Problem-Solving Archives - Page 3 of 8

The OODA loop

John Boyd, a US Air Force colonel, built a model of decision-making out of his experience of air combat: observe, orient, decide, act, then repeat. His central claim was about speed — that cycling through the loop faster than your opponent is what wins, because it leaves them reacting to a situation that has already changed. As a Weapons School instructor he was nicknamed Forty Second Boyd, for his standing bet that starting from a position of tactical disadvantage he could defeat any student pilot within forty seconds.

The model spread from the Air Force into American business and sports coaching. It is a formal argument that acting quickly beats acting correctly.

Disciplined initiative

US Army doctrine, ADP 6-0, defines it as action in the absence of orders, when existing orders no longer fit the situation, or when unforeseen opportunities or threats arise. Mission orders are defined as directives that emphasize to subordinates the results to be attained, not how they are to achieve them.

The Army writes into doctrine a duty to act when nobody has told you to.

The shot clock

Basketball teams that were ahead used to stall, holding the ball and refusing to shoot. The NBA’s answer was a clock forcing a shot attempt within twenty-four seconds. The sport changed its own rules because not acting was ruining it to watch.

The two-minute drill

American football has a distinct mode for the closing minutes: no huddle, plays called at the line, clock managed to the second. Teams practise it as a separate discipline — a whole rehearsed system for what to do when there is no time to deliberate.

Good Samaritan laws

Every US state has legislation protecting a bystander who intervenes in an emergency from being sued for the consequences. The legal system identified hesitation as the problem and removed the reason for it.

The case method

Harvard Business School teaches almost entirely by case. Students are given an incomplete business situation, cold-called without warning, and required to state what they would do. Not what the considerations are — what they would do. And a substantial part of the grade is participation, so silence is penalised directly.

Class participation

American schools grade it, from elementary through university, and it appears on the syllabus as a percentage. A student who has understood everything and said nothing receives a lower mark than one who spoke up and was partly wrong.

At-will employment

The default rule across almost all US states is that either party may end the employment relationship at any time, for any reason that is not illegal, without notice. Whatever else it does, it makes staffing decisions fast. A manager who wants to change a team can change it this week.

The golden hour

American trauma medicine is built around the idea that the first hour after serious injury determines survival. R Adams Cowley in Baltimore made it doctrine, and the US trauma system — helicopters, designated trauma centres, rapid transport — was designed around it.

Researchers have since questioned whether sixty minutes is a meaningful threshold. The system it produced is real regardless, and it was built on the premise that speed is the treatment.

Bystander CPR

American public health has spent decades training ordinary people to start chest compressions immediately rather than wait for professionals, and has simplified the instruction repeatedly to lower the barrier to starting. The campaign is not about doing it well. It is about doing it now.