"You see but you do not observe"--Thoughts on the OODA Loop

Sherlock Holmes

Radley Balko discusses a couple recent police shootings. First the shooting of Levar Jones by a South Carolina state trooper, Sean Groubert:

By now you’ve probably seen the video below, which shows former South Carolina state trooper Sean Groubert shooting Levar Jones after pulling him over for a seatbelt violations. Groubert asked Jones to show his license, then opened fire when Jones ducked into his truck to retrieve it. Groubert has since been fired, and now faces felony assault charges that could bring a 20-year prison sentence. 

Let’s first state the obvious: This shooting was completely and utterly without justification. Jones did nothing wrong. He was pulled over because of a dumb law, did what he was told, and was subsequently shot for it. Groubert should never be a police officer again. Both he and the state of South Carolina should not only pay Jones’ medical bills, but a substantial sum of money for Jones’ pain and suffering. 

All of that said, watch the video again. Does Groubert look like a cold-blooded killer? I doubt he got out of his car intending to shoot Jones. It looks to me like Groubert was terrified, possibly jumped to some conclusions about Jones based on his race and appearance, and reacted out of fear. Which is to say that this looks less like a rogue cop and more the product of poor training, possible racial bias, and a cop who has been conditioned to see threats where none exist.

(Underline added). Balko goes on to describe how law enforcement has exaggerated the threat to police officers in traffic stops, even though police deaths have steadily declined. He observes:

But Groubert’s actions are consistent with and the predictable consequence of a false narrative pushed by law enforcement leaders and organization and abetted by some the media: that policing is getting more dangerous by the day. In truth, on the job police fatalities have been on a downward trajectory since the mid-1990s, and last year was the safest year for cops in a half century. And that’s just if you’re going with raw numbers. If you look at fatalities rates, 2013 was likely the safest year since the early 1900s. (It’s difficult to get precise figures on the total number of police officers over the years.) Yet we still see a steady stream of assertions from police officials that they are “at war” or that the job is more dangerous than ever. (It’s true that there has been an increase in fatalities this year. But again, this is after the safest year ever in modern policing.) 

There’s also an emerging faction in the law enforcement community encouraging cops to use more force more often. The theory is that too many cops hesitate before pulling the trigger, and that cops are unnecessarily dying as a result. ...

The other incident Balko discusses in his article concerns the killing of John Crawford in a Beavercreek, Ohio, Walmart. You may remember that this incident involved a man handling a BB-gun at a Walmart which was reported to police as a man in the store threatening people with a firearm. What Balko finds significant is that the officers had just undergone training regarding "active shooters": 

The police officer who shot dead a young black man in a Walmart store in Ohio as he held an unloaded BB rifle had less than two weeks earlier received what prosecutors called a “pep talk” on how to deal aggressively with suspected gunmen. 

Sean Williams and his colleagues in Beavercreek, a suburb of Dayton, were shown a slideshow invoking their loved ones and the massacres at Sandy Hook, Columbine and Virginia Tech while being trained on 23-24 July on confronting “active shooter situations”. 

“If not you, then who?” officers were asked by the presentation, alongside a photograph of young students being led out of Sandy Hook elementary school in December 2012. A caption reminded the trainees that 20 children and five adults were killed before police arrived . . .

I want to look at these incidents from the perspective of the OODA loop developed by U.S. Air Force Col. John Boyd. Most of you are probably familiar with the OODA loop: observe, orient, decide, and act. Although originally developed as a formal description of the decision making process fighter pilots should follow, it has gained widespread acceptance and use among police and tactical shooters. If you are interested, here are a couple articles that explain the OODA loop or process more fully (one from the Art of Manliness, discussing Boyd's theories in more detail, including more on the history and ideas that influenced Boyd; and another article discussing it in the context of use in decision theory).

(Source)

The Art of Manliness article explains the basic issue Boyd was attempting to address:

According to Boyd, ambiguity and uncertainty surround us. While the randomness of the outside world plays a large role in that uncertainty, Boyd argues that our inability to properly make sense of our changing reality is the bigger hindrance. When our circumstances change, we often fail to shift our perspective and instead continue to try to see the world as we feel it should be. We need to shift what Boyd calls our existing “mental concepts” – or what I like to call “mental models” – in order to deal with the new reality. 

Mental models – or paradigms – are simply a way of looking at and understanding the world. They create our expectations for how the world works. They are sometimes culturally relative and can be rooted in tradition, heritage, and even genetics. They can be something as specific as traffic laws or social etiquette. Or they can be as general as the overarching principles of an organization or a field of study like psychology, history, the laws and theories of science and math, and military doctrines on the rules of engagement. ...

While our paradigms work and match up with reality most of the time, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes the universe pitches us a curveball that we never saw coming and the mental models we have to work with aren’t really useful. ...

