Musings at Altitude

For the last two days, I’ve been sitting at or below sea level, and the temptation to yield to the burdens of business and thus sink into despair have been great.  I talk often about the OODA loop – observe, orient, decide, act – and I’m convinced that we’ll never be able to effectively quantify the business lost because of the slow response of any corporate bureacracy.  I’ve been blessed in my life to see the very best of OODA loop performance in business, and unfortunately the very worst as well.  The best goes back almost two decades now to my Air Force days when decisions were made on the information known and the path was adjusted as more information became available.  I can’t remember a time where we actually said “no”, and we all held ourselves accountable to rapid recognition, rapid response, rapid deployment, and very rapid availability of operations capability.  During those incredibly stimulating days, we responded to any stated (or even unstated but recognized) need with speed.  Our OODA loop was spinning tight.  Risk was something we lived with – we didn’t ignore it, but we sure didn’t focus so much on risk that we denied the operations folks from getting their needed mission capability.  We were spurred on by a passionate focus on our mission and a common commitment to deliver to each other what was needed to get that mission done.  For us, we delivered capability.  For our customers, they delivered clear requirements, funding support, operations support, and ultimately critical feedback throughout the entire definition and delivery process.  It was about as close to nirvana as I can imagine, and it’s rare in business that I can come close to that rapidly spinning OODA loop environment that I experienced in that one job in the military.

I have found in business that start up companies can come close to an exciting OODA loop spin, but the actual tightness or velocity of the spin is highly determined by the founding team or the individual that’s been tasked to be the money rep and leader for the company.  Only rarely can some other member of the company actually influence the spin of the OODA loop.  As companies get bigger, other members of the executive team (not the CEO or any of the remaining founders) could be significant accelerators, but more likely, significant resistors to any speed needed to achieve phenomenal business results.  The reasons given to slow things down are too many to state, but they include too much risk, unclear ROI, no money available, can’t trust the execution, not enough margin, don’t have time to look at it, and the one that becomes the catch all when no other excuse seems reasonable, it’s not in the plan.  In any particular instance, one or more of these may in fact be true.  But how many great opportunities drop in our business laps without risk, or without timing problems, or without funding or investment challenges, or without some schedule problem that creates so much chaos that other things need to be set aside to respond effectively to that great opportunity that faces us.

I visited a company yesterday and today that had their act together.  The functional leaders actually said, “although I don’t agree with this because of how risky it is, the program manager makes that decision and my job is to support him.”  I looked at the program manager and I could see that he (1) understood he had that responsibility and (2) knew that with that responsibility came a huge burden to spin the OODA loop very fast to achieve success…lots of eyes were glaring down on him.  But the company as a whole supported the program manager’s decision.  That dialogue was a clear example of business nirvana to me.  In that company, the OODA loop was spinning fast and tight as they responded aggressively to business opportunities and executed flawlessly most of the time.  When problems did exist, they learned from those problems and they talk about those problems constantly.  With that focus, the OODA loop spins even tighter.

I’m in a company today that needs these examples of those doing it right to model that behavior for us to accelerate our OODA loop.  For every person pushing hard to spin the cycle faster, others are yanking hard in the opposite direction to slow things down and create comfort in methodical execution.  We have had several times recently where we went through the “OO” very fast, and then the great resistance of the organization begins acting against the “DA” driving lethargy into any execution process (if we get there).  The great challenge that we face is that the resistors don’t act in concert with each other, but they seem selectively perched along the path and ready to jump into the resist cycle at the very moment that a previous resistor may be losing grip.  I’d cherish the opportunity to take them all on at once – we could get all the resistance out in the open and get on with it or we’d stop the process, but at least we’d attack and respond to each resistor and then accelerate into the business opportunity at hand.  One of many things I haven’t figured out is whether or not the resistance and the resistors are malicious and devious or instead good hearted people just behaviorly incapable of living with a fast spinning OODA loop.  I’m hoping the latter.