The Art of Manliness - #564： Assault Your Assumptions Through Red Teaming

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. We live in

00:00:11.800 an age of disruption. Companies that were once stalwarts overtaken by small plucky upstarts

00:00:16.100 our personal lives can also be disrupted. It can lose a job or a business fails. My

00:00:20.220 guest today says that instead of waiting to be disrupted by outside forces, you're better

00:00:23.840 off using techniques developed by intelligence agencies and the military to disrupt yourself

00:00:28.300 first. His name is Bryce Hoffman and he's the author of the book Red Teaming, how your business

00:00:32.300 can conquer the competition by challenging everything. We begin our show discussing what

00:00:35.840 red teaming is and the history of its development from war gaming by 19th century Prussians to

00:00:40.120 more sophisticated techniques developed by the U.S. military during the war on terrorism.

00:00:44.080 Bryce and I discuss the hidden biases that red teaming is designed to counter and then

00:00:47.640 get into specific red teaming techniques you can start using today to challenge your assumptions,

00:00:51.540 stress test your strategies, identify unseen threats, and make better decisions in both

00:00:56.260 your personal life and your business. After the show's over, check out our show notes

00:00:59.580 at aom.is slash red teaming.

00:01:11.320 All right, Bryce Hoffman, welcome to the show.

00:01:14.040 Good morning, Brett. Thanks for having me on.

00:01:16.000 So you are the author of the book Red Teaming, how your business can conquer the competition

00:01:20.500 by challenging everything. Now, I'm sure some of our listeners have heard of this concept

00:01:24.840 of red teaming. It's come out of the military. We'll talk a bit more about that. But for those

00:01:29.180 who aren't familiar with red teaming, what is this concept?

00:01:33.540 Red teaming at base is really a system for confronting hard truths that hold us back from 0.55

00:01:42.540 moving forward in the best direction possible. It was developed by, as you said, Brett, it was

00:01:47.600 developed by the military and the intelligence community as a result of the failures and intelligence

00:01:53.540 that led to the terrorist attacks on 9-11. And in the case of the U.S. Army, as a result of the

00:02:00.340 really faulty assumptions that the Army came to believe were responsible for turning what seemed

00:02:07.540 to be easy victories into long protracted counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan. So it was designed

00:02:15.120 intentionally to help these organizations challenge their own thinking, deliberately try to poke holes in

00:02:23.160 their own plans to make their plans better and to make better decisions in the future.

00:02:28.340 So red teaming became systematic in the aftermath of 9-11 and during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

00:02:34.960 But there's a history that goes back further than that in the military. Like, when did we start seeing

00:02:39.220 sort of proto-red teaming in militaries?

00:02:42.540 So the origins of red teaming in the military really go back to the Prussians in the 1790s. And after they

00:02:48.280 had been defeated by Napoleon, they, which, you know, if you think about it, for the Prussians

00:02:53.500 was really a big deal because the Prussians considered themselves to be kind of the most

00:02:58.080 badass military country on the face of the earth at that time. And so the fact that they were defeated,

00:03:03.580 not just by the French, but by a French corporal was really humiliating for them.

00:03:07.580 And so they decided they weren't going to take it, that they were going to

00:03:11.440 wait for the right opportunity and attack Napoleon again. But they knew they'd only get one chance.

00:03:17.220 They did two things that are really important that kind of set the stage for red teaming.

00:03:21.440 One is they recognized, and this is important, this goes to what I was talking about, Brett,

00:03:26.600 about confronting hard truths. The Prussians realized that none of them were equal to Napoleon,

00:03:33.440 that none of them was as good a general as Napoleon was. But what they then did is say,

00:03:41.080 well, you know what? We're not, none of us is as good as Napoleon, but you know, Hans over there

00:03:45.540 is just as good at logistics as Napoleon is. And Fritz is as good at artillery strategy as Napoleon is.

00:03:53.680 And Gunther over there is as good at cavalry tactics as Napoleon is. And so instead of having

00:03:58.440 one general lead their army, they found the best general in each of the key areas that a general

00:04:05.100 needed to be adept in and created a team of generals, what they called the general staff

00:04:11.320 to lead their military. And they told their king, you know, we're not going to have one general in

00:04:16.520 charge. We're going to have this group in charge and together we're going to be as good as Napoleon.

