Articles
The Second “O” in “OODA”
By: Frank Borelli
http://www.borelliconsulting.com/index.html
For any contemporary warrior who is not already familiar with Boyd's Cycle - the human decision making paradym - I say to you, "Go and study." First documented by Col. John Boyd (USAF Ret, now deceased), the Human Decision Making Cycle is comprised of the following four steps repeated in endless loops: Observe; Orient; Decide; Act. Anyone who has ever been in a fight knows that thinking faster than your opponent matters - and not just a little. Veteran combatants have given testimony as to the applicability and importance of Boyd's Cycle. More specifically, they've talked about how important
it is for every warrior to understand what an "OODA Loop" is and how moving through it faster than your opponent means you'll be victorious. This week we take an in-depth look at the second "O": Orient. Boyd's sketch of the OODA Loop as presented in his summation of "A Discourse of Winning and Losing", which he referred to as "the big squeeze," 28 June 1995. From "The Mind of War - John Boyd and American Security"
In Boyd's sketch of the OODA Cycle, there are five inputs to "Orientation". They are:
1) Cultural Traditions
2) Genetic Heritage
3) New Information
4) Previous Experiences
5) Analyses / Synthesis
Now which of those, if any, can we change? Maybe Analyses / Synthesis. With proper training and education I believe that we can streamline how we use our conscious and subconscious mind(s) to Analyze data. That said, let's take a look at the other four.
Cultural Traditions:
Unless you are raised in a family that takes great pride in, and therefore places a great focus on, its cultural traditions, you may not even be aware of yours or how they affect your perceptions. Remembering that we have observed our surroundings and are now orienting ourselves to that which we have observed, the interpretation of how we fit into the environment is, in part, determined by our upbringing. Further, how we orient ourselves in this set of circumstances - this new experience if you will - is also dependent on how we remember and react to our previous experiences (#4). Let me give you an example:
Pick an event that was something special for your family to do when you were growing up. When I say "growing up" I mean prior to age 18. It should be an event that occurred at least once a year and for more than four or five years in a row. For me I'll use the Italian Festival. I was raised in Maryland by an "old world" Italian father. Every Sunday we had family day where we - my dad, mom, sisters and I - would go to a relatives house - usually one of my uncles - and spend the day together. Once a year we all got together and went to the Italian Festival that was actually a fund-raising event held by a local nursing home. Many of the things you'd find at a normal carnival, such as rides, food vendors, etc. were found at the Italian Festival. But some things were unique such as the homemade ravioli vendor (where you could watch them make and stuff the ravioli before cooking it for you) or the grease pole climbing competition. The Italian Festival was something I always looked forward to, inevitably enjoyed and eagerly waited for year after year. While working as a police officer if I had to respond to the Italian Festival for a call for service, my memories and positive outlook would most certainly have a potential affect on my judgment and perceptions upon my arrival. Religious upbringing is also a "Cultural Tradition" that can affect how you orient yourself to the environment. LtCol Dave Grossman (ret) tells of testing potential police recruits in controlled circumstances where they'd be forced to use Deadly Force against a subject. Some of those potential recruits simply could not do it. Their upbringing had inspired in them feelings and beliefs that didn't allow them to take a human life - even to protect another human life or their own (sometimes). Such are Cultural Traditions. They can limit what options we perceive as existing and therefore put restraints on how we orient ourselves to the environment.
Genetic Heritage:
Without getting into a huge debate on whether behavior is caused more by genetics or training (nature vs nurture), let's just recognize that we are limited in our physical responses by our physical disposition. Whether or not you perceive a specific set of circumstances as threatening or not may be entirely dependent on your physical ability to overcome whatever challenge exists to remove the perceived threat.
New Information:
Remembering that in the Observation segment there are four new inputs for each cycle started, New Information may be forthcoming repeatedly. As a result, when the information is "fed forward" if you will, into the Orientation segment, that New Information plays a role in how we perceive our existence within the evolving environment. Additionally, that new information is processed and applied as we perceive it through our Culture Traditions and Genetic
Heritage.
