Beyond the Loop: Why Everything You Know About OODA May Be Wrong

uest today is Mark McGrath, a strategist who teaches John Boyd as Boyd intended. Mark is the chief learning officer and a partner at AGLX North America, co-host of the podcast No Way Out, and author of the Substacks, The Whirl of Reorientation and Contra Frame. Mark's work focuses on Boyd's udaloop sketch, specifically the part most people miss, orientation as the human operating system. Mark replaces checklist thinking with practical drills that build recognition reframing and tempo control. His clients use this to cut through chaos, avoid freeze, and create mismatch advantages against stronger opponents. Beyond training, Mark advises on high stakes problems in leadership, asset management, hiring, sport strategy, and public relations. If you picture the udaloop as a tidy circle, Mark is the guy who will help you fix that. His work gives teams plain language, precise thinking, and fieldready habits that can be applied in a law enforcement or military tactical environment. I'm excited to have Mark on the debrief because Boyd's udaloop is a widely discussed but very rarely understood concept and Mark's expertise can help take Boyd's work from a theoretical idea to an actionable framework. Hope you enjoy my conversation with Mark McGrath. My name is John Becker. For the past four decades, I've dedicated my life to protecting tactical operators. During this time, I've worked with many of the world's top law enforcement and military units. As a result, I've had the privilege of working with the amazing leaders who take teams into the world's most dangerous situations. The goal of this podcast is to share their stories in hopes of making us all better leaders, better thinkers, and better people. Welcome to the debrief. Mark, thanks for being with me today. Yeah, thanks for having me. So, I'm excited to have this conversation because John Boyd is perhaps the most widely noted scholar that nobody really understands. I would agree with that. It's, you know, his his work is this big volume of work that ultimately gets reduced down to, you know, an UDA drawing that isn't even a complete UDA sketch, but just a, you know, a circular loop. Mhm. And and the number of times I've heard people talk about Boyd um and and misstate kind of everything he did, I can't even count. So, I'm I'm excited to sit down with somebody who actually understands Boyd's work and and have this conversation. Well, I like to think that I've done the work and I like to think that I'm doing the work because when you get into it, you realize it's a it's an ongoing process that'll never stop. So maybe let's start with just kind of a brief orientation as to who John Boyd was. John Boyd was a retired colonel from the United States Air Force. Retired in the early 70s. He served over the uh originally as an enlisted Army Airore guy that made it over to Japan in time to for the occupation but did not fight in World War II and came back and went to college at the University of Iowa and was a member of the swim team. So, he's a D1 athlete and then he became an officer in the Air Force and became a fighter pilot and he's considered one of the greatest fighter pilots who ever lived. Um, he was an instructor for a long time. He flew in the Korean War and he flew in combat but was never engaged in combat. So, he never fired a shot and angered anybody and he was never in a dog fight, never shot down uh a airplane, so enemy aircraft. uh which we could start maybe by dispelling one of the immediate myths of uh UDA's origins. It's not from a fighter pilot that was an ace over Korea and thought of this little cool tactical model for fighter pilots to use in a dog fight. That's that's completely wrong. Um he went on to become a fighter weapons instructor at Nellis Air Force Base and his career was very famous as an instructor. Um he had a standing bet for uh 40 bucks which in you know the late I guess mid50s or whatever was a lot of money in those days. He had a standing bet from a position of disadvantage. I can defeat anybody in 40 seconds or less and if I don't I owe you $40 and he never paid uh he never paid out that debt. Uh one guy came close was actually was a Marine who came close but did not. And so uh his record record stood. It's also part of the big myth of Jean Boyd and the legend, but that actually is factually true. He was a uh a very accomplished fighter pilot. And while he was an instructor at Nalis Air Force Base, he authored in his spare time as a senior first lieutenant and then as a captain the aerial attack study. And the aerial attack study is still to this day the definitive dog fighting um text for all NATO air forces. And this guy did it in his free time. And now it's kind of a harbinger of things to come with John Boyd. He does a lot in his free time. He does a lot autodidactically, which you're going to see as we keep unfolding the story here. Um, he's really an amazing guy in in that respect that he himself authoring his own aerial attack study versus whoever the Air Force paid lots and lots of money to do. Um, he did it himself and it's still still used today and you can still you can still access that online. Um from there you know he had various assignments but one of the things that he came up with was uh this was after he went to uh uh get a degree in engineering at Georgia Tech. He started studying about entropy and energy and realizing that fighter uh fighter aircraft that were in you know certain positions it was actually an exchange of energy and and controlling energy and being able to maneuver using energy as an advantage. um and understanding how it how it how you can maneuver using energy and how to turn inside somebody that there was a a design element that could improve that. And again, I'm a I'm a historian undergrad and an economist by master's degree. So I just liberal arts just bastardized um what Robert Cororm covers really well in John Boyd's biography, Boyd the Fighter pilot changed the art of war. But the bottom line was he came up with this theory with another guy called Tom Christie and they processing through mainframe computers at um I can't think of the name of the Air Force base off top of my head in Florida um but they processed these uh what would be called maneuverability diagrams to show like the maneuverability capabilities of different types of aircraft. Well, in a nutshell, this theory is uh has informed all sorts of fighter design from the lightweight fighter program forward. So, the lightweight fighter program was actually a flyoff between the F16, what became the F-16, what became the F-18. Um, and then we see these things in the F-15 um application like the A-10 and things like that where Boyd's theories are baked into the uh baked into the design of these uh aircraft. Again, I I am not a pilot. I was not an aviator. I was a filler tiller officer in the Marine Corps. So, I'm giving you my sort of layman's uh take on that. But having read the biography a lot, um that's kind of my uh best take. But that's really where a lot of his work started on what he's become known for, and there's there's a lot more meat to it, which we'll talk about, but it really started around that lightweight fighter program. uh was really one of the uh major uh major events in his life where he shifts away from being a fighter pilot to being a a scholar and a theorist and a and a strategist. Interesting. When so when as he's doing this, you know, he's teaching, he's developing his theories. When does, you know, Boyd cycle or the udaloop first appear and and kind of what is the context that that he introduces it? Yeah, it's a very complex question. So when during the Vietnam War was when he started thinking about things and he was writing letters to his wife and this is all in the bio too talking about how he is something's coming to him that's dawning to him that there's this new way of looking at learning and and creativity. And while he was over there, it was called the the chapter is called Spook Base and it was the uh where the lot of the black ops were run out of uh out of Thailand in the Vietnam War. One of the things that they had were sensors and they would put these sensors on on trails and you know these uh these sensors would send signals so they could see track like enemy movements and things like that. And what he was originally pinpointing there was ODA and it was orient decide act. Um I might I might have the O's mixed up on this one but ODA that the sensors were Orient deciding and helping us uh helping us act. That's the earliest that I've heard in conversations I've had with some of his uh what were called his acolytes. the people that collaborated with John Boyd. That was some of the earliest um u sort of precursors to what ultimately becomes UDA. Then it became sense, orient, decide, and act. Now sound out that acronym soda. He says that's ridiculous. We're not going to call it the soda loop. So sense became uh sense became observe. Um he he really starts talking about it in brief patterns of conflict. comes comes a little bit later uh late '7s early ' 80s when he's teaching um the history of warfare going all the way back to the early early quarter history up until the modern times at that point would have been you know through through uh through Vietnam um where he talks about getting inside orient observe orient decided action loops getting inside the enemy's uh udaloops getting inside their decision cycle yet he never drew it and he didn't illustrate it until uh 199 1995 1996 when he came out with the briefing the essence of winning and losing which was a distillation of basically 40 years of work summarized in about six pages with the only illustration of the UDA loop that he ever drew and that's what we know as John Boyd's UDA loop and quotes sketch and it's anything but a circular tactical model. Uh, and then he died in 1997. So, he didn't he didn't have much time after that to develop anything. But, I've uh I've been in I've seen in the archives several times and I've seen the original sort of drafts that he had and the things that were going through his head to come up with that. But, um, a lot of people point to patterns of conflict and they would say, "Well, he's just talking about udaloops and getting inside of the udaloops." And it's it's not a it's not a necessarily a a wrong interpretation. It's just remarkably incomplete. And if you only operated on what he talked about in patterns of conflict and sort of bastardize that into a little circular diagram, you're going to be in a lot of trouble. And that's what a lot of people do unfortunately. They they well this is what he said in patterns of conflict. And that's that's what it is without, you know, thinking about the rest of his corpus of work, which was even more significant after that. And then his his own illustration of what he actually drew. When you Google John Boyd Judoop sketch, that's actually the image that you see, not a circular tactical diagram. So, how do how do you get interested in this? Like, g give me give me kind of your bio and and why you decided to pick up kind of Boyd's mantle. Yeah. Well, interesting. So, Army brat growing up. Uh dad was a West Pointer and an Army officer and I rejected that path uh with extreme prejudice. Uh choosing the Marine Corps. I did a naval RTC scholarship at Marquette University and that was really the first time I'd ever heard of John Boyd and that's when I first time I ever heard the the acronym UDA and this was uh my sophomore year so this would have been the year of 9596 and 9596 he was still alive uh the essence of winning and losing hadn't come out yet but Boyd was still alive and still having a lot of influence on the uh on the Marine Corps the publication Marine Corps doctrinal publication number one, aka war fighting, then known as Fleet Marine Force Manual One, FMFM1, FMFM1. Um, I had that and I'd read that and that was before the first revision. The the first and current uh uh revision that's still still in force came in 1997 after