What’s the F in the OODA Loop?

Posted by Ahsan – March 27, 2010

OODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.

There’s an F in the OODA Loop – its best kept secret. Perhaps John Boyd omitted it out of fear of being mistaken for a culinary maestro (FOODA, anybody?). Well, to be serious, it is present in the official diagram.

OODA -> F -> OODA

The F is present when an  OODA Loop ends and another begins: Feedback.

So what is Feedback and why is it so important to the OODA Loop? The OODA Loop is an empirical construct. A user cycles through the loop, ending with Action, but they must begin the next loop by Observing the result of their Action in the Environment.

The Importance of Being Fed Back

Imagine a business providing a service for its customers, but ignoring their feedback. How can they satisfy their customers without listening to them?

I used to be averse to self-styled self-help gurus spouting cheesy advice, until I stumbled across Jamil Qureshi, a sports psychologist cum author, at the 2009 Emirates Airline Festival of Literature. His book, The Mind Coach, contains an epic passage that I have whole-heartedly embraced:

Turn Failure into Feedback

We tend to perceive our actions as either failures or successes. This is one reason why you may not see life as the learning opportunity it is. As soon as we see things as a failure, we take things personally. The learning opportunity gets lost in a fog of self-doubt and bad feeling. However, being turned down, rejected or refused doesn’t mean you’re inept, incapable or bad. It simply gives you feedback about how to do it better next time.

In fact, there is no such thing as failure, only feedback.

There Will Be Friction

In the absence of proper feedback, the second OODA loop will be operating on inaccurate Observation and its Action will therefore be out of tune with what was actually required by the environment. There will be Friction: a mismatch between the environment and the user’s mental conception of that environment.

It boils down to these points:

  1. You must observe accurately.
  2. You must be willing to accept the input you get. There’s no such thing as bad feedback or good feedback. Feedback is Feedback.
  3. You must Observe again to see if your Actions effected any change in the Feedback you get in the next OODA Loop.

Feedback will be your mantra. Feedback, Feedback, Feedback!