A Reader Asks: Tell Me More About John Boyd
John Boyd first appeared on this Substack newsletter as a source, and a citation in a post dated January 17, 2022, and titled “Reference Narratives for “large-world” decisions, see link and citation below.
Source: Osinga, Frans P.B. (2007), Science, Strategy and War, The strategic theory of John Boyd, Routledge
That post provided sources for building our own decision-making tools, “reference narratives”, to navigate the quantitative model evading, radical uncertainty that affects “large-world” decisions as described by John Kay. A reader asked for more information about John Boyd, and the book in the citation.
Colonel John R. Boyd
Colonel John R. Boyd (1927-1997) did not write a single book. Like Clausewitz and Sun Tzu before him, John Boyd’s work is more often heard of in bits and pieces, than read for comprehensive understanding. He aimed to teach how to think, rather than to provide ready-made answers.
While he gave thousands of briefings in the form of pre-PowerPoint, “acetate” presentations, and over several decades, he did not even write monograph-length articulations of his general theory on the nature of strategic thinking, and competitive decision-making under the pressure of time and conflict. However, Frans Osinga’s book summarizes Boyd’s work masterfully, and calls it “ … a theory of strategic behavior in general, or in more precise terms, the dynamics of survival and growth for competing complex adapting systems.”
In addition to Osinga’s book, sources include the collection of essays edited by Mark Safranski. These essays document an online roundtable discussion that marked the 10th year anniversary of Body’s death, and the publication of Osinga’s book.
Source: Safranski, Mark (Editor) (2008), The John Boyd Roundtable, Debating Science, Strategy, and War, Nimble Books
Placing the work of John Boyd in the context of a prior post titled
“A Reader Asks: Tell Me More about James P. Carse”, see link below, shows that (i) Carse teaches us how to play the Infinite Game in order to keep things going, and (ii) Boyd teaches us how to crush it when playing Finite Games in order to stop the games and name a winner.
The Purpose of the OODA Loop
Likely the most famous of Boyd’s “bits and pieces”, the OODA loop, (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) belongs to an overall framework designed to help organizations, as well as individual fighters, live long and prosper in a rapidly changing and hostile environment. Specifically, the framework seeks to improve “our ability to shape and adapt to unfolding circumstances… such that we … can survive on our own terms” [John Boyd briefing: “the Strategic Game of ? and ?”, p. 15.
His thinking, forged in fire, started with achieving Ace status, flying 22 sorties in the F-86 Sabre for the 51st. Fighter Interceptor Wing during the Korean War. His success came from developing and practicing the concept of Energy Maneuverability that later drove the development of the F-15, and the F-16 fighters.
As discussed in our first post “A Map is not the Territory”, we build mind-maps to manage motion over, and across a territory.
Boyd built his own mind-map to navigate the territory of a fighter pilot engaged in combat. Navigating this territory required knowledge, and an explicit awareness of such knowledge, reaching far beyond the level of mind-maps for everyday life.
Thus, to reach his goal to “survive on his own terms” and to help others survive on their own terms, Boyd sought insights and analogies across many disciplines.
Shane Deichman’s essay in Safranski’s book shows that Boyd embodied the “Medici Effect”: “… a horizontal thinker who integrated perspectives across multiple, seemingly divergent, disciplines into a cohesive whole.”
The Components of the OODA Loop
Safranski’s book includes an essay by Chet Richards that organizes Body’s sources as follows:
- Red Zone (Conflict): Military history & strategy, for insights about friction in battle, and centers of gravity in strategy.
- Blue Zone (Math and Science): Philosophy, Mathematics, and Science, for insights about the nature of complex systems as well as the physics of operational control.
- Green Zone (Eastern Philosophy): Taoism, Zen, and even “Toyota” (as we will understand later in this post), for insights about clarity of vision, non-attachment to fixed forms and concepts, fluid awareness, as well as implicit guidance & control.
If Boyd were still alive today, he would have likely added Radical Uncertainty (John Kay), Anti-fragility (Nassim Taleb), and Ergodicity Economics (Ole Peters) to his list of blue zone topics and readings.