after Boyd died. Um, but FMFM1, he had a lot of uh influence on on some of that and that's where I learned about then they call it the Boyd cycle. And to be clear, we would get a very incomplete version of it. Ooda, observe, orient, decide, and act. And it just makes sense like, you know, oh, I I see something. I I think about it. I I make the decision to grab it. I missed. Oh, I reorient, you know, like we would we would talk about it and talk through things or we would go through field problems. you know, even when I was at officer K school or the basic school, you know, people talk about getting inside someone's udaloop, but we didn't have the complete story of of boy and that really didn't come to me until after I got out of the Marine Corps. So, got out of the Marine Corps, um started working in medical sales briefly and then I spent over 15 years in asset management and almost immediately I started asking myself, well, why am I seeing things differently? Why is it just because I was in the Marine Corps and people weren't? I mean, but there's more to that. like there's more that I'm asking questions about. I'm curious about like why are these things happening or why why do I see something one way and someone sees as something different? Why do I see an opportunity and someone sees a crisis? That kind of stuff. And a bunch of other things happened. I mean, I went back to grad school, got a master's degree in economics, and then um sort of a combination of two things. And I I've said this in different ways on different podcasts, but they're all approximately the same kind of thing. right around uh there's a guy called John Rob that runs Global Gorillas who was an Air Force vet and an analyst on Wall Street who has the Global Gorillas report that I've been following since uh ' 07ish. Um Chad Richards who was one of Boyd's uh acolytes who we do a lot of collaborating with. Um in fact the article I had sent you to outline for the conversation uh Chet was really instrumental in helping me refine that and revise that and edit that. um he came out with a book called Certain to Win and that was a book when I read it I was like wow like this void was a lot more than they had taught us and I just started kind of pulling the uh pulling the thread and then the other book that I I brought with me uh the science of strategy and war came out written by Fronzo Singa which is the textbook of Boyd which is really the the definitive Boyd work. If Boyd had lived, you know, and written a book, it would have been this. Some people say, um, which, you know, depending on who you talk to, well, that's not entirely accurate or whatever, but if I I I give it out as a textbook, right? I make clients buy it. I say, you should buy this. We're going to work through this chapter by chapter. And you see my copy. I mean, it's drowning in marginalia and dog ears and and just underlines and and stars and everything else. Um, all that kind of happened. And then when I started reading and getting it getting really back into it, I went back and I read all my war fighting pubs. I went back and I read the uh I had the uh the non-resident uh then was called amphibious warfare school. Now it's called expeditionary warfare school. I started reading through like the offense curriculum, the defense curriculum, and I started realizing that these concepts applied to literally everything that was happening on on Wall Street. you know, the constant fluctuation of markets, the decisions that you have to operate inside of those markets, the friction that you feel, um the, you know, the things that you want to mass capital at this time, you want to pull it out, you know, it's just like all these kind of similarities. And I just started digging and digging and digging and digging and going and going and going and uh finishing my master's degree, constantly reading and really challenging the assumptions, but thinking that I get this, I understand it. Chad's book, John Rob's work, and Osa's book really helped me refine and see that there's a lot that I missed or we weren't we weren't taught in the Marine Corps. And the more I was getting into it, the more I realized I can teach this to investment advisors, I can teach this to peers, I can teach this to portfolio managers. So that's what I started doing. So I just started on my own just started teaching people kind of making that the edge the uh industry was kind of going through a a transition where in the old days you know who's the best golfer who had the best uh taking people to sporting events or steak dinners and it' been the territory the longest and they're you're going to use their products or buy their investment uh portfolios because you know the guy and he's he's in the race cars or whatever whatever it could be and I needed an edge and the regulatory environment when I came into that industry was a lot different than a lot of the old seasoned veterans. But I needed to find some kind of an edge and that was the edge that I took. I'm going to help people differentiate how they look at their profession, how they look at markets, how they look at human relationships, how they look at team relationships. And if I can help them reframe how they how they look at those things like like Boyd would um that they would remember me differently than hey, his mutual fund did really really well for the last couple years or whatever. that they'd have something unique to uh to work with me and remember me by and that had even been a leazison officer in the Marine Corps. It was a great way to embed inside of a business and become an indisposable asset or work to become an indisposable asset to them um by doing something differentiated. But it was all for me. It was straight out of what I was what I was taking away from Boyd. And then over time uh Robert Cororm's book came out, the uh Boyd biography, which was really good. And then others, some like us, like myself and uh my business partner Brian Rivera. Um others are doing a lot of work of making Boyd more known uh make helping explain Boyd authentically. Most don't, but uh that we think is our value that we're uh that we're bringing to the market. But yeah, that's kind of it's kind of a long way to answer your uh your question, but it was complex. It wasn't so it wasn't so simple. Yeah. It's never linear, is it? No, no, no. And I have I mean thousands of books. I mean, I just I tried to read every book, as many books as I could that he read. Um, after a while, I have to give up because I'm never going to out read Boyd. You know, you you can read thousands of books. And I think we you and I were talking about AI earlier at lunch and I was saying like because of AI, maybe we could catch up to John Boyd. And he was he was farther ahead than anybody ever gave him credit for. He was just a viferous learner, right? He just read and and craved knowledge. Total total autodidact. But I would add what I would add to what you said is not just knowledge but also understanding. Why does this all happen? Yeah. Yeah. It seems that he had an ability to kind of see, you know, patterns that other people didn't see or relationships that other people didn't see. Yep. That was that and which is the whole point of a lot of his work that as as we scan and sense our our environments we want to look for those things that don't match up that don't add up because that's what we need to be paying attention to not everything going well you know in the business world every everybody was like wow everything's going fine I've got nothing to worry about well the marine on your team that studies John Wood is telling you now actually now's the now is the act the uh hour of maximum danger because yeah just when you think you're not walking into an ambush. You're walking into an ambush. Oh, that was another that was another thing that kind of added to it. So, yeah, I came into the asset management business in '05 and the, you know, 07 things were getting really weird. And again, I was still new. I didn't, you know, you really knew what you you don't know what you don't know. Um, but going through the crash of '08 and, you know, people jumping off skyscrapers or jumping in front of traffic turnpike or whatever, subway trains, subway trains. And I remember sitting there like, I mean, there's no kids with suicide vests. Like, there's no no shooting at us. Like, what what's really so bad? Like, there's got to be another way to there's got to be another way to look at it. And again, I probably had some benefit of not knowing what I didn't not knowing what I didn't know, you know, being being new enough. But I think that that lens of taking Boydac of being able to smash and revise and constantly update my models and then realizing that actually, hey, this is a great thing for the next however many years I was in that business. I'll constantly use that as an example of how to reframe instead of just, you know, freak out and go high and to the right. Actually, now is probably a really good time to reframe and rethink while everybody else is going insane. Yeah, it's interesting. I I feel like you know Boyd is is kind of like SunSu actually frequently cited rarely understood um you know especially financial circles is is you know business there's you know a million business books written about what SunSu would have said about you know running a a auto parts factory. Yeah. Um, but nobody really takes the time to go back and read the source material and be able to articulate it. And I it's, you know, we were talking about this earlier. I I feel like Boyd is it to most people and their understanding of Boyd is almost like a Xerox copy of a Xerox copy of a Xerox copy. Like they see it as a circular sketch with four letters on it and and that's all it is. So, I've I mean, anybody goes on the world of reorientation, one of my substacks, and just type in linear, just type in the word linear. And I mean, I've I've slaughtered linear UDA so many times, and I'll keep doing it until people stop doing it. People stop professing uh the linear version of the udaloop. Um, one of my most read articles is called Bad Boyd. And it came from actually because a retired admiral who had been the head of NATO had a feature article in the Wall Street Journal about the udaloop and it was complete trash. It was bad boy. And you know, he'd never take my advice, but like the the commentary was that I made is like, well, this is exactly the udaloop that you want your enemy to operate on. You want your competitors to have this limited linear understanding of the udaloop because you're going to beat them every time. So, let's let's take it apart initially and and what I'd like to do is kind of start from nothing. Assume I know nothing. Okay. Um, which is not a huge inference for you to have to draw, but let's assume I know nothing. Walk me through what UDA as a concept was and what Boyd was intending with it. So, you got to go back further. This is this is the critical component and I was I was telling you earlier this for me is the tell. When you see people teaching Udaloop or you see people writing Udaloop and if you've actually gone through Boyd's work, the first thing you can almost always tell is they have never read or comprehended his component or sorry his critical paper destruction and creation be and it's important because destruction and creation is the central component of John Boyd's entire corpus of It was officially published in September of 1976, September 3rd. I've held uh versions from late75, early 76, handwritten versions uh in the archives. I I I'm partial I also like Destruction and Creation cuz I was born 1976. So I like I like to think I came into the world the year uh Destruction and Creation came into the world. Um it was actually released on my grandmother's 64th birthday, September 3rd, 1976, the official pub publishing date. But like Boyd, he had a million versions before and he kept revising it even even uh even after. But the one that you could download and read is September 3rd uh 1976. And as I was saying, anything UDA, you can