A very interesting book about John Boyd, who was a crack fighter pilot, and then later military strategist and reformer. Boyd flew as an instructor in the real life version of Top Gun, and beat everyone in 40 seconds or less. But later in his life he really studied military strategy, and this is where the interesting parts of this book are.

Boyd was literally the designer of the F-15, and a theory of maneuvering called Energy-Manueverability (E-M), which mathematically gave a chart for each aircraft that gave pilots an idea of the ideal speeds and altitudes they could use to pull off various turns and tactics.

One interesting thing I noted was that throughout his career, like everyone else in the military, Boyd was getting reviewed by his superiors, called ER's. It was interesting to hear, and relevant to business, how you had to "read through the lines" and how even a positive sounding ER could be a career-killer if the person wasn't recommended for promotion. Reading this has definitely made me think twice every time I've read (or written) recommendations for people.

Another Boyd tidbit I liked was when fighting bureaucratic battles in the Pentagon, he had a mantra to "use the other persons information against him". Starting with the other persons argument and data, and working backwards, you can make pretty compelling arguments.

Perhaps the biggest idea Boyd came up with is what is called the OODA loop, which stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. A key quote defining the OODA loop:

"Thinking about operating at a quicker tempo - not just moving faster - than the adversary was a new concept in waging war. Generating a rapidly changing environment - that is, engaging in activity that is quick it is disorienting and appears uncertain or ambiguous to the enemy - inhibits the adversary's ability to adapt and causes confusion and disorder that, in turn, causes an adversary to overreact or underreact. Boyd closed the briefing by saying the message is that whoever can handle the quickest rate of change is the one who survives."

Another great quote that helps explain it:

"Boyd said the strategies and bloodbaths of World War 1 were the natural consequence of both the vo Clausewitzian battle philosophy and the inability of generals to adapt new tactics to nineteenth-century technology: line abreast, mass against mass, and linear defenses against machine guns and quick-firing artillery. The bankrupt nature of that doctrine was demonstrated on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, which the British suffered sixty thousand casualties. After more than three years of the meat-grinding form of war, the Germans began engagements with a brief artillery barrage with smoke and gas obscuring their intentions, then sent in a special infantry teams. These small groups looked for gaps in the defense and advanced along many paths. They did not hit strong points but instead went around them, pressing on, always going forward and not worrying about their flanks. They were like water going downhill, bypassing obstacles, always moving, proving, and then, when they found an opening, pouring through, pressing deeper and deeper."

Getting your lieutenants to the point where they can do this kind of infiltration successfully requires great communication and men who can think fast on their feet. In other words, you had to enable every leader to be able to follow the OODA loop, and just arm them with the overal goals, and trust them to make their own decisions. Very different from previous military structures, where "the need to know" remained at the top.

Why is this empowerment valuable? Because:

"The key thing to understand about Boyd's version is the not the mechanical cycle itself, but rather the need to execute the cycle in such fashion as to get inside the mind and the decision cycle of the adversary. This means the adversary is dealing with out-dated or irrelevant information and thus becomes confused and disoriented and can't function."

And:

"Understanding the OODA loop enables a commander to compress time - that is, the time between observing a situation and taking an action. A commander can use the temporal discrepancy (a form of fast transient) to select the least-expected action rather than what is predicted to be the most effective action. The enemy can also figure out what might be the most effective. To take the least-expected action disorients the enemy. It causes him to pause, wonder, to question."

This makes sense. You can almost picture the commanders of old, who used to have to get on the phone with their boss in order make any decision. "Take the bridge, blow it up, or wait?". Hours and days could be spent waiting around for generals to make up their minds. This form of maneuver warfare is what the Germans used in WWII - they called it blitzkrieg - and it's what we used in Iraq the first time.

In business we have a word for the above - micromanagement. In a sense, it sounds like empowering business leaders and their lieutenants to have an effective OODA loop is what will let a business move faster and win marketshare. I bet somebody has written a book about that - I will have to look.