So when you think about the OODA loop in terms of those that do (doers) and those that be (beers) it’s very difficult to make the beers sound like attractive human beings (although of course they make attractive drinks). But most of us in our work try to be rather than do most of the time. Being is relatively safe, the way that you get on with being is by not rocking the boat. The way that you get on with doing is by constantly rocking the boat, by constantly trying new things.
And as I’m writing this I’m vaguely aware of a tension, or a dichotomy, a contradiction with another kind of classification — not one that to my knowledge Boyd used. This a distinction that Venkatesh Rao draws between what he calls “losers” and “sociopaths” — there’s also another category — “clueless”. And the thing that’s being troubling me is that I couldn’t figure out the doers and beers fitted on the classification of losers and sociopaths. But as I’m writing it now, I think I’ve figured it out. The crucial thing to understand is that there are two kinds of losers — according to Venkatesh Rao — engaged losers and checked-out losers. Engaged losers are doers rather than beers — they attach value and derive satisfaction from what they do rather than who they are. Then, in Venkatesh Rao’s classification, there are the clueless — the classification with which I always had the most difficult. The clueless are also beers, but unlike the losers, they don’t realize that the hierarchy is pointless and worthless, they actually believe in this shit.
Then, finally, there are the sociopaths. They do realize that the hierarchy is bullshit — unlike the clueless, but they are totally willing to play it for their own ends. Sociopaths are doers — but they aren’t the kind of valuable doers that Boyd had in mind, I don’t think. I’m getting this glimpse of an idea, that in old, ossified, dying organizations is just full of beers — checked-out losers and clueless-management. Whereas vibrant organizations — new start-ups, organizations that somehow manage to renew themselves have a higher proportion of both engaged losers (who are doers) and sociopaths (who are engaged doers).
And this does kind of tie back to something that Boyd talked about, but in a different context — thermodynamics. Boyd used the equations from thermodynamics to model aircraft and to understand why some planes were more maneuverable than others. Crucially, modelling aeroplanes in this way allowed him to understand at what speeds and at what altitudes enemy planes would be less effective that American planes. Boyd did this with equations from engineering and solid calculations.
If have no belief that it is possible to look at organizations and provide equations for the amount of “Doing energy” versus “Being energy” in the organization, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it isn’t a useful concept for thinking about organizations. It seems to me that at the development level, what you’re almost always trying to bring into the organization is “doing energy”. There will always be a tension here and if the “doing factor” in the development team is 1 — there will probably be so much creative conflict that nothing gets done. Similarly if the “doing energy” in the management/leadership layers of the company is 1 the company will be doing nothing but lurch from crazy idea to crazy idea and nothing will make it to full fruition — but if the “doing energy” in management is too low, nothing will ever get done.