Col. John Boyd
January 2nd, 2009
Col. John Boyd knew a thing or two about life and death decisions under conditions of rapid change, uncertainty, and ambiguity. As a fighter pilot he bet any taker that he could maneuver onto his tail position and shoot him down within 40 seconds. Most of the time it took less than 20. He never lost the bet. Boyd was arrogant, brash, cocky, and always testing limits – whether airplanes, people, ideas, or the military bureaucracy, itself. To some he was a crackpot. To others he was one of the greatest military and strategic thinkers of the 20th century.
Boyd read extensively. Mathematics. Physics. Genetics. Biology. Anthropology. Sociology. Political and military history. His intellectual grasp of scientific and philosophical ideas was expert. He found connections everywhere. In a conversational flourish, he might weave together Marx’s theory of alienation, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, Mendel’s genetics, and throw in Sun Tzu, quantum physics and Michael Jordan’s slam dunk for emphasis. Boyd believed that learning how to think sharply, deeply, and quickly was a prerequisite to our ability to adapt to complex, uncertain, and ever changing circumstances. His motto may well have been, “Think sharply and innovate, or die.”
The basis of Boyd’s philosophy of adaptability is that we must stay open to survive. Living systems are open systems, communicating continuously with the outside world. We communicate to gather information, knowledge and understanding, as well as replenish our life energy. If we close ourselves in and the wider world out, we cripple our capacity to adapt, and eventually die out as a non-discerning and uninteresting part of that world.
When under fire – whether it be through misunderstandings, failings, bad breaks, setbacks, disappointments – our tendency may be to isolate ourselves to the security of a more certain physical, emotional, or intellectual space.
We hide out in our living rooms, we close ourselves off from other people, we fix ourselves to our secure biases about other people and the world, failing to let ourselves be challenged by new information. What we gain in temporary sense of safety and security, we lose in the potential of stretching our capacity to not only adapt, but even thrive in face of uncertainty, ambiguity and change.
Boyd’s key concept was the OODA loop. It was a strategy of staying engaged both physically and mentally during times of uncertainty.
Observation: gather information from the world by means of experience and your senses. Pay special attention to information that runs counter to your experience or expectations.
Orientation: Analyze and synthesize the information to form a perspective from which to guide a strategy of action.
Decision: Determine a course of action based on how you’ve chosen to orient yourself to the situation.
Action: Play out the decision, while continuously adjusting according to how the world responds.
For Boyd, a life that always works out, a life without loose ends, or failings, or humiliating defeats, or blown fuses would not be a life worth living. We need challenges. We need to be pushed. Without problems to solve, and setbacks to overcome, we would become automatons — life’s furniture rather than creative, thinking agents of change.
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To read more about this amazing personality see:
Hammond, G. T. (2001). The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.