The world is changing dramatically, fast and beyond everything we have seen. Globalization and technology have introduced more diversity, more dynamics and more interdependencies than ever before. This provides project management, and management in general, with a challenge. How to survive in this environment? Together with dr Ali Anani, I am taking on this challenge with an attempt to provide some structure and some answers for management practitioners.

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by Ali Anani and Bas de Baar

In Fish And OODA Loops we introduced fish schooling as an important part of the Fish Pond Metaphor. Schooling mimics human tendency to organize and view our selves in groups of people. This leaves the question of how individual fish operate within a school resulting in one organic adaptive entity? Our preliminary answer is the topic of this posting.

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By Ali Anani and Bas de Baar

After reading about OODA loops and Social OODA some of you (yes you!) might have had one big question: What the heck has this to do with fish? In this post we will go back to the Fish Pond and explain the connection. Well, we'll try.

Fish do not simply float around in a tank. Although they once in a while bump into glass walls, they are able to find food, detect other fish and perform other cases of interacting with their environment. Fish in general can sense changes in the environment either by vision, by smell, sound and by the sensitivity of the skin (changes in water pressure, acidity and temperature). Yes, if fish want to communicate, they blow bubbles.

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By Ali Anani and Bas de Baar

In our previous article we painted the image of people walking on the OODA highway, continuously performing OODA loops, interacting with the environment, in the search for information packages that help them adapt to changes. In this posting we want to extend this notion to the use of social OODA loops.

Image by kk+

Humans are social. A group of people interacting with each other has to be viewed in a social context. (Human) needs are all expressed in comparison of other members of the globe. That is why they are considered social. In this context we also consider the concept of group affiliation. Group affiliation is what it is all about in our lives. During your life you are a member of a lot of social groups, by default, by choice or by force (…) The group memberships determine how we see ourselves in the whole of society, it determines our identity. (source)
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By Ali Anani and Bas de Baar

In this part of the Fish Pond Series we will show how people are on a continuous OODA loop going through life. The effectiveness is depending on the amount of solid processed information. While traveling through life you have positions where you have more of the proper information and places where you are lacking information. The road of life in this way becomes flat and spiky.

Projects, organizations and even society in general are all abstractions of the interactions of individuals. When looking at the behavior of a person, we see that from a very high level perspective this is determined by:
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