Four perspectives on the quaternary cycle

Three of the most popular learning cycles—PDSA, OODA, and Kolb’s experiential learning cycle—can be better understood if we see them as structures pointing at three temporal perspectives and a meta-perspective: future, past, present, and human experience in general.

To illustrate this, first let’s review the three cycles.

PDSA cycle:

Plan > Do > Study > Act

This cycle was developed by Walter Shewhart and W. Edwards Deming. It is the most-used learning cycle in industrial contexts. It defines a process for experimentally implementing process improvement or a new product.

Plan means plan out an experimental implementation of a new process standard. This includes defining criteria for a successful test.

Do means empirically test the new standard.

Study (sometimes written check) means studying the results of the test in the Do phase, as compared with your plan and the criteria you defined.

Act means act on what you learned in the study phase. If the test was successful (the new standard met the success criteria) then act means implementing the standard throughout the organization. If it was unsuccessful, then it means concocting a new or revised idea. Then develop a new Plan to test that one.

OODA loop:

Observe > Orient > Decide > Act

This one (usually referred to as loop instead of a cycle) was developed by John Boyd for the US Air Force with the goal of training fighter pilots how to win dogfights by thinking faster and more effectively than their enemy.

Observe means to observe what is occurring. This corresponds with the Study of the PDSA because it is where you mentally process what has just occurred, however, it also corresponds approximately with the Do phase, because in the OODA loop, the application is a fluid situation, whereas the PDSA is more turn-based, where you can make a change and study it at your leisure. PDSA is more like chess, and the OODA is more like boxing.

Orient does a lot of work in here. As the diagram illustrates (which Patrick Edwin Moran drew, referencing Boyd’s original diagram), it can include:

• Cultural traditions

• Analysis & synthesis

• Previous experiences

• New information

• Genetic heritage

In a word, it refers to your beliefs. This corresponds the with Act of the PDSA because this is when you reflect on the situation and apply your past experiences to it.

Decide corresponds with the Plan of the PDSA. It is the mental process of choosing your next steps.

Act is where you execute on what steps you decided to perform. It corresponds with the Do of the PDSA cycle fairly directly, except—as is generally the case with the OODA compared with the PDSA—it will usually be a brief period of time. Again, one is continuously running OODA loops, whereas PDSA happens at a more deliberate iteration.

Kolb’s experiential learning cycle:

The meaning of the cycle is the output

The output of the PDSA cycle is a new process standard. The standard might be a new piece of equipment or a new way of using the old equipment. It could be on a factory floor, in an IT department, on in a household—any setting where people can set standards and adhere to them. The PDSA has a complement: the SDCA, which stands for Standard > Do > Check > Act.

In the Act phase of the PDSA, a new standard is implemented. It is thereby the norm for the affected process. From there, anyone performing that process engages in the SDCA: they hold the standard in mind, or actually reference it (S) > they perform the operation (D) > they check the process steps they performed, and the output produced, against the standard (C) > if they adhere—if they meet the criteria—the person continues on; of there’s a problem—if the criteria are not met—then they will call in Management, who initiates a PDSA cycle.

The output of the OODA loop is effective action. This could be in a situation as fluid as a dogfight, or a less volatile situation like a negotiation or a study session. You can apply to OODA loop to the same situations where you would apply the PDSA or the Kolb’s cycle. It just depends on the priority of the output.

The output of the Kolb’s cycle is learning. I love the Kolb’s cycle because, while learning inherently occurs in the PDSA cycle and the OODA loop, the Kolb’s cycle does it better. That’s what it was designed for, and it excels at doing it—if you implement it correctly. You can begin using it in any situation, at any time, and the phases easily map onto your experience.

Life occurs. > You reflect on it. > You get an idea. > You test your idea. > Repeat.

Concrete experience > Reflection > Abstraction > Experimentation

Developed by David Kolb, an education researcher. I learned about this cycle from Justin Sung and use it daily. It doesn’t correspond perfectly to the PDSA (that’s why in the diagram at the top of the page, I say ‘A/E’ and ‘C/E’. This is because there is no explicit planning phase, and experimentation and concrete experience each have their own respective phases. In the PDSA, on the other hand, planning is its own phase, and the experimental phase is only represented once—the Do. (Though, it could be argued that one does experimentation in the Act phase if the experiment is unsuccessful, but this is a secondary degree of experimentation.)

Concrete experience is what it sounds like. It is the present.

Reflection is remembering the concrete experience, reflecting on it, thinking about it. You might think about what went well and what didn’t, what was memorable, and why.

In the Abstraction, you attempt to generalize from the reflection phase and derive lessons from it. You get ideas.

Experimentation means testing out the content or output of the abstraction phase. You try to validate or invalidate your idea. If your test validates the idea, it becomes genuine learning.

The Kolb’s cycle is extremely useful, and contrasting it with the PDSA will help explain why it’s so great.

The Universal cycle

While I love the Kolb’s cycle, and I use the PDSA cycle every day, and I think about the OODA often, there is another cycle that I reflect on several times a day, which I will call the universal cycle.

Universal cycle: Forward > Down > Back > Around.

This is a generalization of the quaternary cycles and loops we’ve been talking about, viewed from a temporal perspective. All of these cycles do four things, with more or less emphasis.

Cast one’s attention forward into future. > Focus on what is happening now—by looking down on what you are doing. > Looking back at what just happened. > Extrapolating from their reflection by looking up—or you might think of it as around—at life in general and seeing how this specific experience relates to experience in general.

That’s all I want to say about these processes for now. I’ll talk more about how to use the Kolb’s cycle more later.

Cybernetics loop

Another useful model is the cybernetics loop.