No Way Out
Welcome to the No Way Out podcast where we examine the variety of domains and disciplines behind John R. Boyd’s OODA sketch and why, today, more than ever, it is an imperative to understand Boyd’s axiomatic sketch of how organisms, individuals, teams, corporations, and governments comprehend, shape, and adapt in our VUCA world.
No Way Out
Building Snowmobiles: John Boyd's 1992 Commencement Wisdom with Mark Squeglia
The conversation explores John Boyd's early life in Erie, Pennsylvania, and his connection to Strong Vincent High School. The discussion is enriched by guest Mark Squeglia a lifelong Erie, PA resident and recently featured speaker in the PBS episode "Chronicles: John Boyd and his OODA Loop." Mark Squeglia details Boyd's upbringing, the influences that shaped his strategic mind, and his contributions to military tactics and broader applications in business and complex systems thinking. The episode also includes a fascinating recount of Boyd's 1992 commencement speech at Strong Vincent High School, highlighting his philosophies on learning, adaptation, and synthesis.
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PBS Chronicles | John Boyd and his Ooda Loop (S2E013)
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Hey. So, Moose, not too long ago you and I were in the archives. We came across some work that John Boyd was doing on the strategic game of interaction and isolation, and one of the things we came across was this thing from Harding and Strong Vincent High School back in 1992. And it's actually John Boyd going back to be the keynote speaker, right Speaker, at his at a graduation there in Erie, Pennsylvania. Do you remember this at all, Moose?
Mark McGrath:I do. Yeah, I'm very familiar with both the town of Erie Strong Vincent High School, where I visited, and then also that particular speech.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Yes, yeah, that speech is awesome. We can, can. We can talk about this here in a moment and today's episode. We really want to dive back into John Boyd's early life back in Erie, pennsylvania, and to help us through. That is Mark Swellia, who recently was featured in a PBS episode named Chronicles and the episode was John Boyd and his OODA loop. So I reached out to Mark to be a guest today on the show to walk us through some of the reasons why they came up. Why did PBS come to him and ask for help in creating this 30 minute Chronicles episode? So welcome to the show, mark. How are you doing this morning?
Mark Squeglia:Thank you, I'm doing very well. Thank you for having me. I'm honored to be here to talk about John Boyd.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Well, we're thrilled that you're here. So Mark Moose and I watched the episode independently. I thought it was fantastic. But can we go back to how this episode John Boyd and the Zootaloop on Chronicles on PBS how it came to fruition?
Mark Squeglia:Okay. So the local PBS station, wqln, which serves Northwestern Pennsylvania, at some point decided that they were going to create a series called Chronicles and they had identified in the first season probably about 12 episodes, and now they're into their second season with another 12 episodes and they defined the episodes as having to deal with Erie, northwest Pennsylvania and historical issues, historical events or just the history of Erie, the history of Erie. And at some point in time, you know, during that episode development, they identified John Boyd as being a subject. You know I was at that point in time I was the interim director of the Erie County Historical Society. I had been appointed to the board back in 2018, and in late 2020, 2021, the executive director decided to retire.
Mark Squeglia:The board president asked me to step in as an interim director of the Historical Society while they search for a more permanent director. So I did that for about eight months and the WQLN team came down to the Historical Society because we have archives that is about 10,000 square feet and we have quite a bit of information on the history of Northwestern Pennsylvania and Erie and they were doing research on the different Chronicle episodes. And they were doing research on the different Chronicle episodes and at that point in time I met the producer and we had a discussion and he asked me if I would be interested in narrating the Chronicles episode on John Boyd. So that's how that came to be.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:And you're from the area correct.
Mark Squeglia:I'm from Erie and I've been a lifelong resident, born, raised, educated and, unfortunately, worked here my entire career. Never wanted to leave, but I probably should have, but didn't want to leave family. So, yeah, I've been here my entire life.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Well, thank you for that introduction to the episode. What I found fascinating about the episode and I recently had a conversation with John Boyd's daughter, mary Ellen, about John Boyd's upbringing you talk about that in the episode and just for our listeners out there and Mark can back me up on this, john Boyd was born in Erie, pennsylvania, in 1927. His father passed away at a young age and I believe his sister had polio, and this is pre-war, post-world War I, pre-world War II. So, growing up there, can you give us any more insights on Boyd's life from Mark?
Mark Squeglia:Yeah, so you're right. John was born on January 23rd 1927. His father passed away actually on his third birthday. John's father, hubert, worked for Harrimill Paper Company and I also worked for Harramil Paper Company. He was a sales executive responsible for a certain territory.
Mark Squeglia:Haramil was a very unique company that it was a paper mill started by two German brothers who emigrated to Erie from Germany and they started the company on the Lower East Side of Erie on the lake and it became over time it became the preeminent company to work for in Erie. Ge created or located a plant here in 1910. And they were in close proximity to each other. So General Electric and Harramil were the primary employers in this area. So John's father's position with Haramil was a good position. It was a leadership position in the company and they were probably you know pretty well off upper middle class.
Mark Squeglia:So when John's father passed away, john's mother definitely wanted to keep the family together and they went from being somewhat affluent to becoming very poor very quickly. So John's mother was very strong-willed. She was very protective of her children. You're right, john's sister, his youngest sister, shortly after some period of time after his father passed away, contacted polio and at that point in time. You know, polio was viewed as being contagious. So the house was basically quarantined and the family was more or less ostracized from the neighborhood because people didn't want to associate with them, because they were afraid they were going to.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:You know, their children may or may not catch polio their children may or may not catch polio, and as time progresses on, I'm kind of curious. How did Boyd become interested in aviation? What influences were there.