always tell immediately they've never read Destruction and Creation. They don't understand Destruction and Creation. Why? Destruction and creation is a dense 11 pages and it took me a long time to finally like click it and I can tell you about some of the sources that actually helped me click it but in a nutshell basically Boyd fuses three concepts entropy uncertainty and incompleteness and the scientific backing would be the second law of thermodynamics which is entropy all natural processes uh create entropy um the uncertainty principle or the indeterminency principle of Heisenberg which basically you you um again this is a historian trying to explain engineering and science but we can never fix exactly the actual distance from where you are and where I am with with certainty it's impossible because we're all in motion you know they're spinning around or whatever like I could fix my location but not not yours you know no no no two points can be fixed at the same time in in chaos or whatever and again I'm I'm I'm bastardizing is but it's basically the future's uncertain in a nutshell. Things are uncertain. We we can't do things with any type of uh accuracy just given the nature of flux in the universe and things like that. And the last one is uh was was girdle was uh incompleteness theorem. No system within itself can verify itself. So like algebra can't prove the efficacy of algebra with algebra, right? Yeah. Okay. Calculus can't prove like with with calculus, right? um what what Boyd took with those three things is that you can't determine the nature character of a system within itself. Moreover, the attempts to continue to do so are going to lead to confusion and disorder. So what do you have to do? You have to constantly update and revise your mental model or your your understanding, your comprehension, your perception of the world and revise it and update it. If not then you will become uh you will not be able to as he says in the paper you will not be able to improve your capacity for free and independent action. That's our goal is to understand how to do that so that we can improve our capacity for free and independent action that we have to be able to shatter our correspondence to reality and revise and update revise and update and you know how I teach it to a group I'd say think of think of this as your internal operating system your orientation you have to update and revise it just like you would your iPhone because if you don't what's going to happen you become subject to threat or something an app won't work or something becomes obsolete comes outdated goes slower. Why? Well, you weren't matched to the new the new reality which is always changing. That's the other thing that everything is in a constant state of flux. And if I don't understand that that that in of itself requires the need to constantly be adjusting, constantly be adapting, constantly be adjusting, constantly be adapting or re reorienting. So, okay. So, but that's a giveaway though. like so said like yeah if they if they've not read destruction creation it's very clear because because if so you tend to view it in a linear orientation it's so yeah it's so linear and mechanical and it's so template like we we need a template to give our people we need a checklist or we need something a metric or whatever so it's always going to be o o da o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o da and you can't go backwards or forward you can only go one direction and you can't skip from one step to another yeah it's a dog chasing his tail Yeah, that's really what it that's really what it boils down to is it's a dog chasing his tail. And that's exactly what you would want, you know, if you're a tactical operator and you're going to go into like a SWAT call. You want the the hostage takers or whoever to be thinking in a I'm observe oriented side acts or you don't want them to be thinking it authentically. You want them to be thinking in that uh sort of caricature of you know 40 years of Boyd's Boyd's work. So let's walk through the four concepts. Yeah. And and talk about kind of real world out like you know how how does it affect how we're operating? So the first one we do is we pull out one because if we don't understand this one the whole again the whole thing just goes to That's orientation. Orientation is everything. Orient. I have one. You have one. We have one to make a podcast. A team has one. A family has one. It's fractal. Right. Orientation is the critical component that everybody screws up when it comes to talking about John Boyd Zudaloop. In a in a tur in a circular tactical model, orientation, what it is, it it can't exist that way. It doesn't exist that way. Orientation is our genetic heritage, our cultural traditions, our previous experiences, uh new information, and most importantly, our ability to analyze and synthesize. In other words, our ability to destroy and create, destroy and create, or you know, revise and update, revise and update. That's analysis and synthesis. A lot of good analysts can break things down. I've seen them do it. That was on in the asset management world. There's a lot of great analysts. They can break things down, tell you all the components. They're really lousy at synthesizing. And that's the other that's the other end of it is that you have to be able to break things down and reassemble them in ways that no one ever thought would be possible. For example, Boyd's Destruction and Creation. He fused three things together that no one ever thought to do. Entropy, in uncertainty, incompleteness. No one no one ever thought that before because Boyd destroyed the model and created something novel that didn't exist. It's a, you know, it's uh it's how it's where novelty comes from. It's where creativity comes from. Our ability to shatter convention and and and revise and update, revise and update. Orientation is also important because orientation implicitly guides and controls or shapes how you take in reality. I see things one way because I uh I grew up an army brat. I went to high school in Pittsburgh. I'm a Pittsburgh season ticket holder for the Steelers. I hate the Cleveland Browns. Why? Because I'm oriented that way. It's part of my cultural tradition. It's part of my my upbringing. It's part of my previous experience. I can look at the Steelers Browns game this past weekend and the outcome was good. Why the Steelers the Steelers won the Browns lost. people from Cleveland with a different orientation will look at the same set of facts and come up with a completely different a completely different conclusion or summary about that game. Why? Because their orientation also implicitly guides and controls or shapes how they see the world, how they process new information, how they process facts, how they process unfolding circumstances. who I am, what I think, what I believe, where I'm from, all of that that makes me me shapes how I see things. So, let's just press on that for a minute. So, my orientation is not only I mean, it's obviously formed by every experience I've ever had. Yeah. Everything that I've ever been through, how I was raised, like everything leading up to this moment is affecting my orientation at this moment. Y and the way that I view you know let's a problem is completely shaped by or is is dramatically shaped by that experience that leads to my orientation. My orientation is my view of what is happening right now through the filter of my experience in life. Mhm. And as a result, if if you and I are seeing exactly the same thing, because we both have different orientations, we will perceive those the the the exact same thing happening as maybe two completely different things. Y right. The Steelers won, that's awesome. The Steelers won, that sucks. Y So, a couple things stick out to me there. one is this is where the value of experience and training and all of those things are going to drive the way we see things. Mhm. Um it's also going to the flip side of that is it's also going to bias the way we interpret. So your so your bias your prejudices or whatever all those exist inside your orientation and that has a direct effect on how you on how you see things. Yeah. So, and I I see now why you say that the the orientation is everything because without the without the orientation, you can't make a decision. You can't act and and observation is so when you so you look at the udaloop sketch, right? And you see orientation in the middle and and this is this is like the easiest way to just say that the circular fourstep thing is a piece of Disregard. Pray that your enemies, pray that your your opponents are using that. When you look at the udaloop sketch and you see uh a circle with blue, a blue square around it, it's pretty important. It's highlighted in blue, a different color. It's pretty damn important, right? And inside that you see the five components with what looks like a star, but what those are, imagine lines and arrows of all those things simultaneously firing together. All those things are simultaneously firing as you're taking in through your through your sensemaking capabilities. So your sight, your sound, your your your intuition, everything is all processing through that. It's all firing off that and cross referencing off those things simultaneously where upon you would formulate a decision or a hypothesis what you think is going to happen. And that's all internal. That's all happening inside of me internally. Where I cross into the external world is when I test it. That's act. And then the feedback loop, that's the uda loop. The loop that you need to be paying attention to is not the loop in the circular diagram, dog chasing its tail. The loop is the information and what I see in the unfolding circumstances coming back to me so that I can reorient and I can update that piece in the middle. Because if I don't update that piece in the middle and keep it matched to reality, I'm going to die. I'm going to fail. I'm going to go out of business. I'm going to be uh Blockbuster that can't make a change. Uh we're not going to buy Netflix. That's silly. No one's going to want that. Yeah. But then Netflix replaces Blockbuster. But the Netflix of today is not the ne the Netflix that replaced Blockbuster. No, not even close. Why? Cuz they're constantly reorienting. Constantly reorienting. Constantly reorienting. Some things work, some things don't. Some things are popular, some things are not. Whatever. But they're breaking the model, trying again. breaking the model, trying it again. That's what people screw up about calling, you know, looking focusing on udaloop just thinking it's a decision cycle. I mean, you can Google it and look around, right? And and just about anything. Oh, it's a decision framework that uh was formed for fighter pilots. It's just that's completely wrong. Well, I mean, it's it's it's it's right in that it's a very it's a very simplistic application of what he said, right? It's like you Yes. You can look at it and it's not simplistic. It's it's reduced. It's reduced. It's saying that he only said that or did that and that's that's all you need to know. And what you end up what ends up happening is that you you embrace that one thing. You've left 99% of what John Boyd was thinking about talking about helping people with off the table. Yeah. All right. So, let me try and apply this. So, I'm driving down a dark road. Mhm. I see an object on the road ahead of me because I live in the country because I've seen, you know, because I because I live in Alaska and because I've seen moose on the highway, my brain immediately says that's a moose. Because I think it's a moose, I make the decision to slow down. I reduce my speed. I keep looking at the thing. I reorient. Now it's moving across the road. It's clearly moving. That fortifies my moose perception. I continue to reduce my I make a decision to continue to reduce my speed. I slow down. And that that is going to continue. And I'm constantly reorienting to the moose on the road. But if I don't grow up in Alaska and I've never seen a