Method for dealing with uncertainty: the OODA Loop

Uncertainty fuels anxiety. But what if I told you there’s an easy method of mastering the uncertainty we so commonly experience? What if there were a method to transform your business, how you make decisions, and how operate in the market with confidence?


“The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately”

— Seneca


John Boyd

During the Korean War, John Boyd served for his country and flew as a fighter pilot. From an early age though, he had been a keen philosopher and he soon used this knowledge to write ‘Aerial Attack Study’. For possibly the first time ever, the very best dogfighting tactics were released to the world and it became somewhat of a ‘bible’ for this section of the military. As well as having many other contributions, he also helped to develop the A-10, F-15, and F-16 aircraft by introducing the ‘Energy-Maneuvrability (E-M) Theory’.

At the pinnacle of his career, Boyd started to give briefings and his strategies would go on to last a lifetime. Although originally regarding combat, the OODA Loop would go on to change many an industry for the better. More importantly for us, it made its way also into the startup world.

What is the OODA loop?

With ‘OODA’ being an acronym, it stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. In the business world especially, the term has been adopted as a four-step system that helps to make tough decisions. Unfortunately, there is a common misconception that this is all the OODA Loop provides but there is a significant amount more. The OODA loop is a learning process, a method for dealing with uncertainty, and a strategy for winning in head-to-head competitions. It favors agility over raw power in dealing with human opponents in any endeavor.

If we take a step back to the history once more, the system was never described or laid out in a technical paper which is why we now have the different interpretations as well as the simple misunderstandings. In truth, he only ever wrote one published paper at all during his lengthy military career and this was entitled ‘Destruction and Creation’.

As mentioned previously, the OODA Loop was described in briefings that would sometimes go on for as long as five hours. To this day, the only resources we have dating back to Boyd’s time in relation to the OODA Loop include a couple of tape recordings, briefing slides, and transcripts. If you’ve never heard Boyd’s name previously, this is because his ideas were never documented and they are therefore used without credit on a regular basis.

Eric Ries’ Lean Startup

If you’re familiar with Eric Ries’ Lean Startup along with all the ‘lean’ methods, you will recognise similarities between this and the OODA Loop. Whether for customer interaction or building products/services, companies use the lean methods in much of the same way to find a positive outcome. However, Boyd’s OODA Loop predates any mention from Eric Ries or any other name in the business world. With the military origins beginning in the 1950/60s, you can be sure John Boyd was the originator and he felt passionate about the idea with one particular briefing, entitled ‘A Discourse on Winning and Losing’, lasting for fourteen hours.

Applying to the Startup World

Regardless of whether you’ve been in business for twenty years or twenty days, you know that life is surrounded by uncertainty. As a startup, the biggest hindrance you face is not knowing what’s just around the corner and this can be true for sales, purchases, marketing, and all other areas. From one day to the next, you might not know where your customers are going to come from. Additionally, a new law may come into effect suggesting certain licenses for tech startups; suddenly, you have to pay out to have all staff trained and licensed in the correct way.

However, our mindsets tend to hold us back during these times of change and this is where we seem to be making the same mistakes. Whenever something changes, Boyd suggested that we fail to change our perspective and we therefore continue to see things as they ‘should’ be rather than how they are now. In an ever-changing environment, we think you’ll agree that being able to adapt is integral to your success as a startup.

Mental Concepts — For Boyd, these were called ‘mental concepts’ but they have also been called ‘models’ and ‘methods’. Essentially, this term describes the way in which we view the world and they therefore have a heavy say on our expectations. Sometimes, they can be linked back to genetics, tradition, and heritage. Elsewhere, they can just be general principles relating to certain topics such as science and math.

The Curveball — as already discussed, startups will experience curveballs at some points along the way. If you were to ask every business at the top of your industry, they would all say they experienced struggles, failure, and extensive amounts of change. If we have the correct mindset, there is no reason why we can’t use change as a positive step in the right direction just like overcoming failure. This being said, this type of growth cannot occur without the right mental concept.