Mark Squeglia:So the majority of the information about Boyd's childhood is in Quorum's book. That was written, I believe, in the early 2000s, which I think generated more eerie interest in Boyd than anything prior to that, because I don't think a lot of people, unless they went to Strong Vincent with him, knew about Boyd before that book was written, because in actuality after John graduated he left Erie, he enlisted, he went to Japan and then, once he was discharged from the military he came back and spent a short period of time here in Erie and then ended up at the University of Iowa. So his time in Erie was brief really, I mean, you know, from graduating high school to entering the military. So I think the quorum book, really that people that read it understood that you know there was an Erie connection with Boyd and I'm sorry I probably forgot the original question.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:No, that's fine. Actually, I want to get some more context about Erie Pennsylvania, and the reason for this is we'll have an upcoming episode with Mary Ellen Boyd where we look back at John Boyd's life again from her perspective, and she brought up something and it's really to help me understand. I've never been to Erie Pennsylvania. You both have the connection to native Americans in that area. Uh, what, what is there one?
Mark Squeglia:Yes, okay, so I mean the name Erie comes from the uh, indigenous people, the Erie to Cleveland, and they were eventually absorbed, eliminated by the Iroquois tribe. So that's where the indigenous influence comes from, with the Erie's Indians, and then, roughly around the mid-1700s, the French discover presqu'isle, which is the peninsula that forms erie bay, which I'm I'm biased, but it is the finest, most pristine bay on the great lakes and it's a natural harbor.
Mark McGrath:I would agree with that.
Mark Squeglia:They build a fort and then the fort becomes involved in the French and Indian War and then the forts change hands, they go from the French to the British and then eventually, you know, the War of 1812, they go to, or shortly after the revolution they go to, or shortly after they go to the revolution they go to the American. So this area has been, you know, had a French influence, had a Native American, indian influence, british influence and then, finally, you know, post-revolution, the US influence.
Mark McGrath:We should point out that Presque Isle is a great place to go to swim and go to the beach, and that's actually where John Boyd worked as a lifeguard for many years.
Mark Squeglia:Exactly, yeah. So, john, you know he grew up on Lincoln Avenue, which is about two and a half, three blocks from Harding School where he went to grade school. But when he became a lifeguard his house on Lincoln Avenue is a half a block from the bayfront. So he would, when he was a lifeguard he would either walk down the bluff and either row across the bay to get to the peninsula at the lifeguard or at times swim across the bay, which is about a mile, mile and a half. So his time as a lifeguard he developed a relationship with Frank Petnotto, who was the lifeguard manager for many years and he actually became a legend relation to Presque Isle and the beaches. And it was Petnato who became Boyd's father figure, more or less. So you know, once I mean, john was fatherless and then he became a lifeguard and Petnato took an interest in him and kind of, you know, fathered him, gave him advice, and it was with Petnato's urging that Boyd, after he came back from Japan, went to Iowa to attend college.
Mark McGrath:Where he was a varsity swimmer on Iowa's team.
Mark Squeglia:I believe yeah, and he was a very proficient swimmer and water polo player at Strong Vincent a very proficient swimmer and water polo player at Strong Vincent. When he was a senior at Vincent, the relay team that he participated on won the state championship or the state title and he finished second in the 220 freestyle as an individual during the state tournament freestyle as an individual during the state tournament.
Mark McGrath:You know to your point, when you go around Erie I don't I haven't been in Erie say maybe maybe in the last, maybe four years. But you can in the quorum book, as you say, you know it has the address of the house on Lincoln Avenue and strong Vincent high and you can go see Presque Isle down at the lifeguard towers and things like that. But other than that there's really nothing marking that John Boyd is from Erie. There's no PA historical plaque, there's no statue. I don't know if there's anything in the high school inside because I didn't go inside. But what of Erie today is memorializing John Boyd?
Mark Squeglia:To my knowledge, nothing right now. In fact, and if you have time for a little bit of a long story, how I became to know John Boyd was I was giving a lecture and I'm a World War II buff. That's all I've read about since I was a kid. So I was giving a lecture on, I think-mayor of the city of Erie. So I was giving this lecture on the Battle of the Bulge and just before the lecture starts, a gentleman comes out of the crowd and hands me Coram's book on Boyd and he says this is for you. And then he turns around and walks away and I start the lecture because it was, you know, the time to start. I finished the lecture and I'm looking for this guy in the crowd and he's already gone. So I take the book home. I'm eating my dinner and I'm reading the book and I read the first three pages and I get to the part where Hubert John's father works works for Hammer Mill and I'm like holy cow, right. So I mean I zipped through the book in about four days and I called this guy and his name was Milt Purtle and I said Milt, you know, we talked for 40 minutes about Boyd and I finally said to him. I said all right, why'd you give me the book? He goes well, I want you to do a lecture on void. And I said, no, I can't do a lecture on one source. He goes, don't worry, I got seven other books, I'll drop them at your house tomorrow. And bang, I mean, he gives me seven books. So about a year later, I do the lecture on void.
Mark Squeglia:And no, it was part of a group. Um, one of them part of the group was a woman by the name of sally kohler, who was related to the family that started kohler brewing company, which is an eerie legend, but she was a classmate of boyd and she lived next door to boyd. And they were to at that point in time and this is back in 2010, 2011, trying to get the newly built Erie Convention Center named after Boyd, and they were not successful. The best that they were able to do is they were able to get a plaque put on 417 Lincoln Avenue, which is the house that he grew up in, fast forward to about two months ago.
Mark Squeglia:Three months ago, I was contacted by an ex-high school teacher who's a Navy veteran and an ex-FBI agent, who is located here, and they were talking to me about trying to get Harding School renamed for John Boyd. So in November the Navy vet and I are going to go to the Erie School Board and present a request to rename Harding School for John Boyd and I don't know if we'll be successful or not. So there's very minimal movement right to try to get John Boyd some recognition in Erie. Back oh four and I was just going through a bunch of my material that I've acquired um back in oh four that prior group was able to get the mayor to proclaim a certain day in 2004 is John Boyd day. But I mean, that's merely a sheet of paper and everyone's forgotten that anyway.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So so I'm curious, curious. Has the Chronicles episode brought more attention to Erie Pennsylvania, or even to John Boyd's connection to Erie Pennsylvania in the last few months?
