Best Practices AMAURY MURGADO
WHY THE OODA LOOP IS STILL RELEVANT Understanding the mind’s decision-making process can help you calm down subjects and improve your own reactions.
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he OODA loop was created by Air Force colonel John Boyd in the late 1950s. He was a Korean War fighter pilot and a student of combative engagements. Col. Boyd’s understanding of the time-sensitive nature of decision-making based on his experience led him to develop the OODA loop. Once understood, it laid out a winning tactic that helped explain successful fighter pilots and their seemingly enhanced abilities. But it’s not just for fighter pilots. Every law enforcement officer needs to understand the OODA loop because it explains how people act and react in a demanding, evolving, and highly charged situation. This decision-making model can be used to deconstruct verbal and physical confrontations. It also provides a structure for understanding how the mind processes information and takes action in other situations.
consists of four parts: Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act, hence the acronym. In any confrontational situation, you as an officer observe the situation, orient yourself to it by establishing relative positioning, decide what has to be done, and then do it. Any time the situation changes, you have to adapt, and the process starts over again. The decision-making we do in law enforcement is actually a battle for time. The person with the fastest reaction time usually wins. Keep in mind, the bad guy is going through the same process and therefore fighting for the same chunk of time.
VERBAL CONFRONTATIONS There isn’t a day that goes by
PHOTO: TONI BOONE
where officers don’t have to deal with upset people who lash out at the very ones trying to help them. Getting them on track and on a manageable level is paramount to your handing of their problem. WHERE IT CAME FROM By the time you get out of your Boyd studied the aerial comcar, a subject has already made bat outcomes during the Korean most of his decisions. Talking to War and found that even though you is usually the last part of his U.S. pilots flew inferior jets they Every time you move and shoot you are using the OODA loop. OODA loop. This is why it is so difstill beat their adversaries 10-1. ficult to talk to a person when he is Through further research, he was able to decode the process and learn some critical charac- fired up. Simply ordering him to calm down does absolutely teristics about decision-making and reaction time. Boyd no good. He won’t respond the way you want because he is concluded that there were only two ways to beat someone locked in his own loop. You have to break the subject’s conin aerial combat: speed up your decision-making (and thus centration by changing his focus. This starts him on a new reaction time) or slow down theirs. This same principle ap- loop or, at the very least, breaks the one he is on even if only for a brief moment. plies to law enforcement. I was on a call years ago dealing with an out-of-control “he said, she said” domestic disturbance. While dealing with my HOW IT WORKS half, I quickly changed the conversation and asked a question Any time you react you are processing information and making decisions using the OODA loop. The OODA loop about the interior decoration of the living room, focusing on a 14
POLICE JANUARY 2013
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