Mitch Weisburgh, Partner | Academic Business Advisors and Scott Brewster, Co-Founder & CTO | Triad Interactive Media / Hats & Ladders DOUBLE SESSION: OODA OODA! How Rapid Iteration Can Help Level Up Your Gaming Business We are all involved in lots of complicated and complex situations. We deal with students and learning. We write, adapt, and use games for learning. We may be running businesses. One thing that all of these have in common is that we can’t just come up with a plan, execute and expect things to just work smoothly. Unexpected things happen, it’s often impossible to anticipate all possible situations, people react in unanticipated ways, there is often information we just don’t or can’t know in advance, the people we are working with have hidden agendas. Allies, antagonists, and resources shift and change. And so on. So, what are we supposed to do? We are going to explore a framework for managing solutions during periods of dynamic change. The OODA Loop Framework was developed by air force colonel John Boyd based on precepts developed by Sun Tzu, Napoleon, Heisenberg, Kyng, Einstein, Gödel, and others, and has been used by military, political, and business leaders around the world. You’ll learn to prepare for the unexpected, observe and react to actions and results, and pull together and manage a team despite adversity. Presented by the Serious Play Conference seriousplayconf.com at Orlando, University of Central Florida, UCF, July 24-26, 2019

1. OODA Loops
Rapid Iteration for Complex Problems
From
Sensemaking, Problem Solving, and Achieving Success
1
Mitch Weisburgh
mitch.weisburgh@academicbiz.com
Scott Brewster
dr.Brewster@gmail.com

2. What you will learn
• Strategies for complex decision making
• A way of execution that makes you more agile
and effective.
• How to strengthen your allies and team while
inhibiting the ability of opponents to stop you
• Application of this strategy across different
domains
2

3. Why you are here
Situations to change
Personal, professional, family, society, class, school
How will those situations affect you?
You will learn to look at them as challenges that you are eager to resolve, and
as opportunities to become more powerful
You will learn techniques to
Assess situations and determine what is happening
Come up with potential solutions and actions
Avoid common pitfalls that we all have that stop us from achieving what we want
Act in a way that will lead to solutions and accomplishments
3

4. Why are you here?
What situations do you want to change?
How do those situations affect you?
What do you want to learn in order to make the changes you would like?
4

5. Classic Decision Making
1. find out about the alternatives that are open to
choice,
2. the consequences of each,
3. compare the consequences,
4. make the decision
5. execute
InformationGathering
5
Game to reduce teen Juul use

6. Complexity
How do the following affect the ability to make informed decisions?
• Ambiguity
• Unexpected
• Innovation
• Complexity (too many variables), impossible to anticipate all possible
situations
• System and actors affect each other, shifting context
• Heisenberg uncertainty applied to social sciences and interactions.
• Some of what we know can’t be measured
• Unknowns
• Hidden assumptions and biases

7. Complexity Compounded
How do the following affect the ability to make informed decisions?
• Ambiguity
• Unexpected
• Innovation
• Complexity (too many variables),
impossible to anticipate all possible
situations
• System and actors affect each other,
shifting context
• Heisenberg uncertainty
• Some of what we know can’t be
measured
• Unknowns
• Hidden assumptions and biases
• We don’t know what we don’t know
• We think we know, when we are
ignorant
• We find patterns where there aren’t
any
• We rationalize instead of reason

8. Opportunities & Problems are Complex
How do the following affect the ability to make informed decisions?
• Ambiguity
• Unexpected
• Innovation
• Complexity (too many variables),
impossible to anticipate all possible
situations
• System and actors affect each other,
shifting context
• Heisenberg uncertainty
• Some of what we know can’t be
measured
• Unknowns
• Hidden assumptions and biases
• We don’t know what we don’t know
• We think we know, when we are
ignorant
• We find patterns where there aren’t
any
• We rationalize instead of reason
How many of you have built a budget or financial projections for a startup?
How accurate was it a year later?

