More on the OODA Loop

Observe Orient Decide Act are the famous stages of combat decision making and they can be underpinnings of any crisis decision making program.

One of the primary reasons Colonel John Boyd (1927-1997) penned this system was to provide discipline to the process of making decisions under stress. By applying discipline and making the steps repeatable you create an ingrained process that continues even under the stress of combat. Taking that ingrained, disciplined process into your own crisis management processes will serve you when challenged by pressures of a crisis.

One of the key benefits of this disciplined approach is to speed up the decision making process with the intent of "getting inside your enemies OODA loop". While the enemy for our purposes might be a BCM issue, a fire or flood; making fast and informed decisions helps with establishing control of the situation and gives the organization confidence that its leadership has a grip on the situation. In other words getting inside the OODA loop. This attitude of not surrendering the initiative to the event is what I believe is key to my concepts of crisis action management.

The kind of organizational agility that allows you to make and implement decisions in a crisis will put you out in front of the crisis, helping your organization return to normal as quickly as possible and possibly ahead of your competition.