 |
|
|
|||||
When the world stops making sense and everyone’s looking to you for answers, that’s when real leadership begins. I learned this in the most extreme of circumstancesfirst, as a SWAT team Tactical Commander where split-second decisions meant life or death, then as CEO of a major public company where market crises could make or break thousands of our customers’ livelihoods. The skills that kept our team alive in tactical operations are the same ones that helped steer our organization through economic downturns, industry disruptions, and unprecedented challenges. Crisis leadership isn’t about having all the answers; it’s about having the right framework to make decisive moves when the stakes are highest. The OODA Loop: Your Crisis Leadership Framework Air Force Colonel John Boyd developed the OODA Loop by studying why American F-86 fighter pilots dominated technically superior MiG fighters in the Korean War. The framework he created became the gold standard for decision-making in competitive, high-stakes environments, and remains standard methodology in tactical operations today. The loop takes you through four key steps: Observe: Rapidly gather information about the evolving situation Orient: Process observations against your experience and current reality Decide: Choose your course of action with incomplete information Act: Execute decisively while preparing for the next cycle Speeding through the cycle becomes your ultimate competitive advantage. The leader who can take these steps faster than the crisis evolves wins the game, or, in some cases, the dogfight. Observe Without Panic In SWAT operations, observation meant survival. You had to see everythingsuspect behavior, environmental hazards, team positioningwhile filtering out distractions under extreme stress. The same discipline applies in business crises. During business challenges, other industry leaders typically make reactive decisions based on incomplete observations, or worsefail to make decisions due to analysis paralysis. Instead, I apply Boyd’s observation principles: gather data systematically, look for patterns that others miss, and resist the urge to act before you truly understand what’s happening. Here’s the landmine: The moment you let emotions cloud your observation, you lose your competitive advantage. Orient Faster Than Your Competition Boyd believed orientation was the most critical phase, where you synthesize observations with experience and strategic context. In tactical operations, poor orientation gets people killed. In business, it gets companies killed. During the COVID pandemic, while I was CEO of RE/MAX, competitors were still trying to understand the paralyzed market. We had to orient to the new reality of Zoom showings, curbside closings, and overall new ways of doing business immediately. To combat this, I drew on my law enforcement experience of reading situations that didn’t match expectations. We recognized that the market continued even with different protocols, and we had to adjust how we did business. This rapid orientation gave us a significant market advantage, even in the hardest-hit areas. Companies that survive crises orient to new realities fastest and most accurately. Decide with Tactical Precision Boyd understood that having perfect information is a luxury you can’t afford. Whether breaching a door or entering a volatile market, you decide with 70% information and 100% commitment. When you have multiple options but incomplete data, apply the same process we used in high-risk operations: identify your primary objective, consider second-order effects, choose the option that advances your mission, then commit fully. The decision-making process builds confidence to take action. Waiting isn’t decision-making, and waiting for nonexistent information is a fool’s game. How would you feel if the SWAT team had no next step while you were the hostage in the building? Same thing in businessgather just enough information to lean toward a decision. In a crisis, the worst decision is usually no decision. Act While Others Hesitate Action without observation and orientation is reckless, but observation without action is worthless. Boyd’s framework only works when you complete the cycle, then immediately start the next one. During market shifts, our actions required balancing financial and operational oversight against financial challenges and legal restrictions. Crisis operation isn’t just about moving fast; it’s moving with purpose while staying flexible to changing rules that shift daily. I built what Boyd called “implicit guidance and control” into our systems. Our team knew the mission well enough to act independently when circumstances changed faster than communication could keep up. When offices and franchisees located around the globe called with questions, the decision framework was simple: “What’s right that aligns with the values of the business?” Elite performers cycle back to observation before competitors finish their first decision. Getting Inside Your Opponent’s OODA Loop Boyd’s real insight was “getting inside your opponent’s decision cycle.” By going through the OODA Loop faster than your competition, you make them react to your moves instead of executing their own strategy. At RE/MAX and other companies I oversee, we institutionalized rapid OODA cycling through what I call the 3-2-1 decision-making process. Instead of asking management questions and waiting for responses, I empower people to come up with 3 ideas to solve a problem, create 2 best options, then make 1 recommendation. This quick process gets action taken immediately. By the time our competitors made their first major move, we were already three moves ahead. Building Organizational OODA Capability You don’t develop OODA Loop mastery during the crisis; you must develop it beforehand, implementing steps like: Accelerate Observation Systems: Create information flows that give you earlier intelligence than competition, and host weekly clarity meetings for everyone aligned. Sharpen Orientation Through Training: Regularly run exercises like what-if games, so orientation becomes automatic during real disruptions. Practice Quick Decision-Making: Create safe environments for consequential decisions under pressure and build the understanding that it’s okay to make decisions. Build Rapid Execution Systems: Design processes that implement decisions faster than circumstances change. Communication Within the Loop Boyd understood the OODA Loop isn’t just individual, it’s organizational. Your team’s ability to share observations, align on orientation, coordinate decisions, and syncronize action determines collective speed. Maintain OODA coherence by applying tactical communication principles: Observe together Orient collectively Decide with clarity Act in coordination As you get used to “dancing the OODA” together, you’ll see instinctive decision-making perpetuate team success. The Ultimate Weapon Crisis leadership is more than just being fearless; it’s about being intentionally and strategically faster. Colonel Boyd’s OODA Loop that kept fighter pilots alive is the same framework that kept our businesses thriving during market downturns. Whether facing armed suspects or market volatility, the fundamentals remain the same. In competitive environments, the speed of decision-making becomes your ultimate weapon. Not reckless speed, but the disciplined speed that comes from mastering Boyd’s cycle. When your next crisis hits, the question isn’t whether you’ll face uncertainty and pressure; the question is whether you’ll cycle through your responses faster than the crisis itself can evolve. Your competition is counting on you to hesitate. Your team is counting on you to lead. Time to close the loop.
