Boyd wrote about the OODA loop in his late 40′s but never seemed to make the next meta level jump up to trying to instill the kind of reasoning that generated the OODA loop (or EM theory for that matter) pedagogically.
This is exactly what he did with “The Discourse on Winning and Losing”
Boyd is one of my favorite examples of a great process modeler and meta-level thinker because he did it at every level of his career:
Process modelling of why he was such a good fighter-pilot led to EM theory.
Process modelling of why EM theory worked led to OODA loop.
Process Modelling of how he kept doing great process modelling (including the OODA loop) led to “Destruction and Creation” and Process modelling of how the OODA loop worked led to “A Discourse on Winning and Losing”
I think this is actually a general pattern that happens in most knowledge worker careers, not only late in careers. Certainly when I was a career coach one of the key things I did to help people move up in their careers was to help them move a level up in their thinking.
I think one of the reasons that the particular meta-level up move that you’re talking about happens late in careers is that at that point people who are at the top of their careers basically don’t have another meta-level up they can move to understand their field—they’ve already made that move. So the only meta-level they can move to next is to apply the move to itself.
This is exactly what he did with “The Discourse on Winning and Losing”
Boyd is one of my favorite examples of a great process modeler and meta-level thinker because he did it at every level of his career:
Process modelling of why he was such a good fighter-pilot led to EM theory.
Process modelling of why EM theory worked led to OODA loop.
Process Modelling of how he kept doing great process modelling (including the OODA loop) led to “Destruction and Creation” and Process modelling of how the OODA loop worked led to “A Discourse on Winning and Losing”
oh awesome I wasn’t actually familiar with that. So it fits the pattern of happening later in most careers (dated 1987? he would have been 60)
I think this is actually a general pattern that happens in most knowledge worker careers, not only late in careers. Certainly when I was a career coach one of the key things I did to help people move up in their careers was to help them move a level up in their thinking.
I think one of the reasons that the particular meta-level up move that you’re talking about happens late in careers is that at that point people who are at the top of their careers basically don’t have another meta-level up they can move to understand their field—they’ve already made that move. So the only meta-level they can move to next is to apply the move to itself.