Mark Squeglia:Well, yes, you.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Yeah.
Mark Squeglia:Right. A couple of other non-Erieites have contacted me or emailed me and I've referred them to the producer of the QLN episode Chronicles. So it has, but not to a really, really great degree.
Mark McGrath:You know it's the.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Hopefully we can help change that.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, you hear John Boyd referred to often as the American Sun Tzu, to think that he came from Erie. Well, and Erie also has such a deep military history. Of course that was the staging point for the Battle of Lake Erie, correct, wasn't the Niagara?
Mark Squeglia:built there, built the fleet, yeah, and you know, we have, you know, strong Vincent strong Vincent.
Mark McGrath:How about Gridley? Wasn't Gridley from Erie?
Mark Squeglia:Gridley was from Erie. Yeah, cannons there's two cannons I believe. I don't know if they're from the actual Olympia, I don't know if that was the ship in Manila Bay, but they're located in a cemetery out on the east side. Anthony Wayne, although he wasn't from Erie, his bones were buried here and his bones were here and then they were upturned and the legend has it, they were being brought back to Wayne, pennsylvania, and fell off the wagon and that's why, you know, wayne's ghost shows up at certain points. So we have minimal military heroes. But you know, yeah, people don't know about Boyd and people you know. You're right, I believe he, you know the work that he did. He could be referred to as a Sun Tzu for you know, was he bullied by any chance in Erie?
Mark Squeglia:If you read Coram's book, you know he was the references he was somewhat discriminated against because they were poor, and you know the references he had to go to school with holes in his pants or his jeans. I would probably infer that as being yeah, he probably was. You know there was a quote in Coram's book that his mother or his senior officers in the military was tremendously confrontational. I mean, it wasn't a smooth working relationship. So I think that you know, probably that Brian and his mother's advice, you know did, did affect his personality.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So we're starting to build an archetype for John Boyd now, where we have his father passing away when he's three sister has polio. He grows up poor in Erie, pennsylvania, maybe bullied a little bit, um finds a father figure later on and this is important, right, mark Moose? This is important to understand our orientation. So we're building an orientation for John Boyd now. Any thoughts, moose?
Mark McGrath:Yeah, tremendous athlete. You know he turns to athletics, swimming and lifeguarding. Lifeguarding is also a selfless act, right, I mean that's guarding life, protecting. There's a lot of duty around lifeguarding. I've also thought it's never lost on me that the high school that he was named after was named after someone that was really good at commander's intent giving his intent to Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain at the Battle of the Little Round Top Crystal clear, unambiguous. So maybe there's some connection to Strong Vincent. Connection to strong Vincent, uh, in that respect is sort of a proto. Uh, you know a very clear example of things that Boyd would talk about regarding mission command and things like that.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Yeah, just a side note uh, moose, uh, I think the Chronicles episodes have, uh uh, two shows on strong Vincent actually. Is that correct, mark?
Mark Squeglia:Yes, they do.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So again, something else we could dive into, maybe later on. It's fantastic. So the orientation of John Boyd, can I?
Mark McGrath:add I was going to say can we stay on that really quick, Mark.
Mark McGrath:So Boyd going to Strong Vincent High School and Strong Vincent being a very prominent sort of I hate to say, celebrity name, but you know, historical figure name of someone that would have been well known, you know, what could we have expected Boyd to know about Strong Vincent other than his high school was named after him? I mean, I wonder if there was any influence or impact on his story or his legend as he was a kid growing up. Would that be typical for kids growing up in Erie in those days?
Mark Squeglia:I would guess, yes, probably at Strong Vincent. You know Strong Vincent. I mean, at that time Erie had a number of high schools but they were neighborhood based, right, so it wasn't like John could decide to go to Academy or East over on the east side where he was located, he had to go to Strong Vincent. So it wasn't a selection process.
Mark Squeglia:But I would guess and I can only refer to my uncle who was younger than Boyd but he played football for Strong Vincent in the 40s, the late 40s, and I asked him one time I said how did you become so attached to Strong Vincent the man? And he said we were on a football trip. We stopped in Gettysburg. He said we went to Little Round Top and we see the, we see, you know, the statue of the rock, basically where Strong Vincent was, was killed or mortally wounded. And he said from that point on I became interested in Strong Vincent. So I got to think at Strong Vincent High, you know there was, you know I don't want to say one course or one curriculum, but there had to be significant reference to Strong Vincent to the pupils.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Moose, have you made this connection before? Have you heard of this?
Mark McGrath:I have I mean yeah.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So I mean just never thought that John Boyd could have been influenced by Little Round Top right.
Mark McGrath:So I took a group of leaders with our friend Don Vandergriff, who's been a guest on this show, who's the world's authority on mission command, and we were talking about Strong Vincent and his commander's intent to Joshua Lawrence, Chamberlain, to the 20th, made the little round top, and now this particular group of executives that have been advising we've discussed Boyd and Boyd's ideas, and so they're very well aware of Boyd, but I had to throw in as we were explaining the sequence of the battle. I had to throw in and guess who graduated from strong Vincent high school John Boyd. It just was a perfect. It was a perfect, a perfect connection, full circle. So it's never been lost on me.
Mark Squeglia:I mean you can also infer. You know you look at not strong Vincent placing Chamberlain at the left end of the line, but Strong Vincent intercepting the orderly who's going to Vincent's regimental commander to give that person the orders to move people onto Little Round Top. And Vincent stops the orderly and says what are your orders? And the orderly says I need to deliver these to the general. And strong Vincent says give them to me, I will take responsibility.