The OODA loops structures this deep background into a process of cognition for the development of mind-maps that will help you survive on your own terms, as shown on the table below:
Richards shows how over time, as well as conceptual zone by conceptual zone, Boyd’s mind-map incorporated the following key features:
- Blue Zone (1987): “We cannot determine the character or nature of a system within itself, and attempts to do so will produce confusion and disorder”. To see oneself, one must be outside-looking-in. This is reminiscent of Hannah Arendt’s essay mentioned in an earlier post, titled “Function in Disaster, Finish in Style”, see link below.
- Red Zone (1976 to 1986): Operating inside the enemy’s OODA loop, and related concepts.
- Blue Zone (1987): Interaction & isolation in dissipative structures.
- Green Zone (1995): The extended version of the OODA loop.
The Process of OODA Loop
The simplicity of the OODA loop reflects this conceptual depth, in the spirit of “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter”. Boyd had a lot of time, a lifetime’s worth of reading and writing briefings.
“Observe” focuses on analytical thinking, breaking things down into individual parts, using deductive logic, and top-down thinking processes. It makes use of mathematics, quantitative models, the calculus, and derivatives in particular to create conceptual maps from observed reality, seeking both accuracy and practicality.
“Orient” provides synthesis, using the conceptual maps and inductive thinking as bottom-up process to reason by analogy, and to connect the dots – the previously dis-assembled part from observation. It makes use of mathematics, and integration in particular to create reality-based meaning from conceptual maps, seeking both consistency and usefulness.
He stresses the importance of using mathematics to bring observational data down to the scale of our mind-maps in order to make it useful. However, he also focused on getting the math right. One may remember Rory Sutherland’s comments about ergodicity economics in a prior post, see link below: “Averaging wrongly means getting it wrong”.
“Decide” and “Act” mean what they say, cycling back to “Observe” as fast as possible. The fighter that cycles the fastest through the OODA loop will go through more cycles, gain more experience, develop more insights, and usually win the contest. Fighters win by getting “inside” their competitors’ OODA loops. The purpose is not to destroy all of the enemy’s physical forces, but to collapse their decision-making abilities, thus their will to fight.
Using the OODA Loop
Mark Safranski points out that Boyd was one of the first thinkers to understand that human organization are “… complex adaptive systems (what complexity theorist Yaneer Bar-Yam would call “superorganisms”) that thrived or declined in accordance with Darwinian conceptions.” He saw organizations as living, open-ended system, and focused on “doing” (looking to the future) rather than “being” (looking to the past).
Reading Boyd creates a connection to Taleb’s dose/response effect of life’s lessons.
Source: Taleb, Nassim Nicholas (2012), Antifragile, Random House
Rapid fire decision cycles in a world full of shock & awe lead to actions that can make us more fragile, stay resilient, or become anti-fragile. Boyd seeks decisions and actions that make our competitors fragile.
The OODA loop made John Boyd antifragile, an Ace that not only survived but also won the fight in 22 consecutive sorties during the Korean War. To survive attacks, and win the fight in a hostile environment, one must observe, orient, decide, act, and cycle – fast, accurately, consistently, and decisively.
The significance of one’s work comes from its living in the minds, and actions of other people. Richards goes on to show the uncanny resemblance between Taiichi Ohno’s description of the Toyota Production System (TPS), and Boyd’s earlier works on warfare, “Patterns of Conflict”.
The value of the OODA goes beyond a formulaic decision-making process to get inside the enemy’s own decision-making process. It presents a lifetime of deep-work validated by experience, and summarized in memorable best practices for successful adaptation to change.
At the end of each post, we ask ourselves the following question before we publish it:
“What is an individual member of the next generation supposed to do with this?”
Personal practice based on this post, include:
(i) In six words - as explained in an earlier post titled: “Function in Disaster, Finish in Style” – and as an open-ended story: Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act, now?
Minds are closing down under stress. People are tired of ideas. They want to know how to survive. “CTRI by Francois Gadenne” connects the dots of life-enhancing practices for the next generation, free of controlling algorithms, based on the lifetime experience of a retirement age entrepreneur, and continuously updated with Wealth, Health, and Statistics research performed on behalf of large companies.