00:04:20.960 And they were right. And that concept was so successful that militaries all over the world

00:04:27.420 adopted, and it's still in use today, pretty much in every country. So that's a core red teaming

00:04:32.120 concept because it goes to this idea that all of us are smarter than any of us. So that the wisdom of

00:04:38.940 the group is greater than the wisdom of any individual, unless that individual happens to be

00:04:43.240 Napoleon or in a business example, Steve Jobs, perhaps. So that was the first thing that happened.

00:04:48.080 Second thing is they recognized that they were only going to get one chance at this and they better

00:04:53.180 make it count. So to make sure it did, they prepared their strategy to fight Napoleon and then they

00:05:00.260 divided themselves in two groups and they set up a tabletop exercise with little wooden pieces to

00:05:05.740 represent all the different units and the terrain and stuff like that. And they fought battle after

00:05:10.660 battle on the tabletop with one half of the general, the Prussian officers playing the Prussians and the

00:05:15.780 other half playing the French and trying to figure out how the French could defeat the Prussians

00:05:20.400 strategy. Now, if you had Crayola crayons as a kid, like I did, you'll remember that there was a cool

00:05:26.460 color called Prussian blue in your Crayola set. And the reason it was called that is because Prussians in 0.98

00:05:33.180 the 1790s wore these kind of spiffy blue uniforms that that color is named after. So they were the blue team.

00:05:39.720 And since they were planning their fight against the revolutionary French, they painted the pieces

00:05:46.980 for the French red and called them the red team. So that's where this idea of taking a group of your

00:05:52.420 own people and in deliberately trying to, to defeat your own strategy, to poke holes in your own plan

00:05:58.520 comes from. And that was also, they called it Kriegspiel, which in English is war gaming.

00:06:04.300 And that also spread throughout the world is still used today. So what the type of red teaming that

00:06:10.300 we're talking about, which we call decision support, red teaming is the formal name for it,

00:06:14.540 is taking that same approach and not just using it to, to kind of figure out how the enemy is going

00:06:21.220 to react, but to just consciously kind of assault your own assumptions to make sure they can kind of

00:06:26.580 withstand that rigorous scrutiny, because in doing so you and your organization can make better

00:06:31.840 decisions. Okay. So the U.S. military obviously continued this tradition of war gaming after

00:06:37.920 the Prussians came up with it throughout the 19th century and the 20th century. And you said it was

00:06:43.640 after the 9-11 attack that intelligence agencies and the militaries decided we need to take war gaming

00:06:50.280 and do something more, make it more systematic. So what's the story there? How did, who were the

00:06:55.640 organizations, individuals involved with creating this more systematic approach to red teaming?

00:07:01.840 So two things happen in parallel, though at slightly different times. The first thing that

00:07:06.220 happened, Brett, was on September 12th, 2001, literally as they were still pulling people out of

00:07:12.800 the rubble of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, CIA Director George Tennant activated or

00:07:19.300 probably more appropriately reactivated a group within the CIA called the Red Cell. And the Red Cell

00:07:26.500 is the CIA's Red Team. And Tennant told these folks, he said, look, we should have seen this coming. We

00:07:33.880 knew that there was about to be a terrorist attack on the United States, but we failed to connect the

00:07:39.060 dots in time. And the reason we failed to connect the dots is not that we didn't have the information.

00:07:44.320 It's not that we didn't have the intelligence. Cause if you think back to like the 9-11 commission,

00:07:49.700 some of the revelations that came out of that were pretty fascinating. I mean, things like the

00:07:54.760 director of a flight school in Florida calling the FBI and saying, Hey, you know, just a heads up

00:08:00.720 here. I've got the, this group of guys from, from the Middle East who want to learn how to fly jumbo jets,

00:08:05.220 but they don't want to learn how to land them. And they want to do all their simulator training over New York

00:08:10.400 City, things like that, that the intelligence agencies have, but didn't piece together.