9. 9
City Blackout

10. 10
Last 2 Minutes of a Game

11. 11
10% Cost Cut, But Meet Metrics

12. 12
Your Daughter Goes Vegan

13. 13
You Do or Don’t Want Him Re-Elected

14. Observe Orient Decide Act
Simple OODA
14

15. Observe
Orient
Decide
Act
Simple OODA Loop
15

16. Observe
Orient
Decide
Act
Decision-Making:
Classic Vs. OODA Loop
16
1. find out about the alternatives
that are open to choice,
2. the consequences of each,
3. compare the consequences,
4. make the decision
5. execute

17. 17
Game to Reduce Teen Juul Use

18. Observe
Orient
Decide
Act
Decision-Making:
Classic Vs. OODA Loop
18
1. find out about the alternatives
that are open to choice,
2. the consequences of each,
3. compare the consequences,
4. make the decision
5. execute
Game to Reduce Teen Juul Use

19. Winning with OODA
1. Rapidly change the environment
2. Inhibit adversary’s ability to adapt to the changing environment
3. Create confusion and disorder in adversary
4. Cause adversary to over- or under-react.
19

20. OODA winning mindset
1. Whatever we decide and do is merely the first of a series of
actions.
2. We need to be prepared to obtain feedback from our actions.
3. We need to be prepared to evaluate our next actions based
on that feedback.
4. And need to be prepared that we are going to go through
that cycle many times.
5. We have to do this more quickly than our adversaries.
20

21. Full OODA Diagram
21

22. Observe
Orient
Culture
Analysis/
Synthesis
Previous
Experiences
Mental
Modes
New
Information
Decide
Act
Results Feedback
Decision FeedbackEnvironment
Outside Information
Unfolding Circumstances
Your actions
Results of actions
Actions of others
Re-actions of your group
Emotional state
Potential allies/adversaries
Implicit Guidance & Control
Mitch’s OODA Loop Diagram

23. Orient
Use
1. What we already know
2. The norms and culture we follow
3. What we observe including feedback
4. Various methods of analysis
5. Various methods to combine and create new solutions and actions
To come up with possible actions
So that we can decide which ones to implement
And then act
23

24. Using OODA loops
Think of a situation where there is a conflict or potential conflict
1. What are some predictable potential obstacles
2. How do you develop a diverse set of tactics you can draw on
3. What appeals or turns off the other side
4. What types of pressures or stresses is the other side under?
5. How will you observe and listen to be able to use feedback
6. How will you restrategize based on responses, and switch to new tactics
24
Implement GBL in an Organization

25. Winning with OODA
1. Rapidly change the environment
2. Inhibit adversary’s ability to adapt to the changing environment
3. Create confusion and disorder in adversary
4. Cause adversary to over- or under-react.
Multiple mental
models/tactics
Diversity in points
of view
Preparedness to
iterate
Ability to observe
and react
25

26. Applying OODA to Organizations 1
Problems faced by organizations also generally require iteration and responses to
results.
Top down organizations are not nimble
Organizations with highly functional small autonomous groups can react faster to
feedback
• Orientation to the values and methods of the organization is critical
• Impinge on other organizations’ abilities to compete
26

27. Competition
Disrupt Opponents
1. Reduce access to resources
2. Overload their ability to plan or analyze
3. Dispirit members
4. Reduce access to allies
Increase our abilities
1. Provide access to resources and information
2. Increase variety of mental modes/ methods of analysis
3. Reinforce cohesion
4. Add allies, coopt the uncommitted
27

28. Plan for opposition
• Build a cadre of team mates who share a vision and mission
• Strengthen our own position by communicating and demonstrating high ethical and
professional standards,
• Prepare models of other successful ways of introducing change that we can apply as
required,
• Increase our access to resources, information and allies
• Probe to find who is likely to oppose us and how they are opposing us
• Use intelligent iteration to isolate adversaries from allies, deny them information
that would help them adapt to our actions,
• Demonstrate that the actions of our opponents violate behavioral patterns that
they are expected to follow
• Create confusion or overload on our opponents
• Pull in uncommitted people to our side
• Look for opportunities to establish new allies and ally with those who used to
oppose us
In general strengthen our side, weaken the opponents, and attract uncommitted
28

29. Applying OODA to Organizations 2
Problems faced by organizations also generally require iteration and responses to
results.
Top down organizations are not nimble
Organizations with highly functional small autonomous groups can react faster to
feedback
• Orientation to the values and methods of the organization is critical
• Impinge on other organizations’ abilities to compete
• Leadership that sets goals and values information flow rather than rewards
and punishment
29

