Choosing your red team

When forming a strategy of any significance your ‘red-team’ can be almost as important as the group working on the challenge at hand.

For those unfamiliar with the term, it was originally coined by the US military, (but has a history of adoption in organisations large and small) and is loosely defined as “an independent group that challenges an organisation to improve its effectiveness by assuming an adversarial role or point of view.”

Or put another way a group of people who will create the best possible steel-man position against your strategy, highlighting all the ways in which it might fail.

This is self-evidently useful. We all know the blind spots that can form when you are immersed in a project and perhaps too close to the work to see the holes. But certain things must be in place for a red team to be truly effective.

On the level of the individuals you are looking for certain traits:

• People high in disagreeableness will be more likely to challenge directly
• People high in empathy will see how your strategy might impact people on an emotional and subjective level
• Global and systems thinkers will see how your strategy impacts the wider ecosystem
• Detail oriented folk will highlight some of the minutiae that may be critical for success
• Subject matter experts will provide a lens of competence and feasibility
• Non-experts can provide outsider wisdom
• If possible, end users will give you a sense of the desirability of your strategy
• Creatives can highlight some potential left-field alternative approaches

This list is by no means exhaustive and finding a team that encompasses all of the above may be challenging. But thinking about the traits that would be most appropriate in unpacking your particular challenge is undoubtedly helpful and can militate against missing critical context that could derail your project.

Just as important is your culture at large and how you frame the session in specific. This will play a crucial part in the success of failure of any red-teaming session. If there is any sense of defensiveness over ideas or retribution for criticism, this and subsequent sessions will fail. People must feel safe to challenge directly and speak the truth of what they see in the knowledge they will be sincerely thanked.