... The crux of Boyd’s case for why uncertainty abounds is that individuals and organizations often look inward and apply familiar mental models that have worked in the past to try to solve new problems. When these old mental models don’t work, they will often keep trying to make them work — maybe if they just use an old strategy with more gusto, things will pan out. But they don’t. Business magnate Charlie Munger calls this tendency to use the familiar even in the face of a changing reality the “man with a hammer syndrome.” You know the old saying: “to the man with only a hammer, everything is a nail.” So it is with folks with one or two mental models to work with. Every problem can be solved with their current way of thinking. And so they keep hammering away, confused and disillusioned that their work isn’t producing any results.

Boyd's answer to this uncertainty was the OODA model. From the same article:

The first step in the OODA Loop is to observe. ... By observing and taking into account new information about our changing environment, our minds become an open system rather than a closed one, and we are able to gain the knowledge and understanding that’s crucial in forming new mental models. As an open system, we’re positioned to overcome confusion-inducing mental entropy. 

... In his presentations, Boyd notes that we’ll encounter two problems in the Observation phase: 

--We often observe imperfect or incomplete information ... 

--We can be inundated with so much information that separating the signal from the noise becomes difficult 

These two pitfalls are solved by developing our judgment – our practical wisdom. As John Boyd scholar Frans P.B. Osinga notes in Science, Strategy, and War, “even if one has perfect information it is of no value if it is not coupled to a penetrating understanding of its meaning, if one does not see the patterns. Judgment is key. Without judgment, data means nothing. It is not necessarily the one with more information who will come out victorious, it is the one with better judgment, the one who is better at discerning patterns.” 

How do we develop this judgment so that we can better understand our observations? By becoming deft practitioners of the next step in the OODA Loop: Orient.

The most important step in the OODA Loop, but one that often gets overlooked, is Orient. Boyd called this step the schwerpunkt (a word he borrowed from the German Blitzkrieg), or focal point of the loop. 

The reason Orient is the schwerpunkt of the OODA Loop is because that’s where our mental models exist, and it is our mental models that shape how everything in the OODA Loop works. As Osinga notes, “orientation shapes the way we interact with the environment…it shapes the way we observe, the way we decide, the way we act. In this sense, orientation shapes the character of present OODA loops, while the present loop shapes the character of future orientation.” 

So how does one orient himself in a rapidly changing environment? 

You constantly have to break apart your old paradigms and put the resulting pieces back together to create a new perspective that better matches your current reality. 

Boyd calls this process “destructive deduction.” When we do this, we analyze and pull apart our mental concepts into discrete parts. Once we have these constitutive elements, we can start the process of “creative induction” – using these old fragments to form new mental concepts that more closely align with what we have observed is really happening around us.

Of course, orientation is not a one-time affair, but is something that must be continually practiced. You must constantly reevaluating as you gather new information or as the situation evolves.

The decision theory article notes that as one becomes more experienced at a given problem, that person can seemingly skip the orientation and decision portions. The article explains:

The OODA Loop is often seen as a simple one-dimensional cycle, where one observes what the enemy is doing, becomes oriented to the enemy action, makes a decision, and then takes an action. This "dumbing down" of a highly complex concept is especially prevalent in the military, where only the explicit part of the Loop is understood. The military believes speed is the most important element of the cycle, that whoever can go through the cycle fastest will prevail. It is true that speed is crucial, but not the speed of simply cycling through the Loop. By simplifying the cycle in this way, the military can make computer models. But computer models do not take into account the single most important part of the cycle ‑ the orientation phase, especially the implicit part of the orientation phase. 

Thus we come back to the two implicit guidance and control arrows that we mentioned earlier. Let's return to Robert Coram once again . "Note that Boyd includes the Implicit Guidance & Control from Orientation with both Observations and Action. This is his way of pointing out that when one has developed the proper Fingerspitzengefuhl [ fingertip feel ] for a changing situation, the tempo picks up and it seems one is then able to bypass the explicit Orientation and Decision part of the Loop, to Observe and Act almost simultaneously. The speed must come from a deep intuitive understanding of one's relationship to the rapidly changing environment. This is what enables a commander seemingly to bypass parts of the Loop. It is this adaptability that gives the OODA Loop its awesome power."

Note this: experience and understanding can speed your through the orientation and decision process; it does not, however, eliminate the initial step of observing.

Unfortunately, "observe" has been reduced by many to merely seeing. For instance, the article "Understanding the OODA Loop" at Police magazine states:

The OODA loop is a simple yet complex summation of how the human brain processes information and how humans react. First, you observe what is going on around you using your senses. Next, you orient to what is going on around you and put it into context with information rooted in your long-term memory, including training—both good and bad—life experiences, and your genetic heritage. After processing this information you must come to a conclusion about your surroundings, and you must make a decision to act or react. The final stage, if there truly is one, is the physical action. In order to process through the OODA loop, you must perform a physical action to implement the decision you have made. If your action is appropriate and effective you begin to gain the upper hand and can often process through more OODA loop cycles at a faster tempo than your adversary, which ultimately leads to victory. 

Failing to act, or failing to act quickly and appropriately, will often result in defeat. The more defeat you suffer without being able to gain an advantage, the less likely you are to have an effective physical and mental performance. This puts you behind the reaction curve, where you process information more slowly and every time you cycle through the OODA loop you are at even more of a disadvantage. 

Boyd understood how people process information in combat and the role that training, experience, and forethought play in maximizing  your ability to be victorious.
One of the most important things that Boyd's OODA loop can teach you as law enforcement officers is that your survival skills such as firearms training and defensive tactics training must be properly encoded into memory. 

In a life or death situation, you need to be able to process through the OODA loop as quickly and effectively as possible in order to increase your odds of survival and triumph.  

The fastest way to process through the OODA loop is to quickly orient to what is happening and virtually bypass the decision-making process by already knowing what action to take based on the stimulus. Boyd called the process of bypassing steps of the OODA loop "implicit guidance and control." 

Implicit guidance and control is an unconscious preplanned physical response to a known threat stimulus, which is often referred to by psychologists as a "learned automatic response." Some experts also refer to this as a "threat stimulus response pairing."

From a different article at Tactical Response:

Human reaction time is defined as the time elapsing between the onset of a stimulus and the onset of a response to that stimulus. The O.O.D.A. Loop, which stands for Observe, Orient, Decide and Act, is Boyd’s way of explaining how we go through the process of reacting to stimulus. First we Observe, and keep in mind that although we process approximately 80% of the information we receive with our sense of sight, we can and do make observations with our other senses. For instance you might hear a gunshot and not see the person who fired it. Once you look and see the source of the gunfire you are now in the Orient stage of the process. In the Orient stage you are now focusing your attention on what you have just observed. The next step is the Decide step in which you have to make a decision on what to do about what you have just observed and focused your attention on. Finally you have made your decision and the last step is to Act upon that decision. Keep in mind that the O.O.D.A loop is what happens between the onset of a stimulus and the onset of a reaction to that stimulus.

These articles may seem correct. Yet, in fact, the authors have made a critical mistake. As Conan Doyle expressed in one of his Sherlock Holmes stories, "You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear." The author of the Police magazine and Tactical Response articles not only skip over the importance of the "observe" step, they has reduced it to a "stimulus." Stimulus is devoid of understanding.

Returning to the examples above. Groubert asked Jones to produce his identification, and Jones leaned back into his vehicle to get the license. Groubert saw Jones leaning into his vehicle, but did not observe--that is, he is not mindful that he just instructed Jones to get his license. Instead, he sees a threat stimulus. He saw, but he did not observe. If he had observed, he might of realized that Jones did not have a weapon and was simply following Groubert's actions.

Similarly, in the shooting of Crawford, the officer that shot him saw the toy gun, but did not observe that it was a toy gun. The officer saw Crawford with the toy gun, but did not observe that Crawford was, in fact, not an active shooter.

Another problem, and one that is the substance of Balko's critique, is that the officers' orientation was compromised. When Boyd discussed orientation, he was not simply discussing lining up an aircraft for a kill shot. He actually was discussing how various factors--genetic heritage, cultural traditions, previous experience, new information, and analysis and synthesis--interacted to provide us an understanding of the situation and environment. As the prior decision theory article explains:

Orientation is the worldview, the schemata, the mental models, the views of reality, the insights, intuitions, hunches, beliefs and perceptions of the various participants. We create working models of the world by making and manipulating analogies in our minds. With these working models we perceive and define our world. They are our maps of reality  and they are implicit.

Balko theorizes (probably correctly) that Groubert's decision to shoot Jones was probably influenced by his training and stories concerning police officers being killed during traffic stops, and perhaps racism or other personal history or biases, so that Groubert reached a conclusion that Jones was reaching for a weapon. Similarly, in Crawford's killing, the officer entered the scene with a preconception that it was an active shooter event, reinforced by his "pep talk" encouraging his use of lethal force. In both cases, the officers had a worldview that skewed their analysis of what was actually occurring before them.

Some readers may argue that the quickest to the draw training may save an officer's life in a gun fight. But that is the essential problem in both of these situations--the officers were not in gunfights. In the case of Groubert, his mistake has cost him his career and may yet result in jail time. The officer that shot Crawford may not have been subject to charges, but he failed at his task. And, to be sure, if a private citizen had shot Crawford under the same circumstances, he would be facing a second degree murder or manslaughter charge.

I'm not arguing for detailed analysis that slows down our decision making process. But I am warning that a knee-jerk reaction does not satisfy the OODA requirements, and may have serious negative consequences.