OODA-loop or O followed with ODA-loop?

It can be argued that Toyota with it's Toyota Production System is using Boydian principles. Not necessarily after studying Boyd, but nevertheless they have come to similar conclusions.

There is atleast one thing that clearly separates Toyota from most of the other companies. And it is reflection (or hansei in japanese) and I relate it to Observe phase in OODA-loop.

To me it seems that not whole lot of companies actually look back into their successes in addition to their failures to determine their new current reality. So instead of OODA-loop they use one iteration of Observe and then endless loop of Orient-Decide-Act. Which will eventually lead to disaster. Not necessarily when market is good but almost certainly when things turn sour.

This post was partly inspired by post in Lean Blog about differences of approach between Merrill Lynch (8.4 billion USD write down) and Toyota (Exceeding sales goal three years early).