Category:
E-Commerce
Every company wants to have an AI strategy: A bold vision to do more with less. But theres a growing problemone that few executives want to say out loud. AI initiatives arent delivering the returns they were hoping for. In fact, many leaders now say they havent seen meaningful returns at all. IBM recently found that only 1 in 4 AI projects hit the expected ROI. And BCGs research goes further still: 75% of businesses have seen no tangible value from their AI investments. Stop buying tools your team doesnt know how to use The fix? Increase your investment in AI training to support your business transformation. The data tells a simple story. An Akkodis survey suggested only 55% of CTOs believe their executive teams have the AI fluency needed to grasp the risks and opportunities of the tech. Yet, it is these same executives who are trying to reengineer entire workflows, teams, and business models around tools that their people barely understand. And when performance disappoints, the knee-jerk reaction is to buy even more tech. More platforms. More licenses. More dashboards. But that only makes the problem worse. The teams that were struggling to learn one tool are now juggling five. Everyones overwhelmed. No ones effective. And adoption flatlines. Even if you have the most advanced tech in the world, if your team doesnt know how to use it effectively, its worthless. Expand your training budget But, equally, throwing money indiscriminately at AI education alone isnt going to fix the problem. The training investment must be smart. And that means implementing training programs that are truly pan-company and aligned with the business objectives. Too many businesses funnel their AI training into a tiny corner of their workforceusually just their IT, engineering, or data teams. And while these teams do need support, theyre not the ones who are going to deliver the productivity gains that you are trying to realize. That job falls to the rest of your company: the 90% working in frontline roles and business functions where the AI transformation will be felt most. Whether thats operations, strategy, product development, sales, finance, marketing, HR, legal, or customer service. These are the people who run your business. And if they dont know how to apply AI to their day-to-day work, your transformation will stall. If the goal is to modernize the business end to end, your training needs to reach end to end. Teach Data and AI literacy before you teach tools At the same time, surface-level AI training that focuses only on toolssuch as how to write a prompt, where to click, and how to navigate an interfacewill also fall short. Effective AI training needs to build capability and not breed dependency. The best results come when your people understand whats happening under the hood. Dont get me wrong, your team members dont all need a PhD in computer science. But they do need solid data literacy. They need to know how to interrogate, interpret, and act on data. The real value of data comes from understanding what it can actually doseeing its potential and seizing it with both hands. Without even the most basic data skills, AI will create beautiful spreadsheets that cant be acted on. And thats not the revolution anyone had in mind. Train your managers just as muchif not more Equally, when it comes to AI training, theres a myth I sometimes hear: Managers dont need AI training because they’re not doing the work. Their job is to manage the team or set the vision, not run the tools. But that logic falls apart quickly. Firstly, I can think of countless ways that AI can make managers more effective: being able to synthesise and extract lessons from performance data, providing their team with hands-on guidance on how to use AI, and spotting opportunities to reengineer workflows. But, more importantly, it is the bad message that not training your managers sends to your wider team. It runs the risk of your wider company writing off your transformation as “hot air” and “warm words” rather than concrete, in-the-trenches implementation. Wide-scale transformation needs managers who can lead by example. If you train the team but skip the managers, dont be surprised when nothing changes. Build a culture that lets people use what they learn Finally, even the best training program will fall flat if your workplace punishes people for using it. In many businesses, employees are quietly, and perhaps unconsciously, discouraged from using AI. Theres a genuine fear that if theyre seen to be using AI, they will be criticised for cutting corners or cheating. The result? Team members keep their heads down and go back to old habits. In other companies, colleagues are afraid to give AI a go in the first place. Theyre hamstrung by a fear that theyll make a mistake or get something wrong. In both cases, your training budget goes to waste. So, if you want this to work, you need to create a culture of experimentation and entrepreneurship, where trying something new is actively encouragedand not seen as a riskand where teams share learnings, trade prompts, and build real know-how together. Too many companies are pinning their hopes on the next big AI tool. But no tool, no matter how powerful, will move the needle if your people dont know how to use it. The smart move right now isnt just buying more software. Its training your people to work smarter with the tech you already have. Thats how you make AI worth the investment. Thats how you turn strategy into results. And thats what will, ultimately, stop your AI vision from dying on paper.
