Red team (book by Zenko)

Red Team

Micah Zenko

Red Team

This book contains a series of examples of the use of red teams to do alternative or adversary analysis for a variety of organizations. Most of the examples are quite extensive and beyond the scope of summarization. The book does little to explain how red teams work, but more to explain the environment in which they work.

However there were two sections that struck me as worth sharing.

One

The context of the following quote from the book is the work of a red team facilitator who works on corporate strategies. In effect, he creates a war game involving competitive response to a strategy for an organization’s executives to work through. These people often struggle to talk about the “elephants” in the room, but brutal feedback usually gets them to acknowledge the real situation. That is the first half of the effort.

The second half of Gilad’s war games involves developing a new strategy utilizing the findings of competitor responses. This step is also challenging, and most companies that Gilad works for have difficulty clearly articulating such a new strategy. Firms and institutions in any field tend to mistake objectives (which most everybody can identify) with strategy (the guiding principles and courses of action to achieve these objectives).

This resonates with the idea that good strategy consists of sound diagnosis, coherent policies and focused action – and that many organization struggle to develop these components of strategy.

Two

The context of this quote is a reflection on the decreasing level of progress that was experienced in the global effort to eradicate polio through vaccination. After initial success in decreasing new infections by more than 90%, progress stalled. A persistent stall developed with the majority of agencies sticking with the orthodox approaches that had worked previously and resisting considering that the last few percent of cases might require a different strategy. A red team facilitator was engaged to challenge the status quo.

However, red teaming always achieves one of two outcomes. First, it delivers some new finding or insight that otherwise could not have been self-generated within the walls of the targeted institution. The institutions surveyed for this book all faced varying digress of structural or cultural limitations, which effective red teaming can overcome. Almost every leader claims to value openness and creativity in order to bring into existence new ideas and concepts that add value to their institution. Yet the same processes that are required to make an institution function smoothly – hierarchy, formal rules, unit cohesion, and behavioral norms – are precisely those that make differentiation and varietal thinking extremely difficult to achieve. This is not a criticism of anyone who works diligently at their job, but rather it is a consequence of the normal structural, interpersonal, and cultural dynamics that we all experience and cannot avoid….As for the second outcome, even when red teaming fails to have a demonstrable impact on the target institution, it reveals something about the thought processes and values of the institution. A primary causes of red-teaming failures lies in bosses’ belief that it is either unnecessary or irrelevant for their particular institution or, if the boss authorized the red team engagement, that it’s finding are unimportant. When pressed for an explanation as to why they believe this, bosses’- whether government officials, military commanders, or business executives – answers cluster around two theories: if something of consequence was going wrong they would already know about it, or somebody working for them would have already told them. This first claim assumes a degree of awareness and omniscience that is simply unrealistic for any large institution. The second claim assumes that employees have the time or ability to identify shortcomings of blind spots and a willingness to present them to management. Bosses cannot take it for granted that they or their employees can grade their own homework, or envision what paths their competitors might take.

For a large organization, there is a need to develop a high degree of alignment, but that has a cost. People can lose their outsider perspective and begin to assume that the status quo is the only possible situation. Individuals, who might see divergent trends or changes, are challenged to “prove” their insights are true. Even proof can be discounted as a “minor” trend or only interested to “niche” parties. The author believes that an institution that really wants to be challenged probably needs to be challenged from outside (unsurprising from a consultant), but it may be a valid point. Outsider-insiders may see their organization clearly, but insider-insiders may discount their perspectives compared to outsider-outsiders. I find this realistic and an indictment of organizational cultures that impose such blind spots on themselves and impotence on their people.