00:08:14.840 And, and so Tennant said, what I want to do is have this group, the Red Cell take everything that 0.93

00:08:22.980 we believe to be true every day, look at all of our intelligence assessments and try to argue that the

00:08:28.260 opposite is true. Try to argue that we're wrong. Try to poke holes in what we have concluded based on

00:08:34.280 the intelligence that we have, not because we are necessarily wrong, but because a, we could be

00:08:40.160 and maybe you'll figure out the correct answer or B, even if we're right by stress testing our

00:08:46.860 conclusions, you'll make them stronger. So the Red Cell got to work. And obviously the work of the

00:08:51.880 Red Cell is highly classified. But one thing the CIA has said publicly is that the work of the Red Cell

00:08:58.660 is directly responsible for having prevented a number of major terrorist attacks on the scale of

00:09:05.440 9-11, if not larger, since 2001. The other thing that the Red Cell did, which, which is more in the

00:09:12.260 public domain, is they started creating a document a few weeks after this. Every day, they started

00:09:17.840 creating a document called the Alternative Intelligence Assessment. And what this was, was a, a, a,

00:09:24.500 as your listeners probably know that every day, the president of the United States gets a black book,

00:09:30.160 I believe it's about six pages in it of the, which called the Daily Intelligence Assessment.

00:09:35.460 And it is a breakdown of what's happened in the world in the past 24 hours, what the CIA believes

00:09:43.120 it means, and what options the president has for responding to this based on the conclusions the CIA

00:09:49.580 has drawn from this intelligence. So the Alternative Intelligence Assessment was a one-page document

00:09:54.920 slipped in, in the back of that, that book every day that said, you know what, Mr. President, you've

00:10:00.280 just read what we believe is going on in the world and what you can do about it, but we might be wrong.

00:10:05.740 And if we're wrong, here's the other ways you could interpret these events. And here's some other

00:10:11.200 options you might consider. Now it's worth noting, Brett, that both President Bush and President Obama

00:10:17.600 said publicly that they found the Alternative Intelligence Assessment to be one of the most important

00:10:22.920 things they looked at every day. President Trump, about two weeks after he took office, said he

00:10:27.420 found it confusing and asked to be removed from his daily briefing. So the CIA still prepares that

00:10:33.800 they just don't give it to the president. So that's one thing that happened with the CIA. Now, a couple of

00:10:38.180 years later, the U.S. Army kind of had a similar epiphany. See, they thought they won the war in Iraq,

00:10:46.280 and then suddenly they found that they were losing it. And that created a real catharsis in the leadership

00:10:53.620 of the U.S. military, in the leadership of the U.S. Army in particular, that said, how did this happen?

00:10:59.480 How did we so easily win this war and now find ourselves locked in this insurgency that we're

00:11:04.380 actually losing? And so the then director of the U.S. Army, the then chairman of the Army, who is named

00:11:11.800 General Schumacher, former Green Beret, great American, General Schumacher said, we're going to

00:11:17.660 set up a lessons learned team to figure out how this happened, how we got in this mess, and how to

00:11:24.840 make sure we never get in this mess again. And what this team concluded very quickly, Brett, was that we

00:11:31.980 had become victims of our own success. By we, I mean the U.S. military had become victims of our own

00:11:37.560 success. The military had so easily won the war in Iraq in the early 1990s, the first Gulf War,

00:11:45.980 with so little cost. And they'd so easily won the war in the Balkans in the later part of the 1990s,

00:11:53.280 again, with so little cost, that they had concluded that because we had this immense

00:11:58.280 mastery of information because of spy satellites and drones and all this stuff, and because our weapons

00:12:03.620 were so superior to anyone else's, that we basically had become invincible. And they really

00:12:09.560 believed that. If you go back and look at the stuff that was written in the Pentagon in the run-up to

00:12:14.720 the invasion of Iraq, people really believed that they were invincible. And then suddenly they found

00:12:20.820 they weren't. And so the lessons learned team made several recommendations, but one of them was

00:12:26.480 to recognize that a lot of the problem was not just that we thought we were invincible, but that a lot of the

00:12:32.160 assumptions we made because we thought we were invincible were wrong. And so they recommended

00:12:37.540 creating a team within the U.S. Army at every level of the U.S. Army that's job would be to take

00:12:45.280 every strategy that was developed and try to stress test it, try to break it apart, try to figure out

00:12:52.580 what could go wrong with it and how to make it better. And they called this Red Team. And they came up

00:12:57.240 with a formal system of tools and techniques, and they started training senior officers in these

00:13:03.600 tools and techniques so that they could go and do this to make sure this sort of thing didn't happen

00:13:08.020 again. And they created it. They even created their own school. They called it Red Teaming University

00:13:11.820 informally. It had a code name, the University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies, because they

00:13:16.840 didn't want our enemies to know what it really was. And they set it up at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas to train

00:13:22.480 officers in these techniques. And I became the first and still only civilian from outside government

00:13:27.920 to go through the Red Team leader training program there. That's how I learned about this.

