Today we had our monthly online retreat. In fact, the blog I wrote yesterday was part of the preparation for that. What I wanted to say in the blog is that this year could be a year anything can happen. As I said in yesterday's blog, you can't predict the tipping point, whether it's a currency crash or a major economic downturn. We can't predict the critical slowdown that may occur shortly before the tipping point, but we can experience it. If you can experience it, then it may or may not be followed by tipping.
The bottom line is that you don't know what's going to happen, and you can't prepare for it. That's why we need the OODA cycle - not to anticipate too far ahead, but to do it, and then to use the experience to create the next step. This OODA cycle is not something special. I mentioned in the book, "Luck is not an accident", which is about taking action and making the most of chance events. Resilient decision making, which is also used in climate change, is not about making one big long-term decision but about making many small decisions that adapt to the situation on a case-by-case basis. Lean Management also recommends the Minimum Viable Product (MVP), a product with a minimal solution to a target problem, introduced to the market, and then rapidly improved based on customer response. This is the most essential part of the OODA process.
The most important thing is that other people know that you have decided - whether it is an MVP or an adaptive decision. If you have to ask for confirmation every time you decide, you will never get anywhere. These small decisions are made at each member's discretion, and then we share them with the whole group. So if there is a problem, someone from the group will follow up on it. That's why, at su-re.co, all group chats and emails (including my own) are shared with all members. It's not just a somehow transparent system; it's transparency for the sake of doing OODA.
OODA isn't just about small companies; it's also how some of the biggest and most successful projects operate. One of the things that made YouTube different from other video sites in the early days was that YouTube didn't check each video as it was posted but removed it if a problem was reported after it had been posted. Other video sites would check each video before publishing it. This means that even if you submit a video, it won't be published immediately. Which service will people choose if they want to publish their videos? Also, open-source projects do not have a few authorized people checking the source's quality, but a large number of eyes checking for problems. In the past, there was an encyclopaedia project by Microsoft called Encarta. It couldn't keep up with the speed of the world and disappeared. Wikipedia may contain wrong information, but it will be checked by more eyes, and the problem will be corrected.
The world itself is moving towards OODA, and if we don't get on board, we will be left behind. The blockchain system is similar because its trust does not achieve by a permit by a few authority but being secured by many eyes. It's all moving towards the same vision.