off.

So, I have two words to help you:

1. OOTB
2. OODA

OK, so they are not really ‘words’. They are acronyms;

1.  For ‘Out Of The Box’, as in ‘thinking’; and
2.  ‘Observe, Orient, Decide, Act’ as in taking an OODA Loop approach to winning under fast-changing circumstances.

Let’s take them in order:

Time for Some Out of the Box Thinking

When an earthquake strikes it can cause a phenomenon called ‘liquifaction’ in which previously-solid land becomes jellified to the extent that buildings may simply sink into it or to skate sideways and what was once fixed becomes mobile.

In the same manner, when a crisis of the scope of the current Covid-19 pandemic shakes the foundations of the global economy once solid political, social and economic positions become highly mobile, and very quickly.

In Australia we saw a conservative government with a trenchant commitment to traditional values of capitalism, self-help and balanced budgets turned overnight into a socialistic, quantitative-easing, interventionist powerhouse, posting $130 billion in social services and economic props in the blink of an eye.

In first world countries across the world we’ve seen mandatory social distancing stop the vast majority of service businesses in their tracks.

We have seen sudden, sharp realizations about the national risk that a couple of decades of political neglect or ignorance of the creeping abandonment of many long-term strategic capabilities, industries, resources and assets that form the backbone of the ‘common wealth’ of our people, in return for a quick buck, by a few fast-talking fellas who managed to convince our political servants that the stuff that belonged to all of us, was theirs to sell, and that it was none of our business. 

Turns out not only can we no longer manufacture a car – or a light military vehicle – in this country, but we can’t even produce a face mask capable of protecting our front line health workers! We now source those – and a large part of everything else – from ‘the world’s factory’, from China! And let’s not get started on who owns Australia’s gas and coal reserves, or what numpty tax deals our successive governments have done with other fast-talking fellas on their earnings from those resources, that will see us paid peanuts - and then charged a motza (they call it ‘world parity pricing) to buy our own energy resources!

As the pandemic liquifies our economy and community, a few of those realizations are starting to come to the surface and, blessedly, with the usual political rule book suspended for the moment, with people amped up to think outside the square (out of the box!) there is the rare opportunity to do things differently from here on in.

People are waiting for ‘things to go back to normal’. They won’t! And trying to hammer those obsolete square pegs into the round holes we’re going to be faced with in the near future, is going to lose us time, resources and opportunity!

If you’d like an icon of the future then think about the Cruise Liners, and their owners. Those corporations have grown fat on delivering the charm of Venice (selling a viewing of the lives and community of the Venetians) to millions of paying passenger simply by disembarking them on the Venetian’s doorstep. They’ve cut every corner on crew occupational health and safety, and paid them a pittance while evading taxes globally under ‘flags of convenience’, contributing nothing to the infrastructure of the countries in which they are registered. It suddenly seemed unreasonable to take their sick and dying into our health system when they were not contributing to another ‘in their own country’ that could reciprocate for our citizens if similarly afflicted there. Tit for tat makes sense, in fact it’s the only strategy that works with a psychopath, and those corporations are certainly psychopathic in their behaviour.

It’s going to take time to live down – if they ever can – the epithet of ‘floating petri dishes’, especially when that of ‘global free-loader’ is added to it. 

Closer to home, and back on dry land, think how the current crisis is reshaping your own industry, your own markets (both the ones you buy out of and sell into). Think sideways – easier when you have liquification – to other ways of doing things. What trends can you see that you could take advantage of – or at least adjust to!? If you’ve faced rigidity in your labour market up until now, how is that being liquified by this crisis? And what could be possible in terms of staff engagement, mutual commitment, collaboration, innovation, flexibility, drive afterwards?

The same goes for rent. The landlords of our country have stuck fast to their annual increases and earnings aspirations in spite of an economy that had been slowing for the last four years or so, in the process driving retail (and some industrial) tenants up to a brink and into the opposing jaw of on-line shopping who, incidentally, are now booming with shop-from-home orders. This crisis will give many an exhausted retail trader the excuse, the relief – and perhaps, the protection – to simply turn, climb out of that particular box, and walk away. The old retail-in-a-shop model is broken and it won’t be coming back together in the same way ever again. 

I could go on, but that would require a nice sit down, bottle of wine, plate of crackers and hours!

So, I’ll end the OOTB point with: If things for you and/or your suppliers and/or your customers don’t go back to the same way of doing things BC:

• What obstacles does that pose for you?
• What options that were previously unthinkable, would become possible?
• What new or different paradigms, perspectives, lenses, models might be useful to you as you stare into the future? And how might you re-orient yourself to the new landscape as a result?
• What series of opportunities are likely to emerge from all of this which, if you spot them early, would give you an edge? 

Now, go back to the top for a moment, and recall the problem that cat in the box has!

Observe, Orient, Decide, Act – Loop

Developed by USAF Col. John Boyd during the Korean conflict of the 1950s to understand how US pilots, pressed in combat by a faster and better-armed adversary, were able to win at a ratio of 4:1. He saw their wins as a product of a survival-driven rapid cycle of observe–orient–decide–act which enabled his pilots to effectively ‘get inside’ their opponent's decision cycle, gain the advantage of position (bogie in the cross-hairs) and so prevail. 

Boyd saw the concept broadly as directing one's energies in the context of an overall strategy, according to the demands of the evolving situation, of the moment. He held that our ‘orientation’ is the product of our ‘belief system’, ‘cultural assumptions’ and previous experiences, and is the most important part of the O-O-D-A loop since it shapes what we observe ('believing is seeing'), how we decide, and the way that we act.

Boyd cautioned against any rigidity in thinking that would constrain or lock in our perception of a situation. That resonates with the point made for OOTB thinking: of questioning, of reflecting upon your paradigms, assumptions, your beliefs about the circumstances unfolding at this time.

However, the OODA Loop provides its practitioners with an ‘out’ – in fact a string of them – because it’s based on operating at a faster tempo than one’s competitors (or of the unfolding situation, for that matter) and each loop delivers us with another chance to observe and reappraise our situation, to orientate ourselves in relation to those competitors and the shared environment, to make a decision and to act.

Over, and over again. Chance after chance.

On executing your OODA Loop, Boyd said the key is to obscure your intentions and make them unpredictable to your competitors while you simultaneously clarify their intentions for yourself. Thus, operating at a faster tempo you generate rapidly changing conditions that inhibit or destroy your competitor's observation, confuse their orientation, muddle their decision making and delay their acting. 

By understanding and taking control of the OODA Loop you win.

So, in closing: 

Get out of your box; observe more deeply what is happening around you (and everyone else); start testing lenses to find those that provide you with more, better information, faster; make a bloody decision (when you have between 40% and 70% of the information available – Jeff Bezos); act, with courage. 

Loop.