Mark Squeglia:I mean there's a synonymous trait there between Vincent and John Boyd. No question, he's working on the energy maneuverability theory, right? Or he's codifying fighter tactics at Nellis and his boss, his superior, says don't waste your time, don't bother doing it. And he continues, bother doing it, and he continues to do it. And then he presents it to his superior officer and the superior officer doesn't even want to read it. Eventually he reads it and he totally accepts it. And then he takes it one step further when he goes to is it Eglin in Florida? Eglin, yeah. And he gets with Christie and he steals computer time to create the model to put in the. You know not only US fighter performance metrics but enemy fighter performance metrics to create, you know, basically the energy maneuverability theory. You know, basically the energy maneuverability theory. So there's a lot of similarities between those actions on Strong-Vinson's part and Boyd's part.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Hey Moose, I'm wondering, I don't know if you have the copy of the speech he gave there in 1992. I have one ready, but it might be a good time to walk through that, because it really codifies a lot of the lessons we're talking about now and some that we can bring together. Do you have a copy handy, or I'd have to digitally up.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, I can get up.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Okay, I can, I can put it on our screen. I can try it there. Let me add it to our screen. So this is a. Actually, I'm not gonna be able to do it. Here we go. Okay, I'm going to try to share it. Here we go. It's on our screen right now. I'll read this out loud and I'll let you guys read it too. Mr Grodd, colleagues, students and distinguished visitors, thank you for inviting me to a graduation that I missed some 47 years ago, in June 1945. So this is 1992, I believe. Is that correct? We're looking at, yeah, 1992. Let me explain. He goes on to say during those intervening years, I had the opportunity to interact with many different people and cope with many different kinds of situations and some more context. Moose, this is before he sketched the OODA loop. He's back at Strong Vincent talking to a graduating class, and this is where we are. Any any comments on this to this point there, moose?
Mark McGrath:Yeah, this is about the time where, uh, the, the famous uh uh, the one that you can find on YouTube of him giving that conceptual spiral to space cast, this is about the same time, so this is at the pinnacle of his academic explorations.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Yeah. So he goes on to say what have I found? Learning does not end with a diploma or a graduation exercise. And this is him giving a speech at Strong Vincent. Our reality unfolds in a variety of ways that are essentially uncertain, ever-changing and unpredictable. To thrive and grow in such a world, we must learn to adapt until the day we die. So here we go. We're talking about adaptation learning. He's back at school telling everybody you've got to learn. Right Now. I'm going to let you take over here, moose. This is the part we talked about briefly not too long ago.
Mark McGrath:But you want to walk us through the uh next few lines there. Why do?
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:I say this um, where did you drop off? I missed that.
Mark McGrath:Uh, listening to a bunch of analysts, the yeah so, and this is one of my favorite boyd things and he uses. This is why I thought of that conceptual spiral video, because he says this exactly analysts, surface and examine the features that make up a whole and, as I shall point out, such a person is really a half wit. What about being an expert? Not good An expert has all the answers. He's worked his domain or realm so often and so completely. He's a closed system, unable to comprehend and cope with new ideas and actions that lie beyond his turf for expertise. So I would love so let's pause there for a second.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Yeah, this is great. So he's talking about a closed system. This is early complex adaptive systems theories coming out about the late 80s, early 90s. And, like Moose, I was able to go to Gettysburg, to Little Round Top, but with a complexity expert, dave Snowden, where we walked through the same scenario. We went down to Quantico a few weeks later to talk about the connection between Boyd's OODA loop and complex adaptive systems, and here he is talking plainly to graduating high school students about closed system thinking. So, moose, continue.
Mark McGrath:May I say one thing If you're out there listening and you graduated from strong vincent high school in 1992, so you're roughly, you know, brian in my age uh, we want to hear from you and we want to know that, if you, uh, if you remember john boyd coming to uh to give you your address yeah, graduation address because we would love to see if it had any impression on you. Um, okay, worst of all is an analytical expert, a halfwit, who thinks he has it all figured out but doesn't know what to do. We see these people being paraded in the media on nightly news programs, seminars, et cetera. They give us nice rhetorical descriptions and explanations of what has happened, but are unable to come forward with any comprehensive or creative proposals as to what should we be doing.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Wow, matt, the impact that has in today's medium. You know today's technology. You can use the same speech and it would have a slightly different meaning today with our social media. But one of the things Moose and I talk about quite frequently is, you know, there's some misinformation out there and there are people that are unable to make and I'm going to kind of project here in a little bit snowmobiles. So any thoughts from Mark or Moose on actually Mark, have you heard Mark? Have you heard this before? You've ever seen this?
Mark Squeglia:His talk. Yeah, no, I have not yeah.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So this is. I'm glad we're bringing this up now because it connects back to Erie Moose. You want to continue?
Mark McGrath:Yeah. So then what he's going to do is he walks them through the experiment. Imagine that you're on a ski slope with other skiers. Retain this image. Imagine that you're in Florida riding in an outboard motorboat, maybe even towing a water skier. Retain that image. Imagine that you're riding on a bicycle on a nice spring day. Retain this image. Imagine that you're a parent taking your son to a department store. You notice he is fascinated by tractors or tanks with rubber caterpillar treads. Retain this image. Now imagine that you pull the skis off the slope. You pull skis off the ski slopes you discard and forget the rest of the image. You pull outboard motor out of motorboat discard. Forget the rest of the image. You pull handlebars off bicycle discard and forget the rest of image. Pull rubber treads off the toy tractors or tanks discard. Forget the rest of the image. This leaves us with skis, outboard motor, handlebars, rubber treads.