00:13:32.280 And did Red Teaming influence or change the way or change decisions, like strategic decisions the

00:13:37.380 Army made in regards to Iraq and Afghanistan?

00:13:40.960 It really did. And again, a lot of what came out of Red Teaming is classified, but one that was very

00:13:46.400 public, and it shows both the real opportunity and the challenge of Red Teaming, Brett, was the surge.

00:13:54.820 So General Petraeus was in charge of Fort Leavenworth when Red Teaming was set up, and he was an early

00:13:59.960 advocate for Red Teaming. And so when he was put in charge of the war in Iraq in the mid-2000s,

00:14:08.180 he used Red Teaming techniques to come up with this idea of the surge. And Red Teaming is really about

00:14:15.240 contrarian thinking and looking at things differently. So what he came up with was,

00:14:19.900 the president said, we want to pull out of Iraq. By using Red Teaming, he was able to determine the 0.78

00:14:25.600 only way we can pull out of Iraq is to send more troops into Iraq to get the situation to the point 0.98

00:14:30.960 where we can safely pull out for ourselves and for the Iraqi people. And so the surge was given the 0.76

00:14:37.320 green light, and it went forward and was very successful. It really changed everything pretty

00:14:44.720 quickly. It dramatically reduced the violence in the country, the number of bombings, the number of

00:14:49.220 terrorist attacks. So the surge was really working in the way it was intended. But the problem is that

00:14:56.040 the politicians in Washington saw that it was working. And even though General Petraeus had said,

00:15:02.380 you know, we can't just wait till it starts to work. We've got to keep this in place for a period

00:15:08.480 of time here to ensure that the situation really stabilizes in Iraq before we pull out.

00:15:14.800 They said, no, this is close enough. Let's pull out now. And then it started to fall apart again.

00:15:18.600 And so, Brett, what this really illustrates is one of the problems, one of the challenges with Red

00:15:23.900 teaming, not a problem. What it really illustrates is one of the challenges of Red teaming. 0.95

00:15:30.020 Which is that if you don't have the support of senior leadership, if you don't have buy-in from

00:15:35.840 senior leadership, it doesn't matter how good the ideas you come up with are, they're not going to

00:15:40.840 work because they can't. And that's what happened with the surge. So even though a lot of what has been

00:15:48.100 done in the military with Red teaming is classified, the way that you know it's working

00:15:52.020 is that very quickly after it was, after they started to implement Red teaming in the late

00:15:58.780 2000s in the US military, very quickly, it's spread around the world. So the British adopted Red 1.00

00:16:05.440 teaming, the Canadians adopted Red teaming, the Australians adopted Red teaming, New Zealand,

00:16:10.900 even NATO ultimately adopted Red teaming, though they decided that the idea of teams was a little

00:16:15.200 bit too confrontational. And so they called it alternative analysis. But the point is, is it was so

00:16:20.940 successful that most of the countries in the world that are allied with the United States have now set

00:16:25.940 up their own Red teaming programs or Red team training programs and are using this kind of

00:16:31.660 across the world.

00:16:34.780 So Red teaming has been used by intelligence agencies, militaries to defeat terrorists, win wars.

00:16:40.500 But then you talk about, you started seeing companies using Red teaming techniques as well. When did

00:16:46.220 do you start seeing that? What are some example of private or civilian organizations using Red

00:16:50.940 teaming techniques?

00:16:52.760 Yeah. So Brett, before I decided to give up almost half a year of my life to go through the Red team

00:16:58.880 training program at Fort Leavenworth, I wanted to make sure that it wasn't just me that thought this

00:17:04.120 was a good idea, that others in business saw this as valuable and something that they would want to

00:17:08.800 learn and use. So I talked to several friends of mine who are in senior leadership positions with some of

00:17:15.120 the most disruptive companies in the world, companies that other companies have really come

00:17:20.880 to fear because they're so good at disrupting other industries. And I talked to folks and what I found

00:17:26.240 out was that while none of them were really aware of this type of Red teaming that the military and the

00:17:31.900 CIA and others were doing, that when I described the tools and the techniques that were involved,

00:17:38.360 they were really similar to some of the ways in which these companies approach their business.

