Joining the dots

I have had a good day today in terms of reading and I  have managed to cover a lot of ground on reflective learning.  However, all throughout the readings I knew that I had seen similar concepts before but within a military context.
I now realise that a cycle of inquiry is closely related to a concept known as the OODA Loop or the Boyd Cycle.  In simple terms it stands for:

There is also a more complex version:

In military terms there is always a competition between at least 2 players.  The key to success is being able to complete a cycle of action and learning quicker than the opposition.  We refer to this as generating tempo.  If you can do this consistently you can unbalance your opponent and then hopefully defeat him.

The following link gives a good overview of who John Boyd, the originator of the OODA loop was.  http://scienceofstrategy.org/main/content/col-john-boyd-strategy-group

Why it makes sense for the military to go green

A current article in the Harvard Business Review struck a chord with me.  Essentially the US Navy and US Marine Corps believe that going green can save lives and money:


http://blogs.hbr.org/winston/2011/05/the-navy-strike-on-energy-use.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29

Certainly one of the major challenges for me when I was in Afghanistan and in command of 7 different locations ,in an area with an extremely high threat from Improvised Explosive Devices, was how to mange the resupply of these locations.  Any thing that could be done to reduce the logistical burden would make a significant difference and reduce the threat faced during a resupply mission.