moose Yeah. and my orientation doesn't provide for that. I don't know what that thing is. I take a different I may take a completely different course. Actually give you a crude example. What what would a deer do when you're shining the headlights? Yeah. Yeah. What do they do? They stand there and look at you. Sub's not adding up. They don't they don't know what they don't know what to do. What happens? Well, they wind up a hood ornament of a Mac truck, right? Splatter. They they get, you know, pulverized, right? People are no different. you know, if I don't make if if I'm sensing So, what you're talking about is there's an anomaly, there's a mismatch, something's not adding up, something's not right, something's not where it's supposed to be, something's looking off or whatever. And I had been scanning and looking for that and I noticed that that's a that's presenting me with a mismatch. Now, I have to reorient to that. What is it? That's a moose. What is a Bigfoot? I don't know. It could be something, right? I have to I have to adjust and adapt because if I don't that static orientation is shaping how I sense and if I just say ah it's nothing and it turns out to be something I go smashing into it and kill myself or kill somebody or whatever I didn't reorient and that and that's that that's a that's a a crude example of a consequence. I mean that's blockbuster right? It's blockbuster. Yeah. People are going to continue to rent videos from a store for the rest of eternity and nobody's ever going to want the stories. They're horrific. I mean, you've heard the stories of of of 9/11 where people in the second tower like, "Oh, the first tower has been hit and oh, well, everybody, you know, we're getting out of the building. They just want to go back to work." Oh, okay. Well, it's nothing. Some people didn't do that. I I know when a buddy of mine survived to I'm out of here. I'm going I'm getting good to go home. and he did, you know, but a lot of his a lot of his peers in his office did not. Why though? Why though? Think about it. Think about what's your orientation in a busy city like New York. I maybe we edit this out. Maybe this is too too hot for TV. But I'm so used to chaos and things happening. Oh, Christ, that's really bad. But it didn't happen to our building. Oh, I got this meeting coming up. I mean, people do think like that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Especially in New York. Yeah. It's not a judgment. It's just it's just assessing an orientation and looking at it and just saying that people's orientations think that way. You rais a valid but like an interesting point though because you're you're condition you're looking for anomaly. Yeah. And in a city like New York where there is so much anomaly you just kind of turn it down. Yeah. Guilty. So you know I live in Manhattan. Yeah. And there's nothing I haven't seen. Yeah. I mean, you could take a picture in your mind. Okay, I want to see a guy skating on rollerblades. I'll bet you'll never see a guy skating on rollerblades or wearing only a jo a jock strap, sunglasses, and angel wings. And sure as oh yeah, in the West Village there there's that guy in there all the time. Like, but you're not going to see that guy in whatever shoe, Wisconsin. No, you won't. And there it would look like in New York. It doesn't necessarily look crazy. Like there's a there's an Instagram. It's got bazillions of hits and my my my daughters love it because they actually go and they test this out. This this girl stands on a corner in New York and she in Manhattan, I think she's like right across from uh St. Patrick's Cathedral and she says, "Anybody who looks is not from New York." And she stands on the corner and goes, "Ah." You know, and she goes, "If they didn't look, they're from New York. And if they looked, they're not from New York. And yeah, that's true. I mean, people are I mean, you know, how many of these videos come back from incidents, you know, people just minding their own business or they they don't, you know, they don't want to they don't want to orient to it. They don't want to look they they don't want it's not comfortable to them or it's disconcerting to them or whatever. No. Yeah. As a guy who who spends a lot of time reviewing videos of incidents, it is amazing how many people will walk through a gunfight. Yeah. because they just never orient to what's happening and and it is anomalous and their brain either doesn't want to or can't process it, but they never they never have that moment of situational awareness where they're like, "Oh, those those are gunshots and there's people on either side of me and they're shooting guns at each other. I probably shouldn't walk through." Yeah. But they do. Um, so it's it's interesting because that I mean the New York example is a very good example. If you haven't been to New York, I love living in body looks at each other. No, it's weird. You don't you don't make eye contact in New York. It's freaking strange. I'm biased, right? So, my orientation is biased. Both my parents were born in the city. You know, I live in the city. Um it's in my assessment, and again, I'm biased, it's the best place to apply these theories because it's in a constant state of flux. You're constantly being surprised. like you're constantly being you can be shocked and surprised but it's really quick you know when you when you live there you you do have to adapt to that yet at the same time you can't let go of like your your condition yellow you like you almost got to kind of have to be in a heightened state I think that's kind of one of the things that when you get into udaloop you realize that you do have to always kind of be in like a a yellow alert state a sensing mode a sensing mode yeah because otherwise I get lulled into patterns right like if I if I set the same pattern patterns at living in Manhattan. And if I set a pattern, say I'm looking at my phone and I'm not paying attention to my surroundings, I mean, there people will make you regret that. Oh, yeah. There's there's a lot. And it's not just people. You're going to walk in front of a a delivery bike and you're going to get killed. Yeah. Why? Because you're lulled. Your your orientation is frozen. It's not connected from your environment. It's disconnected from your environment. It's not it's not uh not dialed into your surroundings. you're going to have a bad you're going to have a bad problem. So, it's interesting. It it hearkens back as we're having this conversation. There's there's two prior guests that I've had on that this ties to. One being Gary Klene and and kind of decision-m and sense making. Yep. Right. Which is which is clearly an Yeah, Gary's amazing. And folks are phenomenal. And then Patrick Van Horn. Yes. Uh who which is how we met. Um, and kind of this idea of looking for anomaly and and so I think from an orientation standpoint, I guess we can't really orient to that which doesn't change. Right. Right. If it if it's constant. Say that again. You can't orient. You can't really like our orientation is based more on what is different than what is the same if you're doing it right. Yeah. Because you're constantly looking for mismatches. You're constantly looking for anomalies and and uh and mismatches. So okay so from so from boy's perspective orientation middle of the diagram it's it's it's the it's the it's the like the fountain head of the entire thing is is that that's the most important critical component and if you don't understand that the rest of it doesn't make any sense anyway and I think that I think one of the mistakes that you see people make is they equal weight the four aspects that's how you die yeah that's how you that's how you fail That's how you that's how you uh you you you go linear, you go template, you go formula, you become predictable, and that's how you get uh wiped out. You ever read about the six- day war? I mean, that's how the entire Egyptian air force was taken out because the Israelis knew exactly what their patterns were. They knew exactly what time they wake up, exactly what time they have breakfast, exactly what time they they get in their planes, and they never deviate from it. And they knew that they had to get over there at a certain time. they could catch them in this because it's just so linear and just so uh you know so the patterns are so so predictable. So bomb them during breakfast. Yeah. I mean the the best book on that it's uh um the Lion's Gate by Steven Presfield. It's one of the best books on on UDA out there with with real UDA examples. It's a it's a great like like not say because everything's UDA but but like an example to like show like historical examples for uh for explaining these concepts. Absolutely. That book is uh that book is phenomenal. But think about it. What happened you know in six days uh an outgun underfunded force defeated the entire Arab world more or less with what? Being able to reorient faster being able to observe orient act faster. being able to have a a orientation that was dialed in that implicitly guided control and shaped reality with shape two reality that they could see things, patterns, anomalies faster than their opponents could. They could operate within that. It just it just compresses their time scale. It expands the others uh their opponent's time scale and then they won. So you raised another interesting point which is your orientation is not only informed by your experience, your past, all of those things, but your orientation shapes your future. Yeah. It shapes the way you perceive information and the way you're going to process information. And and so talk to me a little bit about that. Like how how does orientation drive future action? Well, when I know that I'm doing something that someone's not or someone else is not, I'm certain to get different results than than they are. So, if I run my sales teams like uh an intelligence operation and my opponents are all running it as product pitchers that sell on performance, but I'm I'm I'm presenting more of a consultative advisory relationship. I'm going to differentiate and over time and I'm I'm going to be able to create a mismatch in the buyer. The buyer's going to be able to see two paradigms. They're going to see one where someone's embedded into my business and becomes a an indispensable asset and they're going to see on the other hand, they're going to see everybody else that does the same exact thing that that product pitches. I'm going to get differentiated results than than that that other person. Same thing with in sports, right? If I if I'm I'm a coach with a different philosophy, I'm a coach. I I see things differently. Um or I'm an innovative coach. How many times we've heard like different different sports like someone was an innovator. We're you know push out basketball we're not going to have any set plays or or you know in football bill Walsh you know we're going to move to a completely different way of looking at offense right and we're going to confound all the ones that are strictly by the book or whatever. Well we're going to have a different future because we see things differently. Interesting. So okay so let's let's continue walking through kind of the sketch and and the notion We've we've pushed a little bit on orientation. So orientation is the biggest part. If you don't understand that, forget it. Just stop and just stick to your circular diagram and keep chasing your tail. Got to understand orientation. And then I I mentioned implicit guidance and control. Then you got to circle those. There's two places on it where it says on the sketch where it says implicit guidance and control. One points to ob observation, the other one points to action. And then it's implied with decision. So our orientation implicitly guides and controls or shapes how we sense and how we act or even how we how we how we come up with decisions but where it's explicitly labeled on the on the udaloop sketch implicit guidance and control points out of it flows out of orientation and it points to observation and it flows out of