00:17:42.180 So for example, I have a friend who's in a fairly senior position at Amazon. And when I described

00:17:48.280 Red teaming to him and described some of the tools to him, he said, you know, I've never heard of Red

00:17:52.200 teaming. I don't think Jeff has ever heard of Red teaming, but what you describe is very similar to

00:17:58.660 some of the things that we do. And he said, we have an internal process that we do to constantly stress

00:18:08.080 test our own strategies, to constantly challenge our own assumptions and to really try to look at

00:18:14.120 different parts of our business and try to disrupt them, to try to look at them the way a competitor

00:18:19.540 who wanted to disrupt us would look at them so that we can disrupt ourselves before someone does it for

00:18:25.780 us. And he said, you know, a lot of times I go to conferences and stuff and I talk with executives

00:18:31.280 from other companies and they say, how can we be more like Amazon? And he said, I always feel like kind

00:18:36.360 of a jerk because the only thing I can think of to tell them is what you could start over because 0.99

00:18:39.800 this is so intrinsic in our DNA. It's so core to what we are as a company and it's been part of our 0.99

00:18:45.400 company since Jeff started it. He said, this is the first time I've heard of kind of a systematic way

00:18:51.420 that you could teach someone to think more like Amazon. And so when I heard that, that was really

00:18:55.780 validating. And I heard that from other companies as well. I heard that from folks at Kleiner Perkins

00:18:59.480 on Sand Hill Road who said, you know, some of these techniques you're describing are very similar

00:19:03.200 similar to the way that we vet companies for investments, that sort of thing. And when I heard

00:19:07.600 that, Brett, I knew that this was really something that was valuable and was worth taking the time to

00:19:11.620 learn how to do, to write a book, to share with other people and to set up a company to teach people

00:19:16.200 how to do this. So companies are just doing it by themselves, but have there been companies who,

00:19:20.880 once they learned about what the military was doing with this more systematic approach to red teaming,

00:19:24.680 they're like, let's do that in our company. Absolutely. And a lot of, you know, a lot of our clients

00:19:30.340 because of NDAs, I can't identify by name, but we've worked with companies in pretty much every

00:19:35.160 industry, you know, from aerospace, transportation, technology, telecommunications. One company that

00:19:42.660 I can talk about briefly is Verizon, which has really made red teaming a central part of its strategic

00:19:50.020 planning process and has really figured out how to use these tools in a very effective way to evaluate

00:19:55.980 every major strategy before it's approved. And it has been game changing for them. They have,

00:20:01.800 they have, they have changed the direction of some of their major strategic initiatives

00:20:05.720 as the result of what they've learned from their red teams. And it's, it's, it's been really

00:20:12.040 powerful. Another organization that has used red teaming, one of the first that we trained was

00:20:17.600 the Development Bank of Japan, which is Japan's sovereign wealth fund. And they wanted to use these

00:20:23.780 tools to look at companies as investment targets that they were thinking of investing in, to make

00:20:29.620 sure that they were really putting their money in companies that could use it effectively. And,

00:20:34.760 and to make sure that the ways that the companies wanted to use the money they were giving them

00:20:38.660 would lead to the success that they hope to achieve. So there's a lot of companies that,

00:20:43.280 that have been able to use this since the book came out and it's, it's really spreading.

00:20:47.360 There's a lot of interest, like I say, not just in the United States, but around the world.

00:20:50.620 I just got back from a trip to Great Britain where I talked with a number of companies and

00:20:54.820 a number of organizations over there about how to use red teaming to really kind of,

00:21:00.360 like I said, disrupt yourself before someone else disrupts you. But it's not just companies.

00:21:04.540 It's not just large organizations that can do this. Individuals can red team themselves as well.

00:21:09.520 And that's important to know.

00:21:10.800 And we'll talk about that. Cause I think that's when I, that was the big takeaway for me personally,

00:21:14.480 I read this book is like, I can apply this to myself, my own life, but also to my own company as well,

00:21:19.540 my own business. And we'll talk about that here in a bit, but let's talk about the power. Like,

00:21:24.140 what do you think red teaming does? And you make the case that red teaming is really powerful in

00:21:29.240 helping us overcome human biases when we are as individuals, we make decisions as well as in

00:21:34.660 groups. So what are like the most common biases or, you know, errors in thinking that humans make

00:21:42.800 when they make decisions?