If somebody gave us a kiss on the cheek as a greeting as opposed to a simple shake of the hand, we‘d be thrown off for a second before we then adjusted our mindset. Of course, our time on earth never coincided with dinosaurs millions of years ago so evidence to suggest the opposite would change everything we thought we knew about the world. If we kept the same mindset as before this revelation, the only path we can take is failure because we haven’t adapted and this is the same for every business (regardless of your productserviceindustry/niche).

Real-Life Examples

Within your startup, you will see small changes in customers, marketing, suppliers, laws, etc. However, there are also huge changes that have affected millions of businesses all around the world and those who failed to adjust were simply left behind. For example, what about the global financial crisis back in 2008/09? If companies continued to see their business as though there wasn’t a distinct lack of money in the world, they would have lost their business within three months.

Suddenly, banks wouldn’t lend to customers which meant they had no money to buy luxury items. With disposable income at an all-time low, businesses had to ‘tighten their belts’, reduce costs, and appeal to customers in other ways just to stay alive. Why? Because of the OODA Loop and this ever-changing mindset in a world full of uncertainty.

OODA Loop — As well as being used to make decisions, the OODA Loop provides a framework that allows a competitive advantage for all startups. With the OODA Loop mindset employed, you can move faster than every other company in the industry thus leaving others behind. For Boyd, he wanted to challenge the ‘traditional’ way of thinking in the military world. Rather than acting because it was expected or ingrained into the minds, he wanted men and women to observe, orient, decide, and then act because it was the right thing for that particular moment.

In truth, there are endless examples in the business world including the rise of technology, increased competition, and the expectations of the consumer. Every year, we find that customers need to be watched closer than ever because there is a fickle nature to their spending habits. As fashions and trends change, a single business can go from the ‘in’ trend to a ‘nobody’ within just a few weeks and many brands have suffered as a result of this mentality.

Nowadays, the world is also ruled by the availability of information which sees the parameters shift on an almost daily basis. With this in mind, the OODA Loop is becoming more valuable to businesses of all sizes but especially to those who are just starting out in these tough climates. Once you make the OODA Loop the main highlight of your strategy, you can get the right feedback from customers, test ideas, and adjust your products/services before the competition even blinks and this is where the main advantage lies.

Using the OODA Loop

For Boyd, the plan was to destroy the competition’s point of reference and this is what’s been explained so far. Whilst you stay up-to-date with the world and change whenever required, you confuse the competition just like a dogfight and immediately gain the upper hand. Before the competition notices any particular pattern, you change stance once again and they’re left scrambling not knowing how to react. Soon enough, they suffer an inability to continue and you reign victorious.

Later in his career Boyd drew out a much more complex diagram that better explains his grand vision of the OODA Loop as a meta-paradigm for intellectual evolution and uncertainty.

Observe — The collection of data by means of the senses

Just as the name suggests, here you assess the data just like you do when arriving at a party. For just a moment, you step back and take stock of the situation. At this moment, you don’t have to justify your observations nor understand them; just look towards the market, what’s happening, where it’s happening, etc. As long as you keep an open mind, you can keep this stage free from judgement.

Orient — the analysis and synthesis of data to form one’s current mental perspective

Next up, we have to make sense of the information and this is done using the mental concepts we discussed a little earlier. By removing all biases and what ‘should’ be happening, you can understand what is actually happening and the changes occurring. Also in this second step, you need to run rehearsals so you’re prepared for what’s to come. When buying a car, you run a rehearsal so you can get the best price and the same principle rings true for startups here too.

Decide — the determination of a course of action based on one’s current mental perspective

So what are your options? Given the data and how you’ve interpreted the data, how can you utilise this to make the right decision for your company? In a dogfight, the pilots would observe, orient, and then decide what to do using the previous two steps as a pathway towards the right choice.

Act — the physical playing-out and testing of decisions

In truth, acting isn’t the final step but instead the end of this first cycle. Since this is a loop, your action will take you back to step one where you observe the results of this test.


For both startups and in everyday life, the OODA Loop is the powerful tool you’ve been missing to deal with uncertainty and walk the earth with a new sense of confidence. Although we can’t prevent the uncertainty, we can be ready for it and this is what the OODA Loop helps you to do.

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Sebastian Haapahovi

Written by

Startup entrepreneur and venture builder. CEO @klopalcom and partner @ http://www.klopal.vc

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