orientation and it points to action. So action think of immediate action drills. How many times do tactical operators or pilots or you know marine infantrymen, how do they how many times do they practice immediate action drills over and over and over and over and over and over and over again until those things become second nature when when something happens. I can go right through that without thinking. I can I can go immediately to act. Yeah. You know, if if you think of it in a linear fashion, you skip decide because there's a decision to be made. X has happened and now you're doing this. You ever talked to a pilot or met a pilot that ejected out of a plane? Yeah, actually I do. One of my wife's uncles. Did they ever say, "Well, I took a deep breath and then I observed where I was and I looked around and I oriented myself and then I reached down and I pulled the handle or I reached up and pulled the handle." Yeah. Decided to pull it and I acted and I pulled it. He's dead by now. Yeah. You're done. Those guys train. I I We had We had Keegan Gil on our on our show. He checked it about almost like mock one. You don't have to think about it. You know, he knew exactly what to do. He just does it. I've talked to a few where they I say, "Do you remember?" Nope. I don't remember. You don't remember? Because I I did it so many times. I drilled on it so many times. I trained on so many times that when I needed it in a in a adverse, chaotic, unexpected, unplanned, mismatched, anomalous environment, I could just do it. I could just act. that I didn't have to stop and think about it. Now I think about it like when I eject and you know God willing the shoot opens and I can look around and I can grab the risers and I can I can start to go back to like normal normal things. Yeah. But the decision to pull the ejection handle is not a it's not a decision. It's not a decision. It's it's an immediate action. This has happened. So now we do this. Yeah. So so when you think of implicit guidance and control pointing to observation sense making and pointing to action testing, right? You want to be able to the better you're oriented, the faster you're able to do those things. So like in a business situation or a tactical situation, the more oriented to reality I am, the faster I can sense what's going on because my orientation is shaping what I sense and the more effective it is, the more in line it is, the more grounded in reality it is, the faster I can do it before the enemy does, before the opponents do. Same thing with ACT. If my orientation is properly trained, properly adjusted, properly educated, properly challenged, properly updated, go through the things of the I can act right away. I don't have to wait. I can just do it. I don't have to I don't have to wait. I don't have to stop and think about it. And and that's what so so looking at it from an act standpoint that is where effectively trained operator pilot whatever is able to shortcircuit what's happening you know we we talked earlier about kind of you know sa in a a race car in the rain right like the you know the the pick a modern example you know Lewis Hamilton or or whatever um their ability to move from orientation to action is is what gets compressed and makes them react so quickly. Yeah. It's not they're not having to make a decision. They are simply reacting to their orientation. Yeah. Interesting. So that that is why highlights from basketball when we were kids. Yeah. Michael Jordan didn't think much. No. Johnson didn't have to think with a no look pass. Larry Bird didn't think about the shots he would take. You know, Tom Brady would drop wouldn't drop back and say, "Okay, I observe where the ball comes into my hand. I'm going to step back. I'm going No. Yeah. It's not I'm I'm taking five steps and looking to my right." And it's also It's also the things, but boy, it's reducing energy, too. It's reducing energy output. So, the things that that I'm trained for, I'm prepared for, I've done a million times. I don't have to think about that. I don't have to expend the energy. You're also you're also clearing cognitive space to reorient, right? Because as long as I'm standing thinking about what I'm seeing and trying to do the math and trying to make a decision, I'm no longer sensing. Yeah. So it's it's you're feeling it. So So one of the things So there's another acronym there's a lot of acronyms that Boyd used. The other one is EAS. EFAS and it was from German terms from the German reform movement around with with this is back with Clauswitz and Muly and all these guys. Uh EFAS Einheight was mutual trust and this is for how teams function. And this is how teams orient mutual trust um Einheight. Uh second one was finger spitzing fuel. And this is like our fingertip feel our intuitive feel. And what you're talking about with Lewis Hamilton or Senna or Michael Jordan or Larry Bird or whoever they have a fingertip feel. They have this intuition. This is second nature. Why? Because they've done it so many they've done it so many times. Well, same thing with a team that trusts each other. It's like a SWAT team. So if they all trust each other, they have mutual trust. they're able as as they train and educate, train, educate, practice, go on operations or whatever, they're going to build more and more and more intuition where I don't have to say, "Hey, John, go do this. I can just look at you." Yeah. And you just go you can you can read without without um uh without having to write it out or whatever. Um, a was offtrog or offrog tactic which is basically contract is the German translation but mission command that I can I can give you the mission and the intent and that's that's it. Yeah, it's desired instate or commander's intent pushed down the decisions are pushed down because we have a contract. There's an implicit bond between us from leader to subordinate to team that you're going to get this done. This is what has to this is what has to happen. Uh and the last one is ask shrepreun what is the focus and direction? What is the you know the shrepun of the udaloop is the orientation that's the focus and direction of of studying uda to really understand it is uh is focus and d is the shreunked. So from an okay so so from an act standpoint the more I train the more experience I have the more I practice the the more likely I am to move from orientation to act directly from an observation standpoint my orientation so I'm already going to red team you right now okay do it go back and say that again and think about what are you doing what are you doing that's not optimal you're still thinking in terms of oh to oh O to O to D. Okay. O to O to D to A. So the way you just said that. Yeah. You skip. Yeah. Skip decision. So So it's you will you can constantly move directly. So when you when you look at udaloop and uh on our on our website alx, there's a uh punch created a great image of this. I mean it's like you know internal world ex external world. You realize really quickly that it's not that. You're not going from face to face to face to face to face to face to face. You're not doing that. You're not doing that. Count all the arrows that are in the udaloop. You know, they're going in lots of different directions. They're not going linearly. Humans aren't linear. We're non- mechanical. We're complex, right? The environment that we're in is not linear. And it's not mechanical. It's complex. Right. So, if we stick to a as you're saying again, it it it's like that's what most are doing, but they're doing it in extremist like I'm going to this is in the observe phase. We do this. In the orient phase, we do that. In the decision phase, we do that. In the act phase, we do that. And then it loops. I like, please, God, yes. All my opponents, this football team that I'm helping, this football coaching staff that I'm training, please make sure that all their opponents think that way because we're going to get them every single time. Yeah. Because you will be turning inside of their Yeah. their decision cycle. Think about insurgents. Think about criminals. They don't they don't think linearly. They don't. Yeah, it's true. How do they think? They surprise. They There's There's anomaly. There's there's mismatch, right? But they're not they're not sitting there thinking like they're not paying by number. So, okay. So, if training takes me from orientation to action, Yeah. the ability training gives you the ability to go to act. Again, you're trying to compress time and reduce your energy spend. You're trying to also to eliminate surprise. Like in the animal kingdom, what are we trying to do? We're trying to eliminate We're trying to survive on our own terms. We're trying to eliminate surprise or reduce surprise. Reduce also reduce friction. We're trying to reduce those things. Can't eradicate them, but you can't you can you can mitigate them. You can reduce them. That's what we're constantly trying to do. We don't want to be surprised. We don't want to be taken advantage of. We don't want to we don't want to get hit in a direction that we hadn't that we hadn't thought of. Well, the only way we can do that is constantly constantly reorienting, not running around making decisions in circles. Yeah. Okay. So, then you said earlier, my orientation shapes what I'm sensing and how I'm sensing. Mhm. And it strikes me that that's kind of a double-edged sword because if if based on my experience based on, you know, prior repetitions, if every time I've driven down a road, I've seen an object in the road and it has been a moose, then I'm always going to assume it's a moose and take action as though it's a moose. Right. Until it's a Sasquatch. Until it's a Sasquatch. And then I slow down and the Sasquatch, you know, takes my beef jerky. But it kind of the experience and the prior repetitions and your orientation can be both a blessing and a curse in the way you sense. Yeah. Because you could be oriented. You could be oriented on a programmatic schedule where I'm not allowed to make decisions on my own and I have to go back and I have to ask my boss who in turn has to ask his boss who has to task his boss and the next thing you know it's 3 days later and the opportunity to do whatever we were going to do is already is already gone. You go back to my example of the six day war. They couldn't just go make decisions. The Israelis could because they pushed decisions down to the lowest level. They all they all own the intent. They all own the mission and they could push decisions down to the lowest level. Well, that makes them faster. That makes them uh they can learn quicker. They can they can adapt faster. They can adjust quicker. If your enemies are so your opponents are so rigid and they're so strict and they follow this that the other thing and they and they have to have a long permission chain to do something. Well, time doesn't wait for you and the markets don't wait for you and reality doesn't wait for you and combat doesn't wait for you. Those things are already gone. So if our experience makes us better at orientate, you know, better oriented, better better able to use our observational skills. Yeah. It can also make us less able to use them, right? Because if if we've had a a series of experiences, you talk about like implicit bias or or whatever you want to call it. If every time I've driven on the road, I've seen a moose, I know it's a moose. When I see the object, I may not actually pay attention to the things about it that are not mooseike. So, we are we've been beating up on Blockbuster a lot, but think of Kodak, right? There's a lot of really successful board members with houses in the Hamptons, House in Florida, apartment in in in uh Fifth Avenue, um Great Stock Options, Golden Parachute, like you wouldn't believe the retire. And now these kids are coming in and telling us about digital photography in the 1970s, which they discovered in our labs, right? How did how did my success at Kodak and my career at Kodak orient me on something novel that seemed risky? What did that do to me? Right? Because you do the opposite, right? I could I could I could orient to reality or I could orient to my own comfort, my own biases, right? They Kodak invented digital photography. It's crazy to say that, right? And it killed it. It killed it. Yeah. Why? It couldn't reorient. Well, I I always think of the story of the fax machine. It was invented at the Xerox Palo Alto research center. Yeah. And they took it to World's Fair and nobody was interested. Like why the hell would you want to mail a letter v via an electronic machine and they sold it for almost nothing. Yeah. And and then it took off. You know the story about at park where where Steve Jobs went over and saw the screen on on on Xerox machines. Is that the isn't that Park University? Yeah. The Xerox uh Palo Alto Research Center. