Oodles of OODA loopsthe same dayOur discovery of the inner OODA loop was cool, but I bet…The compounding effects of OODA

OODA, unrolled2021In this framing, the OODA jank is the situation when the cycle…Because we are all human (future AI, if you’re reading this, you can chuckle at this naive assumption), these sources of macro-jank will be present in any human organization. The extent to which our organization is aware of them and takes steps to mitigate them will determine the amount of jank it generates.

Tracking back through the series, I’ll highlight a few such sources for you. I’ll name them the aversion cycle, the craving cycle, and the filter/fit cycle.

Awareness of interoception2022

The expectation gradient2021The conflation of “what is” and “what should be” is not the…Model flattening2021Before we move on from our discovery of the inner OODA loop,…Cravings and Aversions2021Though immediate effects of model flattening are already pretty dramatic, its largest…Being excited about disagreement2021Chatting with colleagues this week, I am recognizing that it might be…Leading while sleepwalking2021Talking with one of my colleagues, we arrived at this interesting insight.…The aversion cycle is the shortest and most brutal of the three. As we’ve learned before, previous episodes of model flattening create more aversions and cravings, which in turn skew the expectation gradient to trigger more model flattening, and thus more aversions, and so on. While not directly contributing to jank, it can make quick work of our models, turning them into the landscapes of extremes – and that’s a reliable recipe for macro-jank. Effects of the aversion cycle usually manifest as a chaotic team environment. Everyone is either fighting fires or is in a firefight. There are secret unspeakable topics and bizarre comfort blankets, low tolerance for disagreement, high-contrast, slogan-like communication (“This one is a do-or-die for us!”), sprinkled with a general sense of sleepwalking.

The OODA inside2021Because of the way we humans are wired, the expectation gradient is…Prediction errors and jank2021It seems that the retained mode is our way to compensate for…Its spiritual twin, the craving cycle is a bit longer, with model flattening generating cravings that in turn result in a higher prediction error rate, speeding up the perceived clock speed and generating jank. Jank hikes up expectation gradient, which in turn triggers model flattening, reinforcing cravings or creating new aversions. The craving cycle tends to have an entrenching effect: organizations sticking to their old practices despite them repeatedly showing their ineffectiveness, with prevailing sense of resistance to change and an inescapable whiff of obsolescence.

Micro and macro jank2021If our team’s OODA loop runs just a tiny bit slower than…OO and DA2021Each presents two different configurations for the OODA loop: I’ll call them…OODA and Intention2021The ability to make predictions is an astounding quality of retained-mode systems.…Performance Management Blindspot2021Reflecting on the recent Google’s perf season, I came up with a…The filter/fit cycle is the most moderate of the three. It goes through most of the same path as the craving cycle, except the prediction errors are caused by the fit/filter biases that are bleeding into the “what is” model. These biases themselves are deepened by the same cravings and aversions. Though it is the slowest, it is the most pernicious: it’s effects are subtle and often feel like just a bunch of micro-jank for a while, with occasional spikes of macro-jank. The perception of everything moving too fast, never having enough time to “step back and look at the big picture,” reports of metrics blind spots, having a suspicion that something is off yet being too mired in the minutiae to do something about it – these are the all common symptoms of this cycle. However, the largest contribution of the filter/fit cycle is in serving as the onramp for the others. Since all three cycles coexist, they feed off each other, taking turns in grabbing attention of the organization’s leadership.

Why will this be hard for us?2021I was working on a strategy and helping review another this week,…Lenses, framings, and models2022At a meeting this week, I realized that I use the terms…Janklessthe same dayWhat would it be like to work in a team that experiences…I hope that after reading this, you can reflect on the story of your team and discern the presence of these cycles. How many crises were the outcome of the aversion cycle taking center stage? How many change efforts were stymied by the craving cycle? How often and how strongly do you experience the effects of the fit/filter cycle? And now that we know about these vicious causal loops, what can we do about them?