30. Leadership’s Role
1. Articulate and enroll a common vision
a. Often through stories
2. Improving capacity
a. Mental modes of potential solutions
b. Resources and reinforcements
c. Recruitment of uncommitted and adversaries
3. Empowering and coordinating small autonomous groups
a. Training and indoctrination
4. Learn as much as possible
a. Support information flow without penalizing results
b. Refrain from top down decisionmaking
c. Probe opponents
While disrupting the ability of adversaries to do the same
30

31. Applying OODA to Organizations 3
Problems faced by organizations also generally require iteration and responses to
results.
Top down organizations are not nimble
Organizations with highly functional small autonomous groups can react faster to
feedback
• Orientation to the values and methods of the organization is critical
• Impinge on other organizations’ abilities to compete
• Leadership that sets goals and values information flow rather than rewards and
punishment
• Have a high degree of trust
• Convert adversaries to allies, finds ways of persuasion, not directly challenging
• Encourage novelty and innovation with low risks for failure
31

32. How to depress creativity
1. Rushing too quickly to consensus
2. Rallying around expert leaders
3. Punishing dissenters
4. Hardening around a sense of right and wrong
5. Squashing risky unfamiliar ideas in the name of
efficiency and practicality
32

33. Symptoms of depressed creativity
1. Not reconsidering what one knows
to be true
2. Not considering what you don’t
know you don’t know
3. Lack of quality and timely
information
1. Trying the same thing again
2. Giving whatever one is doing one
more time
3. Passing off results as statistical
anomalies
4. Discarding ambiguity
5. Blaming execution or timing
Resulting
in
33

34. Helping your organization
34
• What can you do to help them be more open?
• What can you do when the environment or results change and
they may or may not perceive that a new mental mode may be
needed?

35. Applying OODA to Design Thinking
Strive to win with a “variety of possibilities as
well as the rapidity to implement and shift
among them.”
Boyd, Patterns of Conflict, #176
35

36. Development Options Approach
36
Characterized by synthesizing and exercising
multiple perspectives and concurrent options to
maximize the development of the network’s
capability to evolve expectations and self-
correct focus throughout projects.
OpLaunch

37. Development Approach
37
1. Synthesis
2. Exercise
3. Multiple Perspective
4. More Than One Potential Solution
5. Concurrent
6. Focus
7. Expectations

38. Development Approach
38
Synthesis
Enables collaborators to imagine how a series of efforts may work together to produce
the desired result.
Exercise
A combination of decision, action, and interaction. Exercise includes the interaction of
people with designs and prototypes.

39. Development Approach
39
Multiple Perspectives
Understanding benefits from a diversity of views. This approach supersedes
compromise or consensus. Boyd referred to this as “an ongoing many-sided implicit
cross-referencing process of projection, empathy, correlation, and rejection.” (Boyd, The
Essence of Winning and Losing, 1995)
More Than One Potential Solution (Many)
More than one potential solution. Having several options reduces the reliance on the
accuracy of detailed forecasts.

40. Development Approach
40
Concurrent
More than one option can be synthesized and/or exercised at one time. Learning is
accelerated. Parallel experiments, including A/B testing, are encouraged.
Focus
The item for temporary, concentrated attention. The current objective.

41. Development Approach
41
Expectation
A set of beliefs that evolves during a project. Expectations include requirements,
specifications, value propositions, and hypotheses

42. 42
Game to Reduce Teen Juul Use

43. Applying OODA to Design Thinking
An innovator is a winner — individual or
network — who can build new products, and
employ them in an appropriate fashion, when
facing uncertainty and unpredictable change
Boyd, Conceptual Spiral, 1992
43

44. Applying OODA to Design Thinking
Designers, engineers, coders, graphics artists,
business specialists, and communicators…
collectively, can improve their
capabilities to win consistently.
OpLaunch
44

45. Key Aspects for Success
Ability to generate a rapidly changing environment
Ability to inhibit adversary’s capacity to adapt to such an environment
Cause adversary to fall into confusion and disorder
Results in adversary over or under react
Armed with diverse repertoire of actions/moves
Ability to observe
Agility to cycle through strategies and tactics faster than adversary
45
Success

46. OODA Loops
Rapid Iteration for Complex Problems
From
Sensemaking, Problem Solving, and Achieving Success
46
Mitch Weisburgh
mitch.weisburgh@academicbiz.com
Scott Brewster
dr.Brewster@gmail.com