00:21:44.260 It's a great question, Brett. And it's really important to understand that the military,

00:21:49.320 the CIA didn't just come up with these tools kind of, you know, on a whiteboard somewhere that

00:21:53.900 these are really based on science and they're based on primarily the research that's been done over

00:22:02.460 the past 40, 45 years in cognitive psychology and human decision-making by people like Dr. Daniel

00:22:09.620 Kahneman, who wrote Thinking Fast and Slow, the Nobel laureate, his colleague, Amos Tversky,

00:22:14.680 Dr. Gary Klein, and others. And what these scientists have seen and what these scientists

00:22:21.200 have proven in thousands of experiments is that Adam Smith was wrong. And what I mean by that,

00:22:29.680 Brett, is for the better part of the past 300 years, most economists and most people have thought

00:22:36.860 that Adam Smith's notion of what he called rational choice theory was the way people made decisions.

00:22:42.960 And what rational choice theory holds really simply is, and it is a simple theory, is that

00:22:47.780 we make the best decisions possible with the information available to us. And that if we make

00:22:54.580 a bad decision, it's because we didn't have enough information to make a better decision or because we

00:23:01.560 were swayed by strong emotions like love or hate or a really unhealthy obsession with tulips.

00:23:08.680 And so economists thought, well, this is how the world works. People do their best. And if they make a

00:23:14.340 bad decision, they would have made a better decision if they had more information. But what

00:23:18.680 Tversky and Kahneman and Klein and others have proven is that that's not how people make decisions.

00:23:25.840 That people's decisions, that's how we wish we made decisions, but that people's decisions, no matter

00:23:32.160 how smart they are, no matter how well-educated they are, no matter how experienced they are, no

00:23:37.180 matter how successful they are, are shaped by an array of biases, blind spots, heuristics, which is really

00:23:44.300 just a fancy term for mental shortcuts. And that these things, which are kind of hardwired into our

00:23:50.620 brain, skew our decision-making in ways that we're just not aware of. And, you know, we could talk

00:23:56.960 about what some of those are, but it's important to know that these are things that exist for a reason.

00:24:02.260 You know, these biases and these blind spots exist, these shortcuts exist because, you know, if you

00:24:07.420 were a hunter-gatherer on the African savannah and you stopped to really think deeply about whether

00:24:13.780 the lion that was approaching you was going to eat you or not, you probably wouldn't survive

00:24:17.860 to kind of finish that analysis. So our brains are wired in such a way to help us make really quick

00:24:23.660 decisions when we need to. But the problem is, is that we use that same approach to deal with

00:24:29.820 today's problems, which are much more complex, much more complicated than the ones that people

00:24:34.960 were encountering on the African savannah thousands of years ago. And that's where we run into difficulty.

00:24:40.100 So what are some of these heuristics or biases that you see frequently that really cost

00:24:45.240 organizations or individuals whenever they're making a decision?

00:24:48.560 Oh, there's so many. One of the ones that I think is really kind of endemic in business is

00:24:53.360 sunk cost bias. And sunk cost bias is basically the tendency that we all have when we lose something,

00:25:02.000 when we lose money in particular, to want to recoup our loss. And that desire is so strong that it can

00:25:09.740 often make us do really stupid things that end up costing us more money in the long term.

00:25:15.960 So for instance, at the simplest level, sunk cost bias is why you see people hitchhiking out of Las

00:25:20.920 Vegas, because they don't have enough money for a Greyhound bus, because they've lost their money at

00:25:26.560 the gaming tables and they keep betting in the hopes of recouping their losses until they're left with

00:25:31.440 nothing. But it also affects companies that should know better. So you see companies do things like

00:25:37.240 build a factory, you know, open a new factory and the factory will be unprofitable.