Previous Experiences:I recently learned about something called Expectational Sets. An Expectational Set is what you develop after having been through the same, or similar, circumstances several times. If you crashed your car every time you got behind the wheel, you'd soon learn to expect that. If you are a skydiver and you've done two hundred jumps, you expect your parachute to pop open when you pull the D-ring. If it's what has always happened then it exists as an Expectational Set for you. Your previous experiences have, therefore, created a predisposition in your mind toward certain circumstances. Our problem, most especially in conflict situations, is that circumstances can change in the blink of an eye and our Expectations may not be met. Indeed, we may slow down in our OODA Loops because we have found a comfortable place (mentally) and then find ourselves falling behind as circumstances change - and not in the way we expected. The problem is that once we have fallen behind in the OODA Loop race, it's next to impossible to catch up and move ahead. Therefore, it behooves us to insure that we expect the unexpected... as much as is humanly possible.
Analyses / Synthesis:
How well do you make decisions under pressure? The ability to analyze data, mesh it together with continuing incoming streams of new data, and make coherent decisions based on all of it is difficult at best under duress. When the feces hits the oscillating rotator and everything shtinks, how quickly you can orient yourself to the environment and circumstances may be a direct result of how much you've trained in such situations before. Whether or not you
know the subconscious mind's ability to make lightening fast decisions and trust your subconscious to do that may be the difference between a fast decision and action, or a hesitation and loss in the OODA Loop race. From my own experience I'd say that how we make decisions is a learned skill. I had a father who was very linear in his thinking; he was very logical in his thought process, but then ended up making emotion-based decisions. The overall result was often an impractical decision that was slow to achieve. My mother made very quick decisions - seemingly based on her emotional responses to a given situation - but could logically justify the decision and action after the fact. The result, for me, was growing up to recognize that slow didn't always equal good (decisions) and fast didn't always equal unjustifiable.
Next week, in part three of this series, we're going to take a closer look at the decision making pathways and how circumstances can force us into the subconscious pathway. The hidden third "O" in OO-DA - which stands for "OH SH*T!".
http://www.borelliconsulting.com/index.html
For any contemporary warrior who is not already familiar with Boyd's Cycle - the human decision making paradym - I say to you, "Go and study." First documented by Col. John Boyd (USAF Ret, now deceased), the Human Decision Making Cycle is comprised of the following four steps repeated in endless loops: Observe; Orient; Decide; Act. Anyone who has ever been in a fight knows that thinking faster than your opponent matters - and not just a little. Veteran combatants have given testimony as to the applicability and importance of Boyd's Cycle. More specifically, they've talked about how important
it is for every warrior to understand what an "OODA Loop" is and how moving through it faster than your opponent means you'll be victorious. This week we take an in-depth look at the second "O": Orient. Boyd's sketch of the OODA Loop as presented in his summation of "A Discourse of Winning and Losing", which he referred to as "the big squeeze," 28 June 1995. From "The Mind of War - John Boyd and American Security"
In Boyd's sketch of the OODA Cycle, there are five inputs to "Orientation". They are:
1) Cultural Traditions
2) Genetic Heritage
3) New Information
4) Previous Experiences
5) Analyses / Synthesis
Now which of those, if any, can we change? Maybe Analyses / Synthesis. With proper training and education I believe that we can streamline how we use our conscious and subconscious mind(s) to Analyze data. That said, let's take a look at the other four.