Mark McGrath:Pulling this all together, what do we have? A snowmobile. As you can see, highlighting a feature from each domain is related to analysis, while connecting up each of these features is synthesis. The point, building or creating a snowmobile is an analytic, synthetic effort, not just a reduction performed by some analytical expert. Again, if you were in the crowd and you heard that in 1992. We would love to hear from you and we would love to know is there somebody out there that heard what he said and took it for how? He means exactly how. Uhch and I coach leaders and teams to do exactly that, so that they could become the best versions of themselves, to become more competitive, collaborative, cooperative, et cetera, more creative. And there's Boyd telling a group of high school kids that hopefully they, hopefully somebody listened. I'd love to know. Yeah, hopefully somebody listened.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:We'd love to know. He kind of ends up there at the metaphorical message about stagnation and decay set in when someone or individual group cannot build snowmobiles. Vitality and growth is possible when someone, a group or individual can build those snowmobiles. And he goes on to say a loser is someone who cannot build a snowmobile when facing uncertainty and unpredictable change, and a winner is somebody who can't. So here again, this is just. I think we'll get this to Mark.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:I can't remember how we pulled this out of his notes there, moose, but we were able to spend some time on it. We initially thought we'd get AI to read this out. I think we'll leave that alone for now. But, mark, I just wanted to share that with you because I think this is important in what's happening in Erie, pennsylvania. I'm going to stop share there. There's so many angles we can look at from that message he presented to the graduating class of 1992. Things that we're talking about now, as far as things like adjacent possibles, the synthesis of new technology, there's a lot of connections. I think, moose, you may agree to McLuhan, marshall McLuhan's work in that speech. But so much to go from that one little speech he gave, addressing a graduating class in 1992 at Strong Vincent High School At his alma mater.
Mark McGrath:Pretty cool, isn't it?
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's again before he sketched OODA Loop about three or four years prior.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, that's a critical component because we can go through the archives and we can see his initial renderings of what ultimately became OODA Loop sketch are happening around this time, but the the the version that we're all familiar with, when you Google it and you'll get the Wikipedia page that didn't come out until 1996. So four more years.
Mark Squeglia:But if you could, I like a digital copy of that.
Mark McGrath:Absolutely.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Yeah and Moose again. I can't remember how you and I pulled that together. Uh, from his notes. I think it was from notes, wasn't it?
Mark McGrath:It was in the folder. Yeah, it was in just so many folders down there that you're going through and there's so much.
Mark Squeglia:This is at Quantico.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, we'd love to take you down there sometime. I mean, it's the Boyd archives, first of all. The archives at Marine Corps University are phenomenal, and we mentioned Robert Corum, the author. You know he not only wrote a book about John Boyd, he also wrote a book about Victor Kulak. There's the Kulak Center there at Marine Corps University for Innovation and you know his archives are, as you know, as equally fascinating and you know his archives are, as you know, as equally fascinating In a lot of respects.
Mark McGrath:I think that there's a lot of connections and synergy with both Generals Krulak. There's Victor Krulak and Charles Krulak, charles who actually collaborated with Boyd and knew him personally and eulogized him when he passed. But that idea of constantly innovating and reinventing yourself, that's what Victor Krulak was doing with the Marines the entire time. It's because of Victor Krulak that we have Higgins boats. We had Higgins boats at D-Day. It's because of Victor Krulak that Helleborn Assault came to pass. So it was really interesting that Coram did both of their bios because there's a lot of parallel stories and Krulak was one of those guys that had knocked down a lot of those doors. But anyway, his archives are down there as well.
Mark McGrath:But the Boyd archives, as Ponch could tell you. I mean, you can sit in there for the entire workday and it was as if you've been in there for 30 minutes because you can't stop and it's it's so complete, you know, you could, you could decide to go through, say, his books. Like I said, today we're going to focus on his books and you can read all the marginalia and like on war, I took pictures of his entire marginalia and his Clausewitz copy. But then at the same time you find napkins that have notes on them explaining the definition of a dynamic agent, paper towels. He's taking notes on paper towels. Um, on the back of, like you could see, it was lists that his, his wife, had made like shopping lists, but on the back of it he was doing equations, things like that. So all this is there.
Mark Squeglia:Does the Marine Corps at Quantico still host the Boyd Symposium?
Mark McGrath:They haven't had one in a while.
Mark Squeglia:Yeah, because back in 2010, 2011, when I gave the first lecture on Boyd, I talked to the Jefferson Educational Society and I said wouldn't it be cool if we could contact the Marine Corps and have the Boyd Symposium for one year be held in Erie, in his hometown, rather than at Quantico? We tried contacting a couple people in the Marine Corps, but it didn't go anywhere.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:We could set a time in the future and say is it 2025 or 2026? When you want to do this, it's a little late right now.
Mark McGrath:Yeah yeah, we could talk offline about some ideas too. There's always an interest in Boyd, but there's also still a lot of Boyd enemies. There are a lot of people that will suppress, deflect, oversimplify the OODA loop. They'll do anything they can to dismiss Boyd that he didn't go to college or he didn't have a PhD or he wasn't a general or he wasn't a fighter ace or whatever. There's all the typical things that you hear against Boyd and really it's all ad hominem. You hear against Boyd and really it's all ad hominem. It has nothing that they, they, they, they cause. They can't, they can't attack the concepts. The concepts are so uh sound.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So, mark, let's pick back up on the PBS episodes. We've, we've, we've talked about John Boyd's um, uh, you know, pre, pre high school career and then a little bit going to. We know he goes off to Japan to serve over there. He comes back, goes to Iowa. Any idea why Iowa was selected? Moose and Mark.
Mark Squeglia:Yeah, at the time Art Weibel was the swimming coach. Excuse me, yeah, art Weibel was the swimming coach at Iowa and Art Weibel was the originator of the butterfly stroke and Boyd wanted to swim in college. So he selected Iowa and he meets Mary Bruce at Iowa and she's at Iowa only because she's looking for a husband, or so she said Right, so the two of them, two of them meet and that's how their relationship developed.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:OK, so getting that MRS degree is important.
