Looping for Success

By Barry J. Bruns, Col , USAF Ret
Manufacturing-Works Affiliate

Okay, so the title is a bit loopy.  Who says we can’t have some fun here?  How can we loop for success?  Cowboys do it with ropes, software programmers do it with iterations and hate infinite ones, drivers use them to avoid traversing downtown, and cereal makers try to make them taste like fruit.  Facilitators learn how to loop and group, and stunt pilots only get one opportunity to have their loop intersect the ground.

 

How about a loop or two that, if mastered, can make our businesses better?  Let’s start with Continuous Improvement.  I’m always amazed at how pervasive the phrase has become, it seems that everyone in business knows that Continuous Improvement is a good thing.  Fewer of them understand that it is a reasonably formal, defined loop of activity.  Plan, Do, Check, Act.  That is the continuous improvement loop, and one can trace it back at least to World War II and W. Edwards Deming.  It is the way to make most anything better.  Do a bit of planning, push the pencil, brainstorm, kick an idea around.  Then, before you achieve paralysis by analysis, do something.  Try it a bit.  But, watch as you do, check on how it works, what turns out.  Then, act on the results.  What went wrong, what went right?  Do you know why?  Take that knowledge and use it to make another plan, push the pencil a bit more, and start the process over.  The faster you complete each of these loops, the sooner you’ll see real improvement.  The longer you do this looping process, the closer you’ll come to perfection.  But, since perfection is impossible, you’ll be at it all the time, or as they say, continuously.

That one was easy.  How many of you have heard of the OODA loop?  Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.  You can compare it to Plan, Do, Check Act, but this is a very competitive loop developed by the late John Boyd, a fighter pilot who changed how aviation works in warfare after World War II.  (Boyd, the Fighter Pilot who Changed the Art of War,  by Robert Coram, Back Bay Books/Little, Brown, and Company, 2002.)  Boyd began by trying to determine why American pilots flying F-86’s in Korea against Mig 15’s flown by North Korean and Russian pilots were racking up 10:1 success ratios.  The Mig was faster in all but a dive, climbed faster and higher, had more powerful guns, and was measurably better in nearly every aspect of what was then considered important measures of aircraft capability.  He discovered that since the F-86 rolled faster, its pilots were able to transition from one maneuver to another more rapidly.  In short, they couldn’t do things better than the Mig pilots, just sooner and faster.  But, sooner and faster beat the Hell out of better but later.  If you watch the Iraq war news in detail, you’ll hear our generals and admirals talking about whether we are inside our enemy’s loop or he is inside of ours.  This is the loop they are talking about.  He who is agile, quick to analyze and transition, does better than he who is a bit more ponderous, even if bigger or more powerful.  Does this sound like a winning formula for our small Wyoming businesses?  When Boyd talked about killing the competition, he meant it.  If you compete, you’d be wise to study the OODA loop.

Comments

[SKI]

Great follow up to my query about
Col. John Boyd.

-ski