OODA: Loop one

Air Force Col. John Boyd is famously credited with developing & establishing The concepts of Observe, Orient, Decide, Act (OODA) as a decision tool aide. It's an extremely valuable way to look at complex problems, perform an action, revisit the solution and make changes to plans improve the outcome. It's more of a mindset, really. 

For this blog post, I'd like to do my first look at a recent proposal put forward for a client and try and talk about things I can improve about the process. 

The task was to aid in the development of a proposal for a PhD candidate follow on research. We had about 60 days to develop the product. We came up with our plan of attack. Developed our solution. Presented our findings. And then nothing... Except in the last three weeks. With a final pre-read look to whom we discovered was a real end-user. Which point, we discovered we had epically failed in his eyes. 

So what went wrong?

First, we didn't engage with our principal early enough. Lesson one: over communicate is a winning strategy for ensuring 100% transparency in virtual project management. 

Second, we didn't take the time to really appreciate and understand what our principal wanted out of us. Lesson two: ensure principal engagement is such that requirements are clearly communicated upfront.

Third, when things got slow and quiet we just excepted it as everything was okay. Lesson three: when things go stale: engage, engage, engage!

It's critical to always reflect, in an after action reporting sense, and try and develop lessons learned in order to prevent challenges in future engagements.  For me the above lessons were learned the hard way but will never be forgotten. My client wasn't a learning process is well. They learned, potentially, where my value may or may not exist in helping their efforts. 

For HGG, Inc., the next major engagement is January 15 for a round of funding for my client.  The next five weeks will be very critical and implementing lessons learned above to help assure success. Otherwise, I could very well lose my only client at this point. 

As a risk reduction effort, I do have in the hopper some other potential leads to build out my client base.  This way I won't be exposed suggest having a sole source for funding on my efforts. All revisit those in due time when I have acquired clients and let you know how it goes. 

Happy innovating. 

Sam