Cultural Traditions:
Unless you are raised in a family that takes great pride in, and therefore places a great focus on, its cultural traditions, you may not even be aware of yours or how they affect your perceptions. Remembering that we have observed our surroundings and are now orienting ourselves to that which we have observed, the interpretation of how we fit into the environment is, in part, determined by our upbringing. Further, how we orient ourselves in this set of circumstances - this new experience if you will - is also dependent on how we remember and react to our previous experiences (#4). Let me give you an example:
Pick an event that was something special for your family to do when you were growing up. When I say "growing up" I mean prior to age 18. It should be an event that occurred at least once a year and for more than four or five years in a row. For me I'll use the Italian Festival. I was raised in Maryland by an "old world" Italian father. Every Sunday we had family day where we - my dad, mom, sisters and I - would go to a relatives house - usually one of my uncles - and spend the day together. Once a year we all got together and went to the Italian Festival that was actually a fund-raising event held by a local nursing home. Many of the things you'd find at a normal carnival, such as rides, food vendors, etc. were found at the Italian Festival. But some things were unique such as the homemade ravioli vendor (where you could watch them make and stuff the ravioli before cooking it for you) or the grease pole climbing competition. The Italian Festival was something I always looked forward to, inevitably enjoyed and eagerly waited for year after year. While working as a police officer if I had to respond to the Italian Festival for a call for service, my memories and positive outlook would most certainly have a potential affect on my judgment and perceptions upon my arrival. Religious upbringing is also a "Cultural Tradition" that can affect how you orient yourself to the environment. LtCol Dave Grossman (ret) tells of testing potential police recruits in controlled circumstances where they'd be forced to use Deadly Force against a subject. Some of those potential recruits simply could not do it. Their upbringing had inspired in them feelings and beliefs that didn't allow them to take a human life - even to protect another human life or their own (sometimes). Such are Cultural Traditions. They can limit what options we perceive as existing and therefore put restraints on how we orient ourselves to the environment.
Genetic Heritage:
Without getting into a huge debate on whether behavior is caused more by genetics or training (nature vs nurture), let's just recognize that we are limited in our physical responses by our physical disposition. Whether or not you perceive a specific set of circumstances as threatening or not may be entirely dependent on your physical ability to overcome whatever challenge exists to remove the perceived threat.
New Information:
Remembering that in the Observation segment there are four new inputs for each cycle started, New Information may be forthcoming repeatedly. As a result, when the information is "fed forward" if you will, into the Orientation segment, that New Information plays a role in how we perceive our existence within the evolving environment. Additionally, that new information is processed and applied as we perceive it through our Culture Traditions and Genetic
Heritage.
Previous Experiences:I recently learned about something called Expectational Sets. An Expectational Set is what you develop after having been through the same, or similar, circumstances several times. If you crashed your car every time you got behind the wheel, you'd soon learn to expect that. If you are a skydiver and you've done two hundred jumps, you expect your parachute to pop open when you pull the D-ring. If it's what has always happened then it exists as an Expectational Set for you. Your previous experiences have, therefore, created a predisposition in your mind toward certain circumstances. Our problem, most especially in conflict situations, is that circumstances can change in the blink of an eye and our Expectations may not be met. Indeed, we may slow down in our OODA Loops because we have found a comfortable place (mentally) and then find ourselves falling behind as circumstances change - and not in the way we expected. The problem is that once we have fallen behind in the OODA Loop race, it's next to impossible to catch up and move ahead. Therefore, it behooves us to insure that we expect the unexpected... as much as is humanly possible.
Analyses / Synthesis:
How well do you make decisions under pressure? The ability to analyze data, mesh it together with continuing incoming streams of new data, and make coherent decisions based on all of it is difficult at best under duress. When the feces hits the oscillating rotator and everything shtinks, how quickly you can orient yourself to the environment and circumstances may be a direct result of how much you've trained in such situations before. Whether or not you
know the subconscious mind's ability to make lightening fast decisions and trust your subconscious to do that may be the difference between a fast decision and action, or a hesitation and loss in the OODA Loop race. From my own experience I'd say that how we make decisions is a learned skill. I had a father who was very linear in his thinking; he was very logical in his thought process, but then ended up making emotion-based decisions. The overall result was often an impractical decision that was slow to achieve. My mother made very quick decisions - seemingly based on her emotional responses to a given situation - but could logically justify the decision and action after the fact. The result, for me, was growing up to recognize that slow didn't always equal good (decisions) and fast didn't always equal unjustifiable.
Next week, in part three of this series, we're going to take a closer look at the decision making pathways and how circumstances can force us into the subconscious pathway. The hidden third "O" in OO-DA - which stands for "OH SH*T!".
