Vishen Lakhiani presents a short talk on using rapid decision cycles (OODA looping — Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) to accelerate progress toward large visions. He contrasts visionary leaders who project far into the future with the need to iterate quickly rather than wait for perfect information, recounts learning OODA at Singularity University among notable technologists, and introduces the idea of a "unified brain" — leveraging fast communication (e.g., Slack/WhatsApp) to tap collaborators' minds and iterate. He states a personal heuristic (acting at ~85% accuracy), claims contact with about 100 employees via phone/messaging, and points listeners to chapters 7–8 of his book The Buddha and the Badass and to Mindvalley for more.
Questions this video answers
August 21, 2020
Chapter 7 (vision) and Chapter 8 (creating the unified brain / how to get to the goal).
Observe; Orient; Decide; Act.
About 85% accuracy.
About 100 employees.
Chapters
Do you have a big vision or a big goal that perhaps you are seeking to get to or lead your company towards or build a company to tackle, but you don't know necessarily the fastest way to get to that goal? I've had the benefit of interviewing and speaking to many incredible performers in the world. Men and women doing massive things, like Arianna Huffington, who built a media empire. Peter Diamandis, who started the private space race. Elon Musk, obviously you know who he is. And one of the things I notice about these men and women is that their mind is constantly in the future. They have a vision, they have a goal that is so massive that it pulls them forward. It gets people to join their companies, to join their visions. But here's the thing, none of them know exactly what to do to get to the goal, but it doesn't stop them. They talk about their company missions, they talk about their visions 10 years ahead before figuring it out. So that's the first key lesson, right? I talk about that concept in chapter seven of the Buddha and the Badass. In chapter eight, I talk about how to figure out how to get to the goal, how to create an extended brain. I call it the unified brain, where your mind is plugged into the mind of countless others so that you can rapidly iterate, innovate, test to get to a vision that most people would think is crazy. Now I want to teach you that technique. And that technique for creating a unified brain is, is called Ooda looping. So I know the word sounds weird. This is what it looks like. I'm gonna show you a screenshot of Ooda from the book. Okay, can you grab this? Now, I learned OODA looping while attending a class in Singularity University. And what was really interesting is that the people in that classroom included Ray Kurzweil, the VP of technology of Google, Larry Page, the founder of Google. They were all in this class with me. And the lecturer speaking at Singularity University was talking about AI and not everyone was paying attention. But then he started speaking about OODA looping. And all of a sudden I saw every mine in that room focus. I focused as well. I took good notes. And this idea changed the way I run my business. Now, here's what OODA looping means. It starts with an Air Force colonel, John Boyd, who noticed something interesting about the best fighter pilots in the world. The best fighter pilots in the world would actually end up wasting the most bullets. Now this sounds counterintuitive. You would think that if you are a great pilot, fighter pilot, you'd be able to shoot down enemy craft with precision. Turns out the best fighter pilots, the ones who down the most enemy jets, are actually wasting the most bullets. So John Boyd looked at their thought process and broke it down into this ooda. Now, the first O stands for observe. You observe where the enemy jet is. The second O is orient. You orient yourself to that jet. The D is decide, you decide. And the A is act. You shoot. Now, here's the interesting thing, right? Pilots who were shooting down fewer enemy jets were taking a longer time to go through that process because they were trying to aim for precision. But the pilots who were shooting down the most enemy jets were going through that loop really, really, really rapidly. They wasted more bullets, but they shot down more enemy jets. Now, if you were in a war, what would you care about wasting bullets or shooting down enemy jets? Now, I know some people are uncomfortable with the war analogy. Don't worry about that. This is really about this principle being brought. It applies if you're running a team. It applies if you're an entrepreneur. You want to learn to make decisions in fast cycles and act even in the presence of imperfect knowledge. So you have your bold vision. Now, what you want to do is that you want to make decisions in a very, very, very rapid cycle, testing, refining, and do it so fast that you outthink the competition. So there are many ways you can bring this process into your company, but what it means is that you are plugged into everyone's brain. You' decision cycles, you're grabbing knowledge, you're observing, you're orienting, you're deciding and you're acting really, really, really fast. You are not waiting for 100% accuracy. I act on 85% accuracy. I know that 15% of my decisions, or maybe even 20% are going to be dumb, but I get to make more decisions in any given day and out innovate the competition. John Boyd says, when you practice ooda, you gain an edge over any other competition. So I know the process sounds a little bit complex, but OODA has become more innovative, easily accessible to all of us because of modern technology. At any given point on my phone, I'm in contact with about 100 of my employees all around the world. And what I mean by this is, through slack or through WhatsApp, I'm directly communicating with at least 100 people. And what we're doing is either they are sending me knowledge or I'm sending them knowledge, or we're making a fast decision, documenting it and acting on it. Now, when you do this, you learn to innovate like crazy. And those crazy 10 year visions, those visions that you have no idea how to reach. You start figuring out the path rapidly by plugging into the unified brain of all your collaborators. So the concept of the unified brain and how we can change collaboration, decision making, meeting structure for the modern era using OODA and other principles is in chapter eight of the Buddha and the Badass. Can't wait for you to check it out. You can find this book on mindvalley.com buddhabadass.
