Views from inside a true the battle rhythm

As written, our post in 4-Nov-10 about Processes and Battle Rhythms became more poignant in my life now that I'm deployed. Now working in the environment of a command center, the 609th Air & Space Operations Center for Air Forces Central Command, I live, breathe, and task saturate in that rhythm - providing operational assessments from prior periods to senior leadership. Daily, weekly, and monthly, summaries must be created, metrics evaluated against standards, and deviations examined for root causes. Best effort processes are the typical order of the day, since answers arriving after that period's decision point become very difficult for senior leaders to engage.

Why is that? A good reason, at the AOC, the OODA loop for the senior leaders is tightly controlled. We keep these individuals saturated with information and decisions. Arriving out of cycle means that it will take the senior leader (who is honestly very busy) more time to back up into a previous state's information context. Ultimately, the question becomes one of how to queue up our analyzed information (oriented observations, from our previous post) to the senior leader and ensure that future orientations will occur on time for an effective decision that will lead to action.

Unfortunately, acquisition environments tend to believe that information can arrive at any time and should immediately impact all activities. However, in my experience, when senior leaders handle the new information out of cycle, the acquisition office tends to split and fracture. Configuration control is lost ("did this study take that into account?"), plans are changed before courses of direction are decided ("the outcome of this memo is obvious, we should do this to help the boss get ahead!"), and ultimately senior leaders can become so involved with the new bit of information that other, planned decisions are put on hold - and those missed/deferred decisions start a backlog of program delays that can ultimately severely and negatively impact the program.

I have worked with senior leaders who are conscience of their battle rhythm. Although the tempo of the change may not be as desired ("change everything by COB TODAY!"), but instead of loosing the metaphorical bubble on all the other details of the program, their method ensures that the next decisions needing the information will have the new information and be able to make good recommendations for action.

The real question for leaders:

A - Do you want to give immediate, but disoriented direction for action?

OR

B - Do you want your next decision for action to be properly oriented?

I can see where option A gives the appearance of being responsive; although to a systemic thinker, option B is far more responsive, since the systemic leader in option B knows how to influence their battle rhythm (and OODA loop) so that new information impacts critical decisions.