00:25:43.480 The factory doesn't make money because the workers aren't productive enough, the equipment isn't

00:25:47.640 good enough, whatever the reason. And rather than saying, you know what, we invested $250 million

00:25:52.500 to build this factory. It's really just kind of a been a boondoggle. Let's cut our losses and move

00:25:57.900 on. What did they do? They say, well, let's put $50 more million into this factory and try to try to

00:26:03.080 boost productivity. Okay, maybe that works, but it doesn't work. They keep pouring money in it. They say,

00:26:08.040 let's do another $25 million. Let's invest another $50 million. And pretty soon, the $250 million

00:26:13.360 factory costs $700 million, and it's still not turned to profit. So that's one bias that is really

00:26:20.480 dangerous and that red team thinking is designed to overcome. Another one is availability heuristic.

00:26:27.520 So the availability heuristic is really simple. We are much more aware of information that we've

00:26:33.260 just been given than information that we know from the past. So if you every day are, you know,

00:26:43.520 seeing on the news stories about how great some new technology is, you're much more likely to look

00:26:50.200 at it favorably because of that recent information, despite the fact that you saw much more detailed

00:26:56.020 information two years ago that said this technology had fundamental flaws in it because it's not available

00:27:00.980 to you in your mind as readily. And there's tons of them. There's negativity bias, which is that we

00:27:05.920 tend to recall negative or painful experiences much more strongly than positive ones. So if we were

00:27:12.200 successful, for instance, in a particular business strategy for three years, and then all of a sudden,

00:27:19.820 we blew it one time, we're likely to stop pursuing that strategy because of that one bad experience and

00:27:26.980 ignore the fact that in three of the past four instances, it was incredibly successful because the

00:27:31.920 pain is stronger in our mind than the success. Like I said, it's hardwired into our brains and it affects

00:27:38.260 our thinking on complex problems as well as simple problems like that.

00:27:41.740 So those are examples of decision heuristics we make that can be done on a group basis, but also on an

00:27:46.040 individual basis. But you also highlight that our thinking can change and lead us astray when we're

00:27:50.740 starting, when we get into groups. And one of the ones that stood out to me was the Abilene

00:27:54.860 Paradox. What's the Abilene Paradox and how can that lead us astray?

00:27:59.020 Well, the Abilene Paradox, simply put, Brett, is what happens when we say yes, but we mean no.

00:28:05.680 And, you know, it's something that anyone who's worked in an organization is probably really

00:28:10.100 familiar with. Someone will pose a question, there'll be a problem that the group is trying

00:28:14.300 to solve, and no one has a good answer. And then someone will throw out an answer

00:28:17.980 and say, well, we could do X. Now, everyone at the table thinks that X is a horrible idea,

00:28:25.680 but they ultimately do it anyways because no one comes up with a better idea. And the reason that

00:28:32.260 it's called the Abilene Paradox, and no offense to your listeners in Abilene, Texas, is that the

00:28:37.880 psychologist who first identified this several decades ago was sitting at home with his family

00:28:43.060 on a weekend. And it was a Sunday, they had no idea what to do, was hot, trying to figure out how to

00:28:49.500 kill the afternoon. And they'd been sitting around for, you know, several minutes trying to figure out

00:28:55.040 how they could spend the day. No one had a good answer. And then finally, someone said, well, you

00:29:00.300 know, we could always go to Abilene. Now, no one in the room wanted to go to Abilene. Everybody

00:29:05.880 apparently hated Abilene. I've never been to Abilene, but presumably it's not a great place to visit on a

00:29:11.120 Sunday afternoon. And yet, after a few minutes, somebody else said, yeah, yeah, we could go to

00:29:17.320 Abilene. And then the next thing you know, somebody else said, yeah, that's great. Let's go to Abilene.

00:29:22.020 And then everyone's in the car, they go to Abilene, they have a horrible time. And on the way back,

00:29:26.760 everyone's grumpy and unhappy. And the conversation takes the turn that you probably expected to,

00:29:32.820 which is somebody says, hey, why did you want to go to Abilene? And mom says, I didn't want to go to

00:29:39.020 Abilene. I only said we should go to Abilene because dad said we should go to Abilene. And dad

00:29:42.680 says, I didn't want to go to Abilene. I only said we should go to Abilene because grandpa said we

00:29:48.760 should go to Abilene. And grandpa says, well, I only said we should go to Abilene because I couldn't

00:29:53.500 think of anywhere else to go. And, you know, it's a funny story, but it really illustrates a big problem

00:29:59.100 that companies deal with all the time, which is, you know, when people kind of agree to something that