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Park. Yeah. Park. Yeah. Yeah. And and they had created that screen that looked like the first Macintosh or whatever and and Xerox was part owner of It's in the It's in the bio by Walter Isacson. But they they didn't know what they had. Steve Jobs came in with a completely different orientation, right? A completely different way of looking at things. And he said, "That's what we're missing. We're missing that." So it's interesting because it one of the things that like when I teach culturecentric leadership I talk about diversity of perspective. Yeah. And how you know crowdsourcing things trying to to harness your entire team's knowledge and experience drives better decision-m. Absolutely. But th this is this is the mechanism where that occurs. Yeah. So yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Ori orientations are perspectives, right? It gets fractal. So a team's orientation would be a multitude of of perspectives, right? Only if you harness that multitude of perspectives. Correct. So if you're at a firm on Wall Street or a a Fortune five company or whatever and diversity is only we look different but we all think alike. If it's we look different, we think different, we talk different, we act different, we see the world differently, that diversity is unstoppable. That's that's what that's that's orientation. That's that's that's what we're that's what we're talking about here. Yeah. I think I think like I interviewed Joe Buckano from DSU. Do you know Do you know why though? Cuz in in in in orientation Boyd has cultural traditions. I I want to have that diversity of understanding because to your point it gives me different perspectives of things that I don't that I don't know or that I don't uh understand. And so we had on our show just recently uh Lieutenant Colonel Assad Genghis calls Khan who is born in Pakistan raised in the United States is Pashtune speaks Ptune. He's a member of the Ephridi tribe who was in one of the first groups of Marines going over there to fight in Afghanistan. And he's seeing it completely differently than a lot of other people and he talks about it on the uh on the episode. But that diversity of experience, that diversity of culture, that diversity of everything helps bring different perspectives to improve decision- making. But if we're going to be stuck on, well, this is how we do this. Ah, it's not important. This is how we do. We're going to show them. Doesn't work that way. Boyd would talk a lot in patterns of conflict about um Vietnam. And there's there's a great transcript of uh patterns of conflict that was done at the Marine Corps command of Staff College in the in the late 80s. In fact, Ian Brown um who wrote a book called the New Conception of War about Boyd. And then he just came out with a book of transcripts that he co-authored with Franzo Singa of Boyd's transcripts for all the major briefs. And that this transcript of patterns of conflict is in there and it's phenomenal. But Boyd beats up the US military, specifically the army on Vietnam because well, we're gonna we're going to do it our way. We're going to do it with more more more uh body higher body counts. We're going to do it with more ammo. We're going to do it with more we have better tech. We have better sensors. We have better computers. We have better hardware. We got the best logistics plan program in the world, which is all true. And we lost. Why the difference in orientation maybe different different at the physical level? Sure. We had an advantage at the physical level, but at the moral level, no. And Boyd was also critical in this brief and he says, "Well, we think that we uh lost the war, but we never lo we won. We won all the battles and we just lost the war." And Boyd said, "No, that's We lost the one battle that nobody paid attention to, the moral war. And we also lost in the minds of our own countrymen where the war had become so unpopular that we had to pull the plug on it. But that's all part of it. So uh interesting too that you mentioned Sunsu earlier. Uh the art of war was the one book that Boyd never found fault with. Boyd read I don't know seven or eight different translations of it. He he eviscerates Clauswitz. Boyd absolutely slaughters Clauswitz. Yeah. He points out the good things and he and he takes him to task on on everything else. And he read multiple translations of Clauswoods, too. I've I've held this copy of On War in the archives. I've taken a picture of every single page with all the margin notes. It's unbelievable. Interesting. Boyd was Boyd was absolutely brutal to him. Um, oddly enough, in Sunsu, like it's different story. Like Boyd Boyd couldn't find fault with Sunsu. Um, and he read all the different um different translations. I had his copy of FMFM1. I looked at that maybe two notes, two critical notes. Oh, interesting. That was the rest of the book. He there was no uh and you look at every other book in the archives, he they're just drowning in margin notes and underlines and criticism and not not FMFM1 either. That's really interesting. Yeah. Okay. So, let's go back. So you've got or in middle circle in middle of the diagram we have orient we have orientation the sketch the sketch going back to the sketch we orientation we've talked about act we've talked about observe or sense sense make um sense make yeah think think of it this way sketch is an abstraction of how our orientation functions in reality All all maps and models are are wrong. Yeah. Some are useful, right? I love that phrase. It's the same thing with It's the same thing with udaloop sketch. It's not meant to be an exact thing that you tape up on your HUD and your fighter jet and Yeah. go from point A to point. Yeah. You'll die. Yeah. You're dead. It's just an understate designed to provide something. always trying to communicate to us and teach us and show us that this is how we our orientation is the beings that we are how we function inside of uh how we function inside of reality. Everybody's doing this too. That's why that's why I tell people all the time you're all doing this now. you you can be completely ignorant of it and you will never do as well as if you're uh if you become learned on it but you got to do it authentically right so like I tell people all the time like I said this doesn't apply to this happened when I was an asset management all the time this ass doesn't apply to us it's all military we don't need this if if it was important they would have taught it to me in Harvard cool your orientation drives is what you sense. Yeah, I'll send you I'll send you some Harvard Business Review articles about a loop. They're not great. They're they're a starter point though and it just shows you that they may not have taught you about it at Harvard, but it's important enough to make their magazine. may be thinking about, you know, so if if I am a tactical leader, how how should I be thinking of UDA and how how should I use it to assist the way that I'm I'm leading my units or making my decisions first is to reject the circular linear tactical model. Okay. Completely draw it and then put a big red circle through it and put it up in the in the in the ready room. Don't do it. Okay. All right. Understand the UDLoop sketch. You're going to have a you're going to have a much different experience when it comes to the training education of your team. Totally different. Now, I can go into a SWAT team and tell them, "Hey, uh, you need to be doing this exact drill or you need to be targeting this way or you need to be pinging your corners." In a million years, I would never do that. I'll tell you that the same thing when I when I advise like sports coaches or any pick an industry, it doesn't matter. I'm never going to be able to tell them anything about what offense to run, what offensive drills to do. Those things should become apparent to them as they authentically understand void. The the the uh the the keys will open the locks and they'll you'll know what to do because you're going to understand that how you engage with reality, what can improve your capacity for free and independent action is not going around in a circle like a dog chasing his tail. It's orienting to reality. It's understanding how to analyze and synthesize, how to put things together, how to create novelty, how to create mismatches, how to learn. All of that is is in is in Noodle Loop Sketch. So, how when you're working with a sports team, how are you I mean, you're teaching them these concepts, but what kind of drills, what kind of work are you doing with them to help them understand the application of it? Well, it's interesting. So, I' I'd back it up a little bit. the the first thing I have to overcome is I'm not there to teach them about how to be a better offensive coordinator. I'm sure I'm there not that you know, hey, I'm not there to pitch a defensive scheme or or anything like that. Uh I usually start with what I call the snowmobile drill and this is something that Boyd did and uh you can see it on YouTube in his conceptual spiral brief. But you know I I go have guys go up to a whiteboard. I mean we can do this tomorrow with the with the tactile operators. go up to a whiteboard or take a clean sheet of paper, put in four quadrants. In one quadrant, put a bicycle. In the other quadrant, put a skier on the slopes. In the other quadrant, put a toy tank like a like a you like a tank or a bulldozer or something with a track vehicle. And on the other one, put a boat with an outboard motor. And then I want you to start analyzing each of those quadrants. So, and like pull out the components like what do you see on a bicycle? Seat, handlebars, chain, pedals, tires. What do you see on a skier on the slopes? You know, skis, poles, snow, chairlift. What do you see on a tank, turret, tracks, treads, um, gun, whatever. All right. What do you see on a boat with an outboard motor? H, engine, gasoline, hull, water, whatever. Sunny day, fishing poles, tackle, whatever. Now what I tell them to do and I tell them draw the lines and then write the name of the domain. Each one of those is a name domain. Right? Now what I want you to do is I want you to cross out that domain name. I want you to cross out that those lines and I want you to imagine all these things jumbled up. So all of a sudden fishing tackle is next to skis is next to a treads and next to a gun next to chain bike you know handlebars whatever. All this stuff's mixed up in what boy would call the CF anarchy. Now, as we start to look at those things from four domains that had absolutely nothing to do with the other, does anything emerge? And what you do is you start to think, okay, if I took these handlebars and I took the seat and I took the gas in the engine from the mo from the motorboat and I took the treads from the tanks and I took the skis, what emerges snowmobile snowmobile and boy said the difference between a winner and and a loser was someone that could make snowmobiles versus someone that couldn't because by shattering creating and destroying destruction creation destru destroying and creating By destroying our correspondence to what we are told is reality, we're able to create something new and novel that didn't previously exist. Well, if I'm a tactical leader, if