Applying Military Strategy to Drive Insight in a Turbulent Data Landscape
By Julian Bergquist, CTO, Sort Ascend
Col. John Boyd, a military strategist with limited combat exposure in Korea, was instrumental in devising a concept that has far-reaching implications beyond the battlefield.
Trying to decipher why the seemingly sluggish American F-86’s consistently overpowered the advanced MIG-15’s, Boyd recognized two game-changing elements: improved visibility and a quicker roll rate. This led to the creation of the OODA Loop – a recurrent process of Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act, encompassing every strategic interaction. Boyd surmised that victory relied not on sheer speed or altitude, but the dexterity to swiftly alter course or initiate ascension.
Boyd’s OODA Loop asserts that an organization able to cycle through these stages quicker than its competitors significantly boosts its chances of success. This theory proves extremely pertinent in our current disruptive data landscape. The proliferation of data, courtesy of technological advancements like smartphones and social media, presents formidable challenges to organizations attempting to extract valuable insights.
Analytics can be a valuable tool in helping businesses navigate this data deluge, uncovering crucial insights and providing a competitive edge. However, a common pitfall is adopting an inside-out approach, prioritizing data and technology over defining clear objectives, key questions, and setting a practical timeline. Considering these factors upfront can unlock the full potential of analytics.
The OODA Loop offers a decision-centric framework to big data and analytics, empowering organizations to better harness these powerful tools, especially in disruptive situations.
Here’s how the OODA Loop can be leveraged in big data and analytics when dealing with disruptive events and technologies.
Observe
The decision-making cycle begins with data collection about the environment, competitors, and other relevant dynamics. Consequently, the Observation stage centers on compiling data from apt sources. Amidst disruption, keen observation and a rigorous data management discipline are critical. It includes cataloging data sources, understanding the semantic relevance of data fields, charting how these fields facilitate decision-making, creating a data catalog for storing database object definitions, and data cleansing. A well-executed observation phase enables organizations to prudently allocate resources and make effective business decisions.
Orient
During the Orientation phase, individuals attach context to the collected data, fostering situational awareness. Amidst turbulence, maintaining perspective and context is crucial. Key technologies aiding this process include stream-processing technologies, in-memory analytics, and powerful visual analytic capabilities, which allow scoring, organizing, and recalling data based on the organization’s business and workflow needs. These tools aid real-time pattern detection and event analysis, enabling complex data exploration, modeling, and unearthing concealed patterns and relationships in data.
Decide
Once the context of the data is understood, potential actions can be identified, and possible outcomes can be assessed. Amidst disruptive circumstances, making informed decisions is essential. The Decision phase is about leveraging insights derived from observations to formulate informed decisions. Cutting-edge analytics technologies can automate cognitive thinking, revolutionizing the interpretation of information and decision-making processes. They can sense, predict, infer, process natural language and unstructured data, and learn from past experiences, thereby assisting humans in making superior decisions based on the most relevant data.
Act
After considering various options, the final decision is executed. Even the most valuable data is pointless unless it leads to effective action. In disruptive scenarios, swift and decisive action is pivotal. Big data and analytics can expedite the decision-making process, and by adopting the OODA Loop, organizations can assume a proactive stance against their competitors.
Conclusion
Col. John Boyd articulated timeless principles that remain impactful, particularly in today’s disruptive, data-rich environment.
The OODA loop emphasizes that by identifying valuable data and employing analytics, organizations can decide and act more promptly. This results in a strategic advantage in the face of today’s disruptive events and technologies.
