Ignition

9Decision Making

So how does one make decisions in a crisis — or any situation for that matter? Fortunately, there is a simple framework for how to respond when someone figuratively gets punched in the face.

The OODA Loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) was created by Air Force Colonel John Boyd, a military strategist who used it for combat operations. Although he never wrote a book about the process, his OODA Loop was held in high regard within the military. In 1976, he published a crisp paper about the decision-making process called “Destruction and Creation.” He wrote, “The activity is dialectic in nature generating both disorder and order that emerges as a changing and expanding universe of mental concepts matched to a changing and expanding ...