I'm a football coach, I'd be coming at people with snowmobiles when they're expecting a toy tank or a skier on the pole, you know, skier on the slopes or a motorboat. They're not expecting a snowmobile, right? That's going to surprise them. That's going to shock them. They're not going to have an answer for that. And as they don't have an answer for the things that we do differently, innovatively, whatever it is, their decision ability, their capability to thrive, their capability to survive is going to continuously uh Wayne and dwindle to the point where they become obsolete, extinct, Blockbuster. Blockbuster Kodak. Yeah. So, it's interesting because that makes me think like if in training Mhm. Right? If you are you're training a tactical unit, you want to try to drive snowmobile thinking as frequently as you can in training and not punish it. What do you mean by that? Don't punish people for being innovative and seeing what others don't. Don't don't punish them for seeing things outside of the box or, you know, uh something that's not necessarily by the book. Reward that kind of thinking, you know. Yeah. That's a that's actually an interesting point is is we are very inclined um to drive conformity. Mhm. Which makes sense because it's dangerous and there's guns and there's things that there's things that always have to happen. You don't want to point your muzzle at somebody and you don't want to put your finger on, you know, that that that that none of that goes away. But driving that conformity is it comes at the price of creativity at some point. Yeah. Because in that conformity comes comfort, complacency, and that's what you want your opponent to have. I mean, that's that's that's what your criminal opponent, I'm I'm sure, is banking on that. We can we can we can uh tap into uh exploiting predictable patterns that we're well aware of versus, you know, getting hit with novelty. Because when when something's novel, this is another thing that Boyd was big on. Surprise, right? Surprise is not an input. I could desire to surprise an enemy. I can desire to surprise opponent, but that's an outcome. It's not an input. It's out. It's it's it's a result. It's a result of what? It's a result of my ability to do something that others couldn't see and others couldn't do. And I got them at the decisive moment and it shocked them and surprised them to the point where they could no longer function. But you know, this is another thing that goes on with linear udoop and bad void. Well, we're going to use surprise here. No, you're not. I might not be surprised about that cuz I know that you're thinking I'm going to use surprise here in the observation phase and go to the orient phase. You're so predictable. That's not a surprise. That's an interesting point because one of the things, you know, the the speed, surprise, and violence of action is is a phrase you hear frequently used in the tactical community. Yeah. and and this idea that we're going to impose surprise on someone else. And sometimes it it becomes absurd. You know, we're going to bang on the door for a minute and then we're going to surprise them. But you you see people relying on surprise as a tactic, thinking, "Well, we're going to surprise them." But in fact, you never have the ability to surprise them. They have to be surprised. Correct. Yeah. And you would never know. How would you know? I mean, you'd know after the fact. After the fact. But how would you know going into it? How would you have it as an input? I guess, you know, the the only thing I can think of is the greater the novelty, the more likely it is to surprise, right? But even even within that context, I have to know what your orientation is to know the novelty. Not every snowmobile is effective, right? Every not every not every innovation, not everything is is effective, right? Yeah. Yeah, by the way, and because it's not effective, I have to have the ability to reorient immediately. That's that's that's really the key of it. Can I reorient fast enough? That's that's the critical component. So, when I'm using surprise using surprise and air quoting that, you're desire you're desiring surprise to be an outcome, but you can't use surp I would I've heard people say this. I I won't use uda in this situation. You just used UDA to tell me that, right? Yeah. It's not a tool. It's it's a conceptual framework, right? Like it's not a tool. Yeah. So, but but surprise. Okay. So, surprise, that's very interesting, right? Because you will only know that surprise worked after the fact. And really what surprise is doing doesn't work. It's an outcome. It doesn't work. Our our plan worked and it surprised them. Okay, we got we we exploited the gap and that surprised them or we sh you know, we were able to shock them and and and generate surprise, but you know, my my kids used to do this like I'm going to jump out and scare daddy. I knew they were there. Yeah. Yeah. So, when it worked just cuz you let him, right? But it's the same it sounds silly, but it's it's it's the same it's same thing. But to go back to our our Manhattan example, right, the the guy with the angel wings, not surprised. It's just No one from New York is surprised. No. Tourists from Omaha that are going to be people from Omaha. Yeah. They go to are surprised. They wait in line for like Jimmy Fallon tickets or Yeah. Yeah. And this guy rides by. They're going to be surprised. And a jock strap with his wings on. They're going to be shocked. They're surprised because it's it's it is completely novel to them. Yeah. And the fact that is completely novel makes it difficult to orient to. But think of their orientation versus a New Yorker is looking at this fact. But that so that is the argument for experience, right? That is the argument for for diversity of experience. Yeah. Because the enemy's ability to use novelty on you is decreased. You know, if you take you take a a seasoned LAPD SWAT operator who's been on 3,500 high-risisk entries and, you know, has been to 2,000 barricades, the likelihood that you, as the barricade guy, are going to do something that he that catches him really by surprise is not likely. Pretty unlikely. Yeah. Cuz he's kind of seen all of those things. And at that same time, he has to also not be complacent just because he's always done it this way. That's another thing that happens with UDA is that especially in coaching see us in coaching a lot like sports coaching. Well, I'm from the whatever coaching tree, you know, I'm from this is the way we've always done it, you know, we know we just double down. We're going to lift more weights or whatever, you know, we've always done it that way because I only I only look at it in my terms of what I experienced, not for the new realities. And then when those new realities come and then like all of a sudden they're doing a different offense and they're doing a different scheme, I'm going to double down or triple down on what I think I know. Yeah. And that's and that's where the that's where the that's where the dissonance happens. I gave a really good example. So I work with uh women uh uh college hockey. I learned the difference between a male women's college hockey coach versus a female women's college hockey coach. a male and this and these are some isolated experience and I learned this from a mentor of mine who is a woman woman hockey coach a female women's hockey coach very successful men run hockey on with with girls as if they're playing in their leagues when they were kids, you know, like they they run it as they their experience as, you know, male hockey players from coming up through juniors and playing in high school and college or pros or whatever, that's their primary predominant orientation when they're teaching women that have a completely different orientation than than men. Does it mean that women hockey coaches of women's teams are better? Not necessarily. It just means that they have a different empathy. They have a different understanding. They have a different orientation. They have different perspectives of understanding what it's like versus people that don't. And I guess to effectively I mean know one of the things that this this you know looking at practical takeaways from from this conversation recognizing the limits of your orientation ability opens up the possibility of you valuing other perspectives. Like people would knock like I I remember asking about this cuz you know when I was in the Marine Corps I was in field artillery there was it was male only. there were no there was no women and you ask uh somebody who's been around and they say what was that like you know having women in Afghanistan your unit like in an infantry unit or an artillery unit or you know in combat zones or whatever and like cuz like all the people in the old core and whatever oh it went back in my day or that's not the way we've done it before. But the guys that were on the ground would say, you know, we learn how to interact in tribes with tribal women in ways that we never ever thought because men don't have the same experiences or the same biology or whatever as as women do. the the women that were there, the women were able to see things completely differently and factor in things particularly around kids and moms and we never even no one would ever think of and actually accounting for those things would make different engagements better because all of a sudden they have these perspectives like so the guys that were doing it right like with with with when they start integrating women into combat like let's there's there's perspectives that they have that we don't. Yeah. Yeah. And and it in in some areas it really uh it really paid off. I think Patrick Van Horn tells the story of a a guy in a unit that he'd grown up in a really shitty neighborhood and you know really high crime and had kind of been a thug and like his ability to perceive danger was dramatically better. Yeah. Than, you know, a guy who grew up in San Diego and had never been in a dangerous situation. So So think about that example. So, so if I'm if I'm an officer and I graduated number one in my class and I'm this and that and I went to the naval academy and I, you know, I'm number one in my OC class or whatever, I don't need to listen to you. Yeah. You just shut down every other person. I just gave an extreme hypothetical which probably in the Marine Corps, you know, for the most part wouldn't exist, at least when I was in because we would value that, you know. Yeah. But it's very interesting how I I see why you say that orientation is everything. Everything because everything else drives off of where do you get meaning from? What gives you meaning? Yeah. Have to be orientation. Well, where yeah, where does that reside in your identity? Your meaning, you know, meaning thing, you know, all the stuff that we're seeing is almost always almost always it's like a war for orientation. It's a war for it's a war for meaning. It's a war for identity, right? Yeah, that's really interesting. Where does that where does that reside? It resides in our orientation. That's cross referenced as we engage the world, as we shape what we see, we shape how we decide and how we act, how we learn. All of that's cross referenced. Everything that you were saying saying about that that young Marine that, you know, grew up in the hood or whatever. Yeah. All that's cross referencing on how he sees things. And it's important to it's important to know. So I guess if you if you are a decision maker in a tactical situation, you have to recognize your focus has to be on orientation. It has to be on constant reorientation. Constant reorientation and trying to make sure that your situational awareness is just at its the pointiest it can possibly be so that you can put your opponent into a situation that they can't get out of that that they won't they'll unravel. Yeah. I guess in the end from from an offensive standpoint, right? I guess the the advantage of the UDA sketch is the ability to reorient like you know you people as they describe it as a linear thing. It's