The Need for Organisational Resilience - Chapter 7

Straw man: Distorting or exaggerating an argument in order to make it easier to attack (e.g.

“Nancy wants to hire a new compliance office. She couldn’t care less about payroll; all she wants to

do is keep adding positions”).

Wishful thinking: Assuming a premise is true simply because you want or need it to be true (e.g.

“If we open a new office in St. Louis, sales in the region are bound to go up!”).

(Hoffman 2017, 145–48)

[TEXT BOX ENDS]

Challenged with the previously mentioned fallacies, the Red team confronts the Blue

team with opposing views. Consequently, the Blue team is tasked to “protect” its domain,

whatever that might be related to (e.g. cyber security, emergence of a new competitor etc.).

Both roles, the roles of the Red and the Blue teams will be stressful, but the ultimate

outcome is constructive conflict, with the purpose of opening communications (questions are

being asked that otherwise would not be asked), encouraging debate (addressing deep

seated biases), enhancing collaboration, and producing high-quality ideas and informing

high-quality decisions. An essential quality of red teaming is that it fosters the questioning of

hindsight, habitual thinking and acting, and triggers foresight, an essential process for keeping resilience from eroding over time. 3

Step 2: Establishing foresight

Constructive conflict through red teaming reveals blinds spots in an organisation and triggers

scanning beyond what an organisation believes it knows, beyond what an organisation

thinks it should do, beyond what an organisation has tended to do in the past.

Scanning beyond the knowable, the ‘used to’, the past ways of working can be facilitated

with a range of tools. The most widely used in organisations is Scenario Planning (see

Chapter 2). The use of foresight provides decision makers with imaginative power to

envisage how resilient they need to be and how resilient they used to be − the basis for

organisational insight.

3 More insights into Red Teaming can be gained from Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre. (2013). Red Teaming Guide .

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