00:30:03.440 they don't really believe in. And it's very dangerous. You know, even more dangerous is

00:30:09.160 something that people are probably a little more familiar with, which is groupthink, which is,

00:30:12.820 you know, the pathology of every organization is that over time, it will start to drink its own

00:30:20.940 Kool-Aid and stop challenging its own beliefs. And everyone will start kind of aligning their

00:30:27.140 thinking. And that's really dangerous because, you know, as General Patton once said,

00:30:32.620 if everybody's thinking alike, somebody isn't thinking. And that's what red teaming and red team

00:30:38.040 thinking is designed to do is make sure that everyone is not thinking alike to kind of promote

00:30:43.640 divergent thinking so that you can converge on the best idea, regardless of where it comes from in the

00:30:50.320 organization, by the way, Brett. I mean, a lot of the tools that are involved in red teaming

00:30:53.980 that were created by the military were created because they recognize that they existed in an

00:31:00.380 incredibly strong hierarchical culture and that the hierarchy of the culture of the military

00:31:06.020 prevented good ideas from being surfaced if they didn't come from the most senior people in the

00:31:11.120 room. So a lot of the tools we teach, a lot of the techniques we teach are really designed to

00:31:15.540 help people anonymously surface their ideas and let people evaluate those ideas independent from

00:31:25.040 who surfaced them so that the best idea wins, regardless of where it came from.

00:31:30.500 Well, let's talk about some of these red teaming techniques that organizations and people

00:31:33.780 do. And your book, Red Teaming, it's more about how businesses can use red teaming in a systematic,

00:31:41.520 a large-scale approach. But as you point out in the book, too, you can also use these things on an

00:31:46.240 ad hoc basis in your own small organization or with yourself as well. So let's talk about one that

00:31:52.540 stood out to me was a key assumptions check. What is that? What's the goal of a key assumptions check?

00:31:58.780 So this is a really important technique. A key assumptions check, it's a little bit of a

00:32:04.420 complicated technique, but simply put, it's a way of conscientiously and intentionally challenging your

00:32:11.720 own assumptions and making sure that they're strong enough to base your plan on. Now, it's important to

00:32:17.940 understand there's nothing wrong with assumptions. We have to make assumptions in order to make any

00:32:23.360 decision, to make any plan, to develop any strategy. Assumptions are essential to the planning

00:32:29.740 process. The problem is, is that a lot of people get confused between assumptions and facts. So simply

00:32:38.600 put, a fact is something that is objectively true right now that you can prove. It's not something we

00:32:45.060 hope will be true in the future. It's not something that we wish were true. It's really true right now,

00:32:50.300 and you can go out and show someone that it's true. So if I say, our company made $150 million last

00:32:57.020 quarter, that's true unless our accountants were cooking the books. You can go and get the financial

00:33:02.800 report and see that that is true. An assumption, ideally, is something that is not yet true, but will be

00:33:11.440 true in the future. It's a fact that's not yet true, but will be in the future. So if I say,

00:33:16.640 we're going to make $150 million next quarter, that's an assumption. Even if I've got the most

00:33:23.460 bulletproof quantitative analysis by top folks on Wall Street that tells me this is exactly how much

00:33:29.580 money I'm going to make, it's still an assumption because it hasn't happened yet. So ideally, like I

00:33:34.480 said, assumptions are just facts that are not yet true, and we make our plans based on them. The problem,

00:33:40.080 Brett, is that too often, assumptions are really just wishful thinking. And so a key assumptions

00:33:47.800 check is about identifying the assumptions that underlie your strategy, your plan, or your decision,

00:33:53.440 and then subjecting them to a series of questions that are really designed to poke and prod them and

00:34:00.520 make sure they don't pop on close inspection. And some of those questions are things, for instance,

00:34:05.780 like, is this assumption based on biases or preconceived notions, going back to what we

00:34:11.500 just talked about, about biases and heuristics? Is this assumption based on a historical precedent?

00:34:16.880 And if so, is that historical precedent valid? Because a lot of times we make assumptions based

00:34:22.100 on our past experiences, and it's not really analogous. Other questions that we ask include things like,

00:34:27.820 what has to happen for this assumption to be true, which is something people often don't think about?

00:34:35.000 And another equally important one, if this assumption proