Trying to redesign a process in your organisation? The OODA loop — observe, orient, decide, act, then do the whole thing again — can be a useful way to approach planning for change.
Mobius strip picture from Shutterstock
The OODA approach was designed by US military strategist John Boyd based on his observations of the Korean war, but remains applicable today, as Gartner analyst Ian Bertram pointed out at the Gartner business process management summit last week:
You think about any information process in your organisation today, this is what you would do. There’s a lot of literature around the OODA loop and how can we take it into the business realm.
As with most frameworks, this isn’t a structure that you should follow to the exclusion of all reason: it’s just a useful method for developing your approach. In many ways the loop is the most important element: if you assume that the end of a project means a problem is permanently solved, you’re in for a rude shock. Knowing you’re likely to revisit these issues will influence how you respond to them.
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