Architecting Agility

A Fast Iteration of OODA Cycle
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The Strategy of Agility applied to Business

What is the aim or purpose of strategy?  To improve our ability to shape and adapt to unfolding circumstances, so that we (as individuals or as groups or as a culture or as a nation-state) can SURVIVE ON OUR OWN TERMS.    
- John Boyd

 

John Boyd's OODA Loop Sketch

The concept of Agility/Time/Maneuver as a core element of strategy has been expressed by major strategists and is embedded in many major strategy
 
  • If we have to boil down to one factor that distinguishes great companies, it is the ability to balance Continuity and Change.                           – Jim Collins, Built to Last

 

  • "Constantly shorten the time it takes to convert customer order into deliveries."
                                            – Toyota Motor Company, Toyota Production System, 1992

 

  • Fast OODA (Observe–Orient–Decide–Act) Speed is the real nub of competitiveness

                                                                                                             – Tom Peters

 

  • Most successful small companies possess three defining cultural traits: Self-Confidence, Simplicity, and Speed.  We wanted them.  We went after them.
                                                                 – Jack Welch, CEO, GE, 1995 Annual Report

 

  • Simple, Speed, Satisfaction.  – Samsung SDS 3S Division Motto

 

  • Employ Cheng/Chi Maneuver to quickly and unexpectedly hurl strength against weaknesses. – Sun Tze, The Art of War

     

    • Strategy is the art of making use of time and space.          – Napoleon Bonaparte

 

  • The RTE monitors, captures, and analyzes root-cause and overt events… the instant those events occur… to  minimize delays in core business processes. 
                                          - Gartner Definition of Real-Time Enterprise, 25 Mar 2004

 

  • Fly like a butterfly and sting like a bee.  – Muhammed Ali

 

  • I order my men to attack like the wind.  – Genghis Khan

     

    • Success in war depends on the golden rules of war:
      Speed, Simplicity, and Boldness.               – General George S. Patton

 

Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act more inconspicuously, more quickly, and with more irregularity… It will permit one to generate uncertainly, confusion, disorder, panic, chaos… and to shatter cohesion, produce paralysis, and bring about collapse.

                                                                                       – John Boyd

The strategy of agility boils down to iterating the OODA Cycle faster than the competition.  In business, however, there is one more factor: CUSTOMERS.  Regardless how we defeat the competition, the final arbiter is the customer.  She determines whether we are successful or not.  The strategy of ability focuses primarily on customers - the person who pays the bill.

Thus, the focus is not about beating the competition but about satisfying the customer.  As such, our OODA Cycle must be faster than the customer's Purchase Cycle - the customer's perspective of OODA Cycle. 
 
Marketing experts claim that customers go through 4 phases: Awareness, Interest, Action, and Loyalty.
 
It may not be a one-to-one match between the OODA and Purchase cycle, but the central idea is to be vigilant of each phase of the Purchase Cycle and proactively acting in response.