OODA to ADDA: From Adversarial to Collective

Have you come across John Boyd’s famous OODA loop?

Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.

I have seen it being applied to everything from startups to social change.

A few days ago, a friend, Kuldeep Dantewadia, and I were chatting about Reap Benefit’s experiments in running addas as open community gatherings where people show up, share from wherever they are and let something emerge.

Looking at his diagram of how it works, we realised he’s built the ADDA loop.

Arrive. Disclose. Dwell. Act.

Where OODA is about adversarial superiority, ADDA is about collective emergence. One optimises for speed. the other for trust.

Is the OODA logic to social change the wrong one? Maybe what we actually need is, as Kyla Scanlon, writes “…an elimination diet: fewer inputs, longer stays…” and letting the container do the work

If OODA is a loop for winning, what the current moment needs is the ADDA loop for belonging.

Originally written for LinkedIn on 16 April 2026. View original →