Every year we gather a select group of business and government leaders at OODAcon, where we provide insights into defining issues shaping strategy and decision-making in this age of exponential technologies.

It was also the perfect opportunity to reflect on a key topic which has been discussed for years in the OODA network: How should individuals and organizations adjust to ensure success in the AI age? This is an open question that has been the subject of a long running threads in our slack channels and monthly meetings and in many other posts here on the site.

It struck me reflecting on both these important topics and the many discussions at OODAcon how relevant John Boyd’s seminal paper Destruction and Creation is to ensuring success in the AI age.

Here is why I say that.

We all already realize that we need to be agile in these dynamic times. Things are moving fast and organizations need to be able to shift to address new needs or leverage new capabilities to optimize. But agility is table stakes at this point. Your competitor is also seeking to be agile. Using AI to improve processes is also table stakes. Everyone is doing that. As individuals, it is important to learn to leverage new tools, but with millions of others doing that, learning the new tools will not give advantage either.

Victory will come to those that not only learn new tools and approaches, but can sense systemic changes, rapidly create new models of the environment, execute on decisions those new models drive, and understand when those new models are no longer relevant and what new decisions need to be made.

Boyd’s Destruction and Creation paper is a playbook for doing just that. It lays a logical foundation for any seeking to optimize observations of reality, continuously reorient to the perceived reality, and recognize when old models must be destroyed and new models created.

Read the full paper at: Creation and Destruction

Additional Resources:

• Mental Models For Leadership In The Modern Age
• A Practitioner’s View of Corporate Intelligence
• Decision Intelligence and Establishing an Intelligent Enterprise