Back in the 1950s, US Air Force Colonel John Boyd was serving as a fighter pilot during the Korean War. His experience in fast-paced dogfighting led him to study decision-making under time pressure. He was especially interested in why American F-86 Sabres were more effective than the technically superior MiG-15s flown by North Korean and Chinese pilots.
He observed that, although they were flying inferior aircraft, the American pilots were consistently able to out-manoeuvre their opponents. He concluded that mental agility, the ability to process information and react quickly, was the decisive advantage.
Over the next 20 years, Boyd pursued his interest in the psychology and tempo of decision-making. This led to the formulation of the OODA loop: a practical model for strategic thinking in complex, new, and fast-changing environments. Today, it’s used in fields as varied as business, law enforcement, and sport.
The OODA Loop has four components, and it’s not a one-time process, it’s a continuous cycle:
Observe - Gather data and information from the environment around you. You begin by passively absorbing what’s happening. You’re non-judgmental, applying no filters, just opening your senses to gain a ‘feel’ for what’s going on. Certain things may catch your attention. You start to form images, detect patterns or inconsistencies, and piece things together.
Observation isn’t just seeing what’s in front of you, it’s pulling in data, frontline feedback, market signals, and competitor actions.
Orient - Now you assess what you’ve seen and begin to build a mental picture of how the situation is developing. You become more active in your information gathering, looking for specific things to fill in gaps, explain inconsistencies, and spot emerging paths forward.
This is the 'sense-making' stage: framing the problem, understanding internal capabilities, external threats, and even your own cognitive biases. Boyd considered this the most critical and nuanced phase.
Decide - You choose a course of action. You now have a better understanding of what’s happening and can identify one or more options to move forward. Each option will carry its own challenges, risks, opportunities, and potential benefits. You choose and commit to act.
Decision doesn’t mean getting it perfect, it means choosing a direction based on the best current understanding.
Act - You implement the decision, and immediately begin observing again. Your actions will affect the world around you, and in turn, the world will respond. Some changes will be obvious and hopefully desirable. Others will be subtle.
Action triggers new observations, and the loop begins again.
The OODA loop is iterative and dynamic, not linear. The faster and more accurately you cycle through it - especially the Orient phase - the more likely you are to disrupt your opponent’s (or competitor’s) ability to respond. That’s where the competitive advantage lies.
We humans have a great ability to 'see a problem; fix a problem' and move on. As much as possible, we use our knowledge of the world and past experience to both recognize a situation that may be a problem, and then identify a reasonable solution. And we try to do this as quickly and automatically (subconsciously) as possible. This is great for most situations that we encounter during our day. However, sometimes a situation might require a little more rigour in our approach especially if the situation is new, complex, or fast moving - and perhaps all 3 at the same time.
This is where the OODA Loop comes in. While it mirrors how our minds naturally process situations, it gives us a structure to pause just long enough, to observe more broadly and orient more deliberately, before we decide and act.
From a business (or any) perspective, the OODA Loop can be used 'in the moment' to make a quick decision, or as part of a more considered team-based approach to a business challenge. Either way, it keeps you moving, while ensuring the action taken is grounded in the best available understanding.
Because the OODA loop isn’t a one-time analysis but a cycle, it’s inherently adaptive. When the ground is shifting, things are moving fast, information is incomplete, and you need to test, learn, and revise quickly, it keeps you from freezing or over-analysing. Boyd called that state 'paralysis by analysis'.
A good strategist using the OODA loop isn’t necessarily the fastest actor, but they are the most adaptable. Importantly, the loop is about making sense as much as it is about making decisions.
And in that sense, it’s as much a thinking framework as a doing tool.
Ad Futurum Graham
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