Thimk!
by chet ~ March 26th, 2008. Filed under: Boyd's Theories, Business Strategy.As I have been berating visitors to this blog, Boyd’s work isn’t so much about implementing a methodology as it is a way of thinking about conflict and competition. Over on leanblog.org, Mark Graben makes much the same point about the Toyota Production System:
When you copy, you’re more likely to miss the mark than you are if you actually think through situations yourself. That’s why Toyota execs like calling TPS the “Thinking Production System.” There’s no substitute for thinking, learning from experience, and PDCA … but too many companies want quick answers and copied solutions.
This shouldn’t be too surprising because the TPS and Boyd’s stuff are brothers under the skin. PDCA, incidentally, is the Deming Cycle, Plan-Do-Check-Act. It is better suited for this type of work, a form of engineering, really, than is the OODA loop, which is a pattern for coming out on top in zero-sum conflicts with human (i.e., thinking, motivated, creative, deceptive, etc.) opponents.
“Thimk!” ?? From an old Mad Magazine (as I recall) cartoon back when IBM’s slogan was “Think!” If you Google “thimk” you get 245,000 returns.
March 27th, 2008 at 7:53 am
Implementation of Boyd and the overall organizational role and organizational atmosphere is the key. The organization must have clear goals, or as COL Mike Wyly put it a common cause. It must also have clear values that send a message of integrity, fairness and develop trust, mutual trust.
This type of organization gives people in the organization the individual freedom to think, process information via the Boyd Cycle and acheive desired results. The right type of trusting, teaching and learning organization, allows individuals to “Turn Boyd On!” and complete assigned tasks. It allows “iniative” a key ingredient to efficiency.
March 27th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
It is my opinion that the Deming Cycle works very well, but only if it is clearly understood, embraced and applied in an accountable manner at all corporate levels, much like implementation of Boyd. Everyone must be engaged-not just a few or it simply will not work.
The Deming Cycle is related to Kaizen thinking. Kaizen is Japanese for “change for the better” or “continual improvement”. It requires all involved to “think” another key ingredient to better effciency.
April 24th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
around 1990 one of the large US auto companies had C4 effort to radically change how they developed cars. The explanation was that in the wake of the import quotas, the Japanese found that at the quota level, they could sell as many expensive cars as inexpensive cars … and so radically changed their product mix (with significant higher profit margin). Part of this was to reduce the elapsed time from idea to rolling off the line from 7-8yrs to 3-4yrs (and declining).
roll-forward to 1990, US companies were still taking 7-8yrs for elapsed product development … while foreign imports could do a new product in a couple yrs. (and falling) This allowed foreign competition to more rapidly adapt to changing conditions and customer preferences.
A big part of C4 effort was to heavily leverage technology to radically change the automobile business and drastically shorten the elapsed time of the end-to-end process … and included bringing in number of technology vendors. I may have been a little caustic that (at the time) some (technology) members in the room were still on 7-8yr product cycle