| What do Elon Musk, Dogecoin and former Boris Johnson adviser Dominic Cummings have in common? The OODA loop. If that makes no sense to you, let me explain. The OODA loop is a decision-making cycle developed by the late military strategist and US Air Force fighter pilot John Boyd, who completed a draft of his influential book, "Patterns of Conflict," in 1977. The acronym stands for observe, orient, design and act, then repeat (i.e., loop), and is intended to let the practitioner–originally fighter pilots–stay one step ahead of an opponent, constantly taking in new information and using it. When the loop works properly, you can make decisions quickly that will bamboozle your adversary. In the case of aerial dogfights, Boyd would suddenly pull up his jet vertically before descending onto his opponent's tail. The action disrupts the opponent's OODA loop by forcing them to spend longer observing and orienting themselves, stultifying their ability to design a response and act. By the time they have, you've moved on and gained an advantage. Cummings, the British political strategist who worked for Johnson and the pro-Brexit campaigns, is a huge proponent of the strategy—some have attributed the chaotic Brexit process at least partly to his predilection for the OODA loop. Whether Musk is aware of it or not, he's something of a virtuosic practitioner. Take his most recent adventures with Dogecoin. On Monday, some Twitter users noticed that their home buttons on Twitter, the social media website controlled by Musk, had been replaced with a Shiba Inu–the dog meme after which the cryptocurrency Dogecoin is named. It jumped as much as 31%. Headlines inevitably followed. "Why did Elon Musk change the Twitter logo to Dogecoin?" wrote the Washington Post. "Twitter changed its logo to Doge. The internet reacted by laughing at (not with) Elon Musk," said Mashable. "Elon Musk Merges DOGECOIN With Twitter! (BIG NEWS FOR CRYPTO)" screamed a YouTuber. If it was intended as a daft joke, it was suspiciously well timed: It came just days after Musk asked a US judge to throw out a $258 billion racketeering lawsuit accusing him of running a pyramid scheme to support Dogecoin. Again, intentions are hard to divine, but while he may have raised the profile of his lawsuit, the news coverage mostly focused on how he moved the Dogecoin price. He successfully got inside the OODA loop. We've seen it before. Remember when Musk criticized Tesla analysts for asking "boring, bonehead" questions back in 2018, creating another news cycle? The comment came as investors and analysts were scrutinizing the company's profitability, and whether it had been inflated–perfectly legally–by changes in the way Tesla accounted for the vehicles it leased and how it measured its carbon credit revenue. That's an important detail for would-be investors, but a top CEO ragging on investment analysts is a far more interesting story. OODA loop secured. Of course, if the effect is to disrupt structures of thought, the corollary is that you create an impression of chaos. And chaos isn't usually rewarded by investors. People putting their money in your company need some degree of certainty that it's going to be safe. Which is one reason Tesla shares have taken a pounding this week. The company said Sunday that it had delivered 422,875 vehicles in the first quarter–just slightly above analysts' expectations. The problem is that the 36% growth rate it represented was still well short of Musk's target. To get to that number, the company had offered significant discounts. If Musk needs to accelerate growth further, investors ask themselves, does that mean even greater discounts will be needed? If so, that may well hurt profitability. It's a stretch goal that, for investors, can seem a little chaotic. The stock fell as much as 7.4%. At this stage, anyone putting money into a Musk company should know that this is part of the deal. You might get chaos, but there's a chance you'll get outsize returns too. If you invested $100 in Tesla five years ago, it would be worth about $918 today. But it was worth more than $2,000 at its peak. Musk does appear to have his own five-step engineering process that he recounted to the YouTube channel Everyday Astronaut in 2021. The OODA loop isn't just about befuddling your opponent–it's also about agility and reacting to the changing environment with alacrity. In a sense, it's a more formal framework for Mark Zuckerberg's "move fast and break things." The concept has gained traction in management circles, becoming the subject of several academic papers. For Musk, the key will be ensuring that it's a tool for innovation and adaptability rather than just a distraction technique. —Alex Webb, correspondent for Bloomberg Quicktake | 
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