Comments on: It can be far worse than laziness

By: Redan

Redan — Wed, 29 Nov 2017 15:15:21 +0000

Kirk, I’m on the PDRL now.

Redan, SFC, USA Retired

By: Kirk

Kirk — Wed, 29 Nov 2017 04:46:36 +0000

Redan,

Two things to bear in mind, as you write your OPORDs*:

1. The OPORD is always the first casualty.

2. The OPORD is mostly a list of things that ain’t gonna happen, and those things that do happen almost certainly won’t happen when the OPORD says they will.

*OPerations ORDer, a military document/planning tool consisting of five paragraphs meant to cover everything possible that might pertain to a military operation. The higher the echelon, the simpler such an order should be, but unfortunately, we have this tendency to write platoon OPORDs such that they fit on an MRE case cover, and Corps OPORDs such that they look like the Encyclopedia Britannica. Guess which OPORD contains more things that actually happen per the plan…?

By: Redan

Redan — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 13:06:35 +0000

Infantry axiom: No plan ever survived initial contact with the enemy.

By: Ross

Ross — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 20:53:12 +0000

Acting without undue delay with incomplete information is the essence of getting inside your opponent’s OODA Loop — even if that opponent is yourself.

There are probably some very sexy semantic/Pareto analyses on the optionality value of the left-out information, but moving forward with incomplete 4-1-1 is virtually always better.

I would love to see Taleb’s take on this last point.

By: Grasspunk

Grasspunk — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 09:43:03 +0000

I’ll get moving right away. But first I’ll read those two books he mentions. Then I’ll create a schedule of deadlines and invent a set small experiments I can run to course correct.

I think I can see where he gets the idea that he overanalyses,