Observe. Orient. Decide. Act.
At the moment for decisive action, whatever's going on right now, which is your context -- meets your experience -- which is everything you've learned, remembered, trained for, patterns you recognize, analogies you can apply. This rapid integration of your context with your experience occurs every time your awareness becomes an understanding that generates an action. This is what happens when you wake from sleep; when you're driving and a green light turns to a yellow light, when you hear someone call your name, when something comes moving quickly toward you: a car, a volleyball.
This is different from a planned action begun at an agreed time and place; starting a race at a signal; boarding time at the airport gate; the curtain opening at a performance.
Observe, orient, decide, act can be something you may or may not have trained for and rehearsed, but the action shows up at random time. The blizzard, the tornado, the earthquake, the fire.
What feels like a long time ago now, I was an administrator at an elementary school in Los Angeles. My wife, my son, and I were heading to the parking area of our apartment building. The planned action was for them to drive me to the school, drop me off for work, and then go on their way.
Everything started to shake. We had only been there a couple of months and this was our first earthquake. I had been trained to respond in an earthquake. This was not a drill. Observe, orient, decide, act. I scooped my 18 month old child, and we raced to the center of the parking lot. Glass was breaking, car alarms were going off, utility poles were waving back and forth.
Observe, orient, decide, act. Was the earthquake over, or was this the start of a series of shocks with later ones potentially worse? The school had preparations in place in the event of infrastructure collapse to provide for 1000 people for three days. We drove the short distance to the school.
Observe, orient, decide, act. It was still 45 minutes before the start of school. I was the first and most junior administrator. There were a few teachers and children in the parking lot. Training called for evacuating everyone to the football field and closing the entry gates to anyone who might arrive. I started the evacuation, but buses and cars were arriving every minute. I told security to keep the gates open and to send everyone to the football field. I met the head of maintenance, and it was on me to have his staff open the containers holding supplies to create a tent city, deploy the portable toilets, and stand by. I was now mayor of small city of mostly children that was understaffed, yet to be built, and under conditions of uncertainty.
This Hollywood story had a happy ending, first, because a second shock didn't drop a utility pole on us on our way to the school, and second, because my boss, stuck on the other side of the Hollywood Hills, had a high sequential preference. Even in the short amount of time I had been there, I had been in planning meetings where we studied precedent, explored contingencies, envisioned any number of possible outcomes. We had a clear chain of authority which turned everyone to me in the absence of anyone more senior, for the uncertain decisions. We had stockpiled food and water for all those people, and refreshed those stocks regularly. Everyone from the 4-year-olds to the most senior staff, participated in regular drills.
Walter, bless him, without knowing it would be me, nonetheless had set me up for success. And from the other side of the mountains, in the days without cell phones, I didn't have to make a plan. All I had to do was set his in motion.
What's amazing is the account by historian Stephen Ambrose of the infinitely more complicated and consequential outcome of meticulous planning, the invasion of Normandy in 1944. In Ambrose's account, General Dwight Eisenhower led more than two years of painstaking consideration for the largest seaborne invasion in history. Eisenhower gave one order on D-Day. He said, "Okay. Let's go." The order that set the plan in motion, was issued by a young lieutenant on a paratroop flight behind the Nazi lines over Normandy.
The lieutenant stood in front of his crew in the open door of the plane.
Observe, Orient. Decide. Act.
"Follow me," he said, and jumped into the unknowable.
D-Day was in motion.
Warm regards,
Francis Sopper
REFERENCED IN THIS LETTER:
account: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/D-Day-Illustrated-Edition/Stephen-E-Ambrose/9781476765860
two years: https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/eisenhower-plans-for-d-day.htm