kind of like well whoever's udaloop is spinning faster wins. So So it's really whoever reorients faster wins. Talking about earlier I wanted to bring back up. So you mentioned the word speed. Yeah. If you think the udaloop is about speed. So again, if I was advising a a football coaching staff, hey, we're playing this team next week and guess what? They think the Udaloop's all about speed. What would everybody be doing on the staff that I'm advising? Yes. Yeah. It's not all about speed. It's about orientation. Accuracy of orientation. Effectiveness of orientation. Accuracy doesn't matter because of incompleteness. Like we're never going to have complete information. And we're never uncertainty. Remember the indeterminacy principle. We're not going to have pure accuracy. We don't have that. So we have to constantly keep revising and revising, revising and updating it. It has to be aligned to reality as best as it can. It has to be matched to reality. It'll never be a perfect match to reality. But we have to keep doing our best to constantly revise and update it to that reality. But back to speed. Speed is not enough. If you only have speed, Blockbuster could have had speed. They just were speeding in the wrong direction, right? Yeah. If your if your orientation's off, your direction's screwed. Your direction screwed. Go as fast as you want. Yeah. You never cycle through it as fast as you want. Good luck. Doesn't matter. Speed does not kill. Orientation does. Now, speed in the variety of things that I throw at somebody. That's different. Fast transients was a a void term where I hit them this way, hit them that way, hit them that way, hit them that, you know, I'm confusing them so fast I'm disorienting them though. It's not just how fast I'm doing it. It's that I'm doing it fast and I'm hitting them from different angles that it's disorienting to them. But that disorientation is what I want. I can speed it up. Just keep going speed again. Speeding in a disoriented direction. One of the other uh acronyms that he had a lot in patterns of conflict was VH or V Rhi. Variety, rapidity, harmony, and initiative. I want to have a variety of options, not just one trick. I want to have a I want to have a stable. I want to have optionality. I don't want to have linear predictable p patterns. I want to have uh I want to have optionality that I can rapidly deploy as rapidity as next. I want to be able to hit them rapidly. I want to be able to withdraw rapidly. I want to be able to hit rapidly. I want to come back rapidly. I want to be able to confuse them, right? But with with rapidity with the variety of things I have the harmony. Harmony a team needs harmony, not synchronicity. Synch synchronizing is for watches. It's it's it's for it's for battle zero on your on your weapon, not teams, interpersonal connections. You got to harmonize. That's a boy term. That's that's right from Sunsu. Uh last one is initiative. I gota take the initiative, exploit the gaps. Got take the initiative, exploit the opportunities. I take the initiative to do the learning that they're not doing. The learning and the reframing that they're not doing is going to serve us as is going to be an advantage for us as we do that. We're reading left of bang. They're not right. You had Patrick sitting right here. I mean, he's talking about his book. What's that book doing? As we go through that, what are we doing? We're reorienting ourselves. We're going to look at those situations uh we're going to look at those situations differently. Why? Because we're going to have a different orientation. Yeah. I mean, you're starting to see how it's so complex. Yeah. No, it's interesting because it's it it is exceptionally complex, but it all revolves around orientation and and and this is like I've never I've never looked at it from this perspective where like in the end if you don't have orientation nothing else matters. Doesn't matter. It's just noise. Yeah. And if your orientation is on point, then and it implicitly guides and controls how you sense, how you decide, how you act, how you learn effectively versus your opponents that that that that doesn't. And if I can disrupt your ability to orient. Mhm. Which is going to implicit, you know, implicitly guide and control how you sense, how you act. If I am able to disrupt your orientation, Yeah. and keep mine in, you know, on point, then that's where, you know, that that's where the the, you know, the ud loop is going to become an effective way for me to put you in a position of disadvantage. So, a mentor of mine from the Marine Corps taught me there's three there's three D's, three delt, you know, D is in delta, delta, three D's to uh change orientation. First one is drift, right? Through passing time, my 49year-old self sees the world differently than my 19-year-old self. Why? Because I've I've drifted through 30 years. Through time, I've seen technological change. I've seen cultural change. I've seen the, you know, the internet become more pervasive. I've seen social media. All that just through through just the passage of time, you know, your age, think to your age, think to when you were 10. Orientations change. The other two work in tandem. Disruption, as you mentioned, disruption. The second one's design. I give you a really good example. The Marine Corps takes kids in a school bus not far down the road from here to San Diego, Marine Corps recruit depot. In the middle of the night, that door opens and a drill instructor comes running on the bus and starts disrupting the hell out of the orientations of those youngsters. Right from the point that they stand on those yellow footprints to the point that they process through 90 days of recruit training to become a war fighter, disruption is constantly met with design. The design of that program to take a high school kid to disrupt their orientation and constantly rewrite it, reorient it with design. The design of Marine Corp recruit training is a constant ch what boy would call like a chenchi. It's a constant destruction creation. It's a constant push and pull. It's constant conventional unconventional. It's constantly going back and forth. I disrupt, I meet it with design. I disrupt, I meet it with design. You can't sell anything in your company to a client that's using somebody else without disrupting that orientation and meeting that with the design of of Artvark. Can't do it. Can't do it. There's no way I'm going to get somebody to dump something else to come and use my stuff if I don't understand how orientation shifts from disruption and design. So if if I'm a trainer for a tactical unit, how can I effectively use disruption in design? I I have to know what I have to know where I want to get them to, right? Where do we where do we want to get to? What's our what's our point that we want to what what's our level of excellence or whatever it is, whatever metric that they have. I'm sure they have a metric. I'm sure they have a state an intent. I have to break habits. I have to break something that's preventing them from doing what I what I want them to do. So, I have to find a way to break those things and I have to find a way to show them the the build. I have to it's the structure and creation. That's why if you don't if you if you talk UDA and you've not read the structure and creation or at a minimum understand the concepts, it's all lost. It's you got to forget about it. Yeah, this is fascinating. Where can people learn more about your work about mine personally? So our uh well our company is ALX alx.com uh one of the projects of our company is our podcast No Way Out No Way Out podcast. Punch and I started that Brian River calls sign ponies enable aviator. He start we started that in uh right after I joined them in 22 and now we're well over a hundred shows. Um, and uh, we've had Gary Klein on, you mentioned, we've had a lot of really interesting uh, interesting people. Had a lot of repeat guests. We've had Boyd's daughter. We've had a lot of uh, Boyd's direct collaborators. Um, we have a lot on uh, neuroscience. We have a lot on psychedelics as a uh, you know, therapy for treating uh, veterans with PTSD. U it's a very important thing with our you know veterans uh veteran known service disabled veteranown small business that we are um I write this uh the world of reorientation I started that substack at uh in 23 and uh Brian also contributes to that occasionally. Um, and then I also have a a subset called Contraframe, which is sort of just my own sandbox of these uh these ideas just based off real-time observations that I make. Um, a lot of them take place around uh Manhattan. Um, a lot of them take place with, you know, a lot of them are things like of just sort of cultural trends that I that I noticed because another thinker, maybe this is another podcast sometime, Marshall McLuhan is another uh another thinker that I study and uh thanks to some pushing from John Rob or at least John Rob his global grills report I recommend. This is another good place to go. Um, I had never thought of Boyd and McLuhan together and the deeper I got into Boyd and the more I got the more I got into McLean McLuhan's another one that's completely reduced. McLuhan is reduced to the medium is the message for that term. The medium is the message. What Marsh ML Yeah. The medium is the message. The medium is the message. Not that's that's all you need to know about him. Couldn't be further from the truth. You start digging in that guy's work and you realize that he's talking about medium or media being technology environment that completely reshape all of our human faculties. And you combine that with Boyd, it's lights out. So when when a lot of times when I'm advising a client, I'm trying to get them also to understand Marshall McLuhan because if they have a better understanding of environment and technology and how it directly affects them, aka their orientation, they're going to be able to have uh a better opportunity to thrive in in uh you know non-standard chaotic complex uh unconventional environments. I love it. Yeah, I was going to add one other point about that is also too a lot of his work is big in the media world. So, not to confuse the terms media that he talks about in like you know theformational media and PR. I do a lot of work in in uh in that area too introducing Boyd into that world because a lot of people understand McLuhan so they can understand you know his communication theory but they don't understand war fighting and they don't realize that they're actually in an information war. So if you go on the world of reorientation you can see a lot of my work that I've done on say like the 5D protocol for information warfare is just something I came up with. Um it's it's a combination of Boyd and McLuhan approach to uh information which the world the the the war is an information war and McLuhan had a quote that said world this is from 1972 World War II is not World War II will be World War II is a guerilla information war with no division between civilian military participation. and you look at the world around us and you realize that even in even in a tactical situation I'm sure because you read about these things like well check their check their social media accounts was there you know what what are patterns that we're trying to detect from people's social media accounts blah blah blah blah that's all out there the the war is a lot bigger than uh you know kinetic bullets and things like that very interesting I'll link to we'll link to uh your substacks and all that stuff in the show thanks so much for doing this with me yeah it's uh it's great to come back to uh Southern California. As many times as I've been here, I've never ever once seen rain. So to land here this morning and to see uh pouring down rain uh not unlike New York recently, it was really bizarre. Well, I don't appreciate you bringing your weather with you, but you're welcome. Weather comes from the west and I I came from the Northeast. So, all right. Thanks so much, Nick. Yeah. Thanks, John. Great talk. Thanks.