Speed is killing our decisions. The crush of technology forces us to snap react. We blink, when we should think. E-mail, social media, and 24-hour news are relentless. Our time cycle gets faster every day.
Yet as our decision-making accelerates, long-term strategy becomes even more crucial. Those of us who find time to step back and think about the big picture, even for a few minutes, have a major advantage. If every one else moves too quickly, we can win by going slow.
No one understood the challenge of time-pressured decision-making better than military strategist John Boyd, arguably the greatest fighter pilot in American history. Boyd developed a decision-making framework that our best leaders use today, in military and in business. It is known by the acronym OODA, for observe, orient, decide, and act.
The ultimate goal of OODA is to act fast, but not necessarily first. This applies to lots of things beside armed conflict. In general, we make better decisions when we minimize the time it takes to decide and act — so that we can spend more time observing and orienting.