Unleash OODA to Outpace Competitors
Ralph Rathburn
Certified Scaling Up Coach | Experienced CEO | Japan Expert | International Business Owner | Occasional Baker
When talking about OODA Loops, I often hear “We’re already doing all that”. And you probably are. It’s the context, the systematic nature, and the purposeful intent behind the OODA Loop that brings competitive advantage.
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Observe: Gathering Information
You already gather customer, competitor, market data, along with your internal data. The OODA Loop context adds perspectives on what’s important and why data must be comprehensive and must be observed, recorded and shared quickly.
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Orient: Understanding, Creative Problem Solving and Positioning
You have systems to understand and interpret your data. The OODA Loop context pushes you to understand faster. ?It drives you to quickly find immediate threats and opportunities and to push those through your creative problem-solving systems and then to rapidly position yourself to take best advantage once your decision is made.
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Decide: Making Informed Choices
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You have decision-making processes. The OODA Loop context drives you to streamline and evolve those processes to make faster and better decisions from among innovative options that align with strategic objectives and available resources and that have arisen from good information and analysis.
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Act: Executing
Taking action is what you do, but we all know that delays, internal and external resistance and inefficiencies are a constant battle. Everything in the OODA Loop context pushes the entire company towards rapid completion of the decided action. Quick and efficient action lets us outmaneuver the competition and even the marketplace.
The real genius of the OODA Loop, beyond the context and intent it brings, is that it’s endlessly iterative. Actions and outcomes become data for the next cycle of Observation. The iterative speed of the OODA Loops allows for rapid course corrections.
Maybe the cause of a less than satisfactory outcome was insufficient information – that leads to an OODA Loop dedicated to getting better or more comprehensive data. Or execution problems were Observed, leading to an OODA Loop on fixing those problems. As you get faster going through the OODA Loops and making constant improvements, you’ll leave your competitors far behind you.
I’ll be posting several more articles on OODA Loops that go into greater detail for those who are interested.
I’d like to hear your thoughts. So, please share in the comments how you have used OODA Loops.