Category:
E-Commerce
In a world obsessed with productivity hacks and optimization strategies, I propose we try something radical: What if the secret to peak performance isn’t doing more, but doing differently? What if our industrial-era approach to productivity is not just outdatedbut it’s actively sabotaging our best work? We tend to think about productivity as timesomething that can be constructed and divided up into neat segments. But this view of productivity has serious limitations, especially in a knowledge economy dependent on imagination and creativity. As part of my research for my book Move. Think. Rest. I interviewed nearly 60 people and examined my own journey from academic burnout to entrepreneurial vitality. I’ve identified three game-changing insights that could transform how you and your team approach work: 1. Your Brain Needs Your Body to Think Better The most counterintuitive finding in my research? Movement isn’t a break from thinkingit’s essential to it. As human beings, we’re designed to move. Our spinal cord is an extension of the brain. If we’re hunched over a laptop all day, we’re literally constricting blood flow to the brain, and therefore oxygen to the brain. We’re simply not doing our best thinking. This isn’t just about taking a walk to clear your head. I’ve come to understand movement as a form of inquirya way of collecting different types of data through your body. When I take a ballroom dance class, or go open water swimming, I experience a different type of thinking happening through my body, a different type of data collection that I’m absorbing through the movement. I get out of my head and into my body, which paradoxically helps me think better. The practical application? Start incorporating movement into your work routine. Take phone calls while walking. Use a standing desk. Design brainstorming sessions that get people out of conference rooms and into different physical spaces. Your body isn’t separate from your mindit’s part of your thinking apparatus. 2. Replace ‘Productivity’ with ‘Cultivation’ I challenge the fundamental premise of our work culture by proposing that we shift away from asking “How can I be more productive?” to asking “What might I cultivate?” The difference is profound. This insight came from looking backward. Before the first industrial revolution, most societies were agrarian-based economies. I’m not romanticizing farming (that’s the ultimate volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment), but the agricultural model offers a powerful framework for modern work. When we cultivate, we value both the solo practitioner and the collective. We value quick spurts of growth, but we also value slow growth. We value measuring what we can see, but we also factor in that there’s a lot going on during dormant timespercolating and marinating. If we trust the process through experience, we know that something incredible will emerge. This “both/and” model recognizes that some of our best work happens during what appears to be downtime. Like a farmer who understands that soil needs time to regenerate between seasons, effective leaders must create space for ideas to develop organically rather than forcing constant output. 3. Rest Is a Strategic Advantage, Not a Luxury Perhaps the most radical element of my framework is positioning rest as a competitive advantage. When we rest, we restore. Restoration is so important for being able to spark new questions. When we get exhausted and drained, the new ways of thinking, the new ways of asking “I wonder if I tried this?” simply won’t emerge. When you’re tired, you’re just trying to survive. This isn’t about nap pods in every office (though I’m not opposed to those). It’s about recognizing that rest operates on multiple scalesfrom micro-breaks during the workday to sabbaticals every five to seven years. The key is intentional design of rest periods that actually restore cognitive capacity. My own practice illustrates this principle. As an entrepreneur, I deliberately take dance lessons three days a week, go on micro-retreats that last a day, and ensure daily walkseven if just for five minutes. I’ve become very mindful about self-preservation and self-compassion. I noticed that when I was “procrastinating” (when I stepped away from my laptop) I would come back and all of a sudden things clicked, or I got an idea that seemed even better than before. The Bottom Line The World Economic Forum predicts that by 2027, critical thinking will be the No. 1 job skill, with creativity ranking second. My Move-Think-Rest framework isn’t just about personal wellnessit’s about building the cognitive capacity that future work demands. The companies that will thrive aren’t necessarily those with the most sophisticated AI or the fastest execution. They’ll be the ones that understand how to cultivate human creativity through the simple, profound practice of moving, thinking, and resting with intention. Creativity is the engine for innovation. If you want to consistently innovate over time without burnout, you need this ebb and flow. Movement, thought, and rest help us be more creative, which helps us to sustainably innovate. The future of work isn’t about working harderit’s about working more humanly.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||