Jon Becker is the CEO of Aardvark Tactical and the host of The Debrief, a tactical podcast. Mark “Moose” McGrath had just spent two days in California with Jon and a room full of tactical leaders, taking apart the linear OODA loop. Jon came on No Way Out with Mark and me to talk about what happened in that room.
Jon describes how his view of Boyd shifted overnight. He and Mark explain why orientation decides what wins, and what kills. They also describe the moment a room of SWAT commanders realized they had taught the OODA loop as a straight line for decades.
No slide deck
Mark taught with Socratic questions and no slides. Jon walks through how that method moved skeptics in under five hours. We compare it with top-down instruction, and we talk about the difference between education and training in tactical work.
Boyd in plain terms
We cover Destruction and Creation, Boyd’s essay on how people tear down old ideas and build new ones, and why few people who talk about the OODA loop have read it. Examples include Blockbuster and Netflix, Toyota kaizen and AI. We also talk about co-creating intent, and how a team’s implicit biases shape each decision it makes.
Orientation sits at the center of John Boyd’s real OODA loop, and this conversation keeps coming back to it.
When did you last test what you were taught about the OODA loop?
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Written by Ponch Rivera with AI assistance in production. The full conversation is in the player below.