Mark Squeglia:So yeah, he attended Iowa. He swam at Iowa. He swam at Iowa. I don't think he was as successful swimming at Iowa as he thought he would be or as he was in high school, but he ended up graduating with a degree in economics and then shortly thereafter ships out or, excuse me, no, he joins the ROTC at Iowa to make a few extra bucks. And then the Korean War breaks out and, you know, he ends up ending up in Korea shortly after the outbreak of hostilities there.
Mark McGrath:And I can't remember the story, but I remember he thought something, he and I can't remember the story but I remember he thought something.
Mark Squeglia:I forget what his influence was in goes back to when he was a child. There's reference to when he would be playing with his you know, with the kids in the neighborhood.
Mark Squeglia:He would disappear and then they would find him reading a magazine and the reference was Popular Mechanics and he ended up building model planes and I don't know if he bought the models and put them together or he was carving model planes out of balsa wood.
Mark Squeglia:And then there was a family friend, the name was Eckerd, and they started the Eckerd drugstore chain here in Erie, which ended up becoming populated quite a bit of the eastern seaboard, and the family owned a plane and Jack Eckerd offered John Boyd a ride in the plane, which he jumps at the chance and takes the plane ride and from that point forward, you know, the reference is he's totally hooked on aviation and if he was that hooked on aviation, there's no way he was going to want to fly a bomber. I mean, you know he would want singular control of the aircraft and you know, and I know, ponch, you were a fighter jock. So I mean you guys are a different breed. Um, you know you, you push the, you're pushing the envelope to the limit all the time. And that's how he became so proficient of a of a flyer is that he pushed every aircraft that he was in to the absolute limit. In some cases in his training he took those training aircraft and did things with them that had never been done before in terms of flying.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Mark, I'm curious. You've been looking at history for a while and when you look at John Boyd's background and I think you read Coram's book first is it surprising to you that somebody who came out of Erie, pennsylvania, ends up creating EM theory, does some work with tactical aviation before that and then goes on to do what he did in the Pentagon? I just want to hear your thoughts, because you've been doing a lot of research on folks from World War II and up to today. Is this an exceptional human being, a philomath? What's going on in your mind?
Mark Squeglia:I think this individual had a mind that was just unbelievable, and I don't think he was born with it. I mean, I think his mind developed over time through the different experiences that he went through. You know his military experience totally honed his mind. And then his, you know, the physical experience about flying an aircraft. I mean I don't think he jumped into the cockpit on the first day and said I'm going to write the energy maneuverability theory. I think it was the experience of flying the plane that he realized that there's a better way. Or even you know, codifying the fighter tactics. You know his experience in Korea as a wingman. He wasn't even a shooter but he was the wingman. But he had to think and say you know, there's got to be a better way than this, you know. So I just think his mind was unbelievable. You know it was part engineering mind, part philosophical mind, part totally application mind. I mean, what's the OODA loop? It's all of those things put together and that was kind of the ultimate end of his thought process was the OODA loop. So I just think you know the OODA loop. So I I just think you know tremendous mind.
Mark Squeglia:I'm trying to think of someone similar, a prominent uh leader during world war two that may have had that kind of mind. Um, I know it's not even he doesn't even reach intellectually to that point, but tactically my favorite is George Patton, and you know I look at his management of the Third Army in Europe, his prior career in the military, his development of the tank weapon, you know, in World War I, and then post-World War I, prior to World War II. You know Patton had a. Even though he was looked at as being profane and abusive at some points in time, I think Patton had a tremendous mind.
Mark McGrath:I think Patton had a tremendous mind. Yeah, and Coram mentions Patton. I was going to say when Coram talks about Boyd and maneuver warfare, he specifically mentions Patton. Patton had, I think, the quote that he uses in the book, the language that he uses.
Mark Squeglia:He had the spear directly on the heart of the Germans and Eisenhower slowed them down and stopped them because they didn't understand what was happening. Yeah, I've made two trips to Normandy and the most recent one was for the 80th this year in June. And I mean, you know you play what and I'm not a revisionist history person but you play what-if games and say what if it was Patton in command rather than Montgomery on D-Day and subsequently the Battle of Normandy? Right, I mean you don't know, because the Germans feared Patton more than any other Allied commander and they wanted to know where he was at certain points in time, which is why Eisenhower put him in charge of the fake army over in eastern England to make the Germans think that we're going to invade over the Pas de Calais, which is the shortest route over the channel, rather than the 65 or 80 kilometers over the channel from Plylymouth to uh to con or chairboard. So, um, you know there's a lot. I think there's a lot of similarities in thought process between Patton and Boyd.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, yeah.
Mark Squeglia:That's me personally, because Patton's one of my favorites.
Mark McGrath:Well, I think no. I think Corwin would agree with you. He said in the book that that, uh, the style of warfare that that Patton was inflicting upon the Germans. To your point they were deathly afraid of him. So there was a psychological, moral aspect of it too, not just the physical. And when they slowed Patton down it dragged the war out, and Coram says it dragged the war out another six months and cost another million lives.
Mark Squeglia:And Patton also read Guderian's book and Rommel's book prior to the war. So, Patton was in the German mind, I mean.
Mark McGrath:Doing what Boyd said get in there.
Mark Squeglia:Exactly.
Mark McGrath:Yeah.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Yeah, hey, mark, really appreciate you being here today. The Chronicles episode is John Boyd and his Oodle Loop. It's a local PBS station out of Erie, pennsylvania. We highly recommend that all our listeners go and watch that. It's a great 30-minute episode on some of the things we talked about today and more, but I want to turn it over to you. Mark, if you have any questions to us or comments, anything you want you're curious about, this is your time to ask away, and we reserve the right to make up our own stories here.
Mark Squeglia:Okay, well, yeah, I do have a question. You know I'm obviously very interested in John Boyd and you know working towards trying to get John Boyd some recognition here in Erie but also educate people. You know in Erie about Boyd and elsewhere and that you know that's the result of the PBS Chronicles series. But my question to both of you is how do you integrate and I've read a little bit on your website how do you teach Void principles to businesses? And I think our initial conversation, brian, was you talked about Agile and I said well, I'm Agile, educated, but when it comes to project management I totally hated putting together project plans, project plan out the window and manage the project by the seat of my pants and really hated doing status reports and reporting upwards on the status of the project. So I'm really curious to know how you integrate the OODA loop and Boyd's teachings.
Mark Squeglia:Yeah, that's a huge council and coach businesses. How do you do that?
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:That's a massive question. So I'll just touch on the agile connection there. The big connection is agility is an outcome of the OODA loop. So if you look at who signed the Agile manifesto, who created it one of the persons is Jeff Sutherland, a former RF4C pilot who later on got a PhD at Colorado and, I think, in biology, so connecting aviation to biology. He also examines the Toyota production system, sees something by the new product development game and he names this thing called Scrum. Basically he says say this approach of plan, execute, assess. Or your planning, your sprint planning, your daily stand-ups, your container, your review with your customers and your retrospective. That is a team lifecycle that all aviators do. You plan, execute, assess. The outcome of that is learning, adaptability and agility. Resilience, safety and innovation are also outcomes of that. So that is already baked into the I'll say it the Agile manifesto.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:The key signatory of the Agile manifesto he's been on the show. He even says Agile is an outcome, or agility is an outcome, of OODA loops Observe Oint, decide, act. I think where we kind of stray from that thinking is they're thinking of the OODA loop. Looks like the PDCA cycle. That's not what we're talking about here, but we do agree with them that agility is an outcome of a high quality observe, orient, decide, act loop. So how do we teach this? Okay, there are many ways to teach this. The current method that we use is to take them through human factors training, where we do not even show them the OODA loop. We don't talk OODA loop, we don't do any didactic type of training. We let them experience how humans perceive reality. And a lot of this information is coming out from folks like Neil Seth, andy Clark, other researchers from neuroscience, the free energy principle, active inference, which all connect back to what John Boyd was studying through the second law of thermodynamics, through cybernetics yeah, so complexity, system thinking, all that. There's a nice connection to these new theories, if you will, of how the brain perceives reality. So we take them through that and you can't argue with that experience. They experientially learn how they perceive a rainbow, how they see a coffee cup and, by the way, what ends up happening is that flow diagram ends up being the OODA loop. It's pretty powerful, right? It's really really powerful to see that. So we don't observe, orient, decide and act. You actually predict what's coming out of my mouth next before it actually comes out, right? And that way it reduces the energy spent in your brain. And all that. We take them through Now. We don't spend a lot of time on that. We then show them that hey, now that you know how you all perceive reality and reality is really constructed top down, inside out it's a controlled hallucination. We're not passively experiencing the external world, we actively do it. Now we can take them through.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Things like red teaming. Why do we need multiple perspectives to understand our past? So now we're starting to look back at why do we need a effective, good planning process as a team to plan forward. And planning is not about executing a plan but the ability to adapt to change as we learn more from the external environment. So, going back to your point about a Gantt chart in project management yeah, once you build a plan, it's dead the moment it touches reality Right. So that's not how fighter aviation works. It's you have a plan, it's dead the moment it touches reality right. So that's not how fighter aviation works. It's you have a plan to deviate from, right, that's it. It's here's a basic plan and oh my gosh, that's not what's going on. But we know what to do because we can replan as we go.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So again, this is a loaded question when it comes to teaching flow. If you look at the OODA loop as a flow system, the number one currency, the most important currency, there is new information. Right, we have to allow new information to flow in that OODA loop. And if you think about what's going on in the world today with social media, cancel, culture, all that, that's the war on information, information warfare. Right, it's external. Now, cognitive warfare is internal, like, how do I change the orientation of somebody through medicines or pharmaceuticals, or putting poison in food, whatever it may be? That is happening today as well. So you have a cognitive warfare going on and information warfare going on which is attacking your OODA loop, that information flow within there.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Now, the key to this is you have to update. You're asking how do we coach organizations? If you're going to build a strategy and I'm going to turn this over to Mark here in a second you have to build a map of the external environment. That's the key point. Right, orientation is about building that internal map of the external environment. If you do not have one, you do not have a strategy, you cannot have a strategy. A strategy is not a SWOT analysis. A strategy is not a bunch of sticky notes on the wall. A strategy starts with a map and there are folks that picked up on this and they actually have mapping techniques to understand the external environment so we can operate in it. So there's a lot more.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Mark's doing some other things as well. We use this inside of the markets, finance sports. I mean, you can ask the same question how do you apply this to teaching your kid basketball? How do you apply it to teach them the importance of going to school? It's the same. Humans are inherently predictive machines. They're trying to update their OODA loop and we're not trying to go faster through it. And I'm going to turn it over to Mark here in a second. Speed is not everything in the OODA loop. So, mark, you want to build on some of these ideas.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, the biggest thing that I try to hammer home is that the orientation is the critical component and everyone's orientation is unique to them. And orientation is fractal. So I can have one myself, but I can have one as a group, a squadron, you know, a company, a state, it doesn't matter. We can. You know, orientation is fractal up and down, fractal up and down. What Boyd's OODA loop sketches is an abstraction like punch set, a map of how that orientation functions and how it shapes, how we make sense in the world, how we make decisions and how we test those decisions via actions and how we learn.
Mark McGrath:Our biggest mission, mark, is always talking about how the reduction of Boyd is setting people behind. They're just going to be chasing their tail forever. You know, the simplified OODA loop in a circle is actually a dog chasing its tail. It's the same thing that he illustrated before he passed. Then you start to realize that my cognition and my ability to analyze and synthesize, my ability to accept new information, my cultural heritage, my genetic heritage, my traditions and things like that, all of that shapes and has a direct impact on how I look at the world, how I look at reality, and we'll all come up with different things because our orientations are all unique. If we're all in the same team or the same organization or part of the same culture, likely we'll see those facts the same way. But what Boyd was trying to do was give people an understanding of how they can thrive in ambiguity, where anything can be interpreted in any direction.
Mark McGrath:Back to your example about Patton. Patton saw something completely different than Eisenhower and Montgomery and Bradley and the Germans were doing it. Patton was creating mismatches for the Germans to the point where they were rendered this thing is over. They thought it was over and then when Patton stopped, they were stunned because they were getting ready to surrender and they realized that Eisenhower had just stopped Patton.
Mark McGrath:That's all understanding OODA, loop and orientation and how it shapes, implicitly, guides and controls how we see things make sense and how we act and learn. And that's really what Boyd is talking about. And I think one of the saddest things about John Boyd is that he passed away so young because what he was on, what he was pursuing, we're still trying to catch up, we're still trying to figure that out and even as close as acolytes don't even agree on what he was pursuing. They just know it was something bigger than what he's reduced to, and that's why we think our work's important and that's why we're grateful for the work that you're doing to create more awareness about John Boyd, because he was an amazing, an amazing, amazing thinker.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:I'm going to add to this, mark. Through this podcast, we've been able to talk to folks that two knuckle draggers would never be given the opportunity to talk to People. 40 minute course that allows us to have conversations about the difference between large language models and what is kind of being touted as active inference, artificial intelligence this next level of artificial general intelligence what that looks like. It also allows us to have conversations with folks in finance to talk about economic models and what's going on in the global economy today. We can talk about mental health. We can talk about the default mode of operation, ego, and how you have to suppress that to gain access to counterfactual thought, which can be described in John Boyd's OODA loop as well. It's already in there, right, and specifically when you put a boundary around that, we could talk about things and we brought this up earlier when we were looking at the address to the high school there and that is adjacent possibles. If you understand the adjacent possibles, that means you can build snowmobiles. So people have already picked up on this type of thinking that John Boyd was already on the path of doing years ago and they put formulas to it Right. So now when we we can have that conversation and go. Okay, if we want to spend time on adjacent possibles and building strategy, strategy maps through the free energy principle, we can do that using John Boyd's OODA loop.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Now I just lost 90% of the people that are on this podcast going. I have no idea what you just said. I'm like exactly. That's why, you know, coming into the podcast listening to it, we'll slow things down with guests to go. What do you mean by this? What is assembly theory? Does that connect to what John Boyd was giving us years ago? Rather than hey, pdca and OODA loop are the same thing. Go fast around them and you're excited. That's what you need to do. No, you don't. You do not need to go through a noodle faster. And you got me excited about this because this is why we're here. You know, going back and understanding John Boyd's orientation, the genetics, the cultural heritage, the previous experience before he left high school is important, right? What were his influences there? And today? The big one is the connection that I was not aware of between Little Round Top and which is mission command.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:I mean that is a massive connection, and later on he studies that through looking back through the Germans and Sun Tzu as well. So a lot of connections here, Sure.
Mark Squeglia:Yeah, I mean I think you know just in your explanation of what you're trying to do in teaching principles, he was a tremendous thinker and I think he would have been successful in any endeavor, I mean, had he entered business and he may not have risen to the top of the chain in business because of, you know, his disrespect for higher authority and, you know, may not have gotten promoted, he might have had to start his own business, but I think he would have been extremely successful in business or any endeavor that he that he chose. You know he chose the military.
Mark Squeglia:So I just yeah you know he is in Secretary Cheney's office the night before Desert Storm is launched. You know he may not have been respected within the circles of the Air Force, but obviously he was outside the circles of the Air Force.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, he was. He was OK with having nothing and reducing his needs to zero, and he was very humble about that. And you know it's interesting, we had a guest on yesterday talking about vincent van gogh, who was, you know, died penniless and he's giving all these paintings away that turned out to be, you know, literally billions of dollars worth of worth of, uh, art. But he, you know, there's a lot of story about Boyd, I think, in that respect too, where it's those of us that are carrying on his mission and developing his work that are helping him bring the notoriety that he never got in his own, that he never got in his own lifetime, and the value of it. When you we say this all the time when you see it, you cannot unsee it. And once you cannot unsee it, you become unstoppable. And that's that's what people, when we're coaching them and teaching them, we're trying to get them to that point where they can see it inherently, because that's the thing Everybody's doing, it, everybody's observing, orienting, deciding and acting.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Whether they understand John Boyd or not, it's when they understand it and how it works in the context of complexity, then they can thrive and not merely just survive. I think that's a good place to wrap it up, and for those listeners out there that know anybody from the class of 1992, please contact us. We want to hear from you and Mark, I'll turn it over to you to see if you have any last comments. No, we definitely want to hear from you and Mark, I'll turn it over to you to see if you have any last comments.
Mark McGrath:No, we definitely want to hear from them. Like I said, you're probably our age. I'm high school, 94. I think Brian's 92, right? So we're age peers and we'd love to hear from those Gen Xers that were influenced by John Boyd and if anybody took it to heart, if anybody remembered it. We would really, really love to hear if that speech influenced you and then Mark, from one Western Pennsylvania into another. Thank you so much for taking the time and helping us cast more light on a very important part of our country. Granted, you and I are both biased, but there's a lot to learn here, and John Boyd is certainly a significant part of our country. Granted, you and I are both biased, but there's a lot to learn here, and John Boyd is certainly a significant part of that.
Mark Squeglia:Well, I thank you both for inviting me and truly honored to be able to talk about him and hope to continue the association going forward. I mean, and it doesn't have to be on a podcast, I'd love to meet with you guys and just talk about you know, boyd things and different how it relates to business and some of the consulting that you're doing, so looking forward to it.
Mark McGrath:Absolutely. Thanks so much, Mark.
Mark Squeglia:Thank you.
