The OODA loop — observe, orient, decide, act — is a tool that is commonly used in strategic decision-making when a situation is still developing, or all relevant information has not been identified. We’ve previously covered the preceding stages of the OODA loop, and now it’s time to dive into the ‘act’ phase.
The act phase of the OODA loop is all about focused execution. It’s where you translate your ideas into action, test your hypotheses, and implement your decisions. Setting your plan into motion, and executing on your strategy, will indicate positive progress (i.e., components of the strategy that work well), or required improvements. You will also be able to take advantage of any new opportunities that have arisen throughout the OODA loop process.
Any actions taken in the act phase are also observable, whether they succeed or fail. This means you are constantly gathering new insight to iteratively feed back into OODA’s loops and optimize your strategy.
Why execution is the ultimate test of strategy
Strategy execution is the only way of finding out if your plan will work. As with any strategy, or other activity, there are always hypotheticals. Something might, or might not, happen that you weren’t originally aware of or could not predict, and change your strategy’s direction. Even in the most perfect scenarios, adjustments or unforeseen events should always be accounted for.
Taking the time to extensively and intricately plan your strategy will ensure that team members are all on the same page, and know exactly what it is they’re working towards. This will keep execution efforts focused, employees productive, and bring efficiency to the entire process — leading to better results. You will have a clear understanding and insight into what resources you have available, and whether you’re using them at the right time. This can also help with strategy optimization as you will know what needs changing, how changes will be implemented, and how long this may take.
By the time you’re ready to execute your strategy, you will have a strong idea of how it will likely evolve. You will quickly know if it is achievable, or what needs adapting to help your strategy to succeed. It will be tested in real-world contexts, highlighting areas where more planning is required or knowledge gaps that weren’t previously considered. You will be able to identify if you are using the right resources at the right time. Executing your strategy is when you see all those hours of planning come to fruition.
Principles for agile strategy execution
Agile strategy execution usually comprises the following five elements. These ensure that there is flexibility and adaptability built into your activities in case circumstances change.
Communication
Communication lays the foundation for any project. Open and clear communication channels between team members improves internal efficiency, offering a way to celebrate achievements or collaboratively solve issues as they occur. This also builds strategic alignment by encouraging involvement across the team, as well as ensuring there is a common understanding of what you’re trying to accomplish.
Collaboration
Collaboration enables you to leverage unique skill sets, in combination with others, that drive positive outcomes. This also encourages cross-functional collaboration that might not have been possible outside of this specific project. Collaborating throughout strategy design and execution will unlock potential within your teams, enable knowledge sharing, and bring results that align with your goals.
Customer focus
Keeping your customers as your central focus when executing your strategy will mean that your efforts are targeted, reducing the potential for distractions that add little or no impact. Understanding what your customers want and need gives your strategy direction, allowing you to incorporate this feedback into your activities. This will ensure you’re making informed decisions and providing value that aligns with expectations.
Continuous improvement
Continuous improvement enables you to regularly review the strategy process and make adjustments that encourage positive progress. This also means that, for future strategy initiatives, you will learn from previous experience, have the ability to overcome unexpected hurdles, and understand the effort required to make your strategy succeed. Common continuous improvement activities include retrospective meetings or other feedback loops.
Courage
It takes courage to embrace change, failures, and success. In strategy execution, decisions must be made in order to make a difference, while also considering that not every decision will work favourably or as intended. For agile strategy execution, team members must be able to experiment and learn from failures. This will empower your team to work with courage and improve the outputs of future strategic initiatives.
How to measure success
Your metrics for success will be specific, measurable, and aligned to your goals — how you measure them is entirely your choice. Define regular checkpoints to measure progress against your goals, using frameworks such as KPIs or OKRs. Measures for success should be clearly communicated when beginning, and throughout, your strategy process to enable strategic alignment.
Success is typically measured using the following process:
- Define measures for success: This could be financial, operational, customer, or employee metrics — as long as they are relevant to your overarching strategy. Include targets to work towards that are attainable (and an additional stretch goal if required)
- Observe and measure: Begin collecting data about your strategy and its progress. What is going well, what needs to change? Do your metrics tell you anything?
- Analyze: Put your observations into relevant context, making sense of your collected data. Share the results with your team and discuss next steps, if any
- Evaluate: What have you learned from this process — and how can this inform future decisions? This includes contributing factors to success (or failure), or unexpected successes that should be considered.
Without effective strategic follow-through, it’s possible that the entire strategy won’t be executed, or executed improperly. Not accurately, or infrequently, measuring success can lead to a lack of progress or a general disinterest in the project from team members. Measuring success ensures everyone involved is accountable for their role, boosting the likelihood of the strategy succeeding. OODA’s iterative process means you will constantly be collecting valuable insight to inform future decision-making, regardless of your strategy’s outcome.
Track and adapt execution
Digital tools can make strategy planning and execution much easier, by centralizing all the project information and making it easier to visually understand progress. Strategy Cards, built using OODA methodology, particularly support tracking and adapting your strategy execution.
By the end of the act phase, breakthrough objectives should have been defined. Using strategy cards provides a simple way for teams to turn these decisions into structured, actionable steps. This partners well with Workbench, our strategy execution platform. Workbench allows breakthrough objectives to be mapped into an X-Matrix, assign clear responsibilities, link projects, and track KPIs — ensuring strategy is not just created, but delivered.
Completing the OODA loop…
…and starting again. The OODA loop uses feedback and feed-forward throughout the entire process. Each stage is observable based on the impact, consequences, and outputs of each stage. It allows you to refine, or make changes, as you gain more knowledge or more information emerges. Its success is determined by discovering what is effective, or ineffective, and how these ideas translate into reality.
Strategy execution, or the act phase, is where you implement your plans. Having situational awareness will allow you to build your strategy around being dynamic and agile, allowing for unexpected events to happen — or circumstances to change — like the OODA Loop’s origin. The key to successful strategy execution is using situational awareness to anticipate what might happen, and being flexible and adaptable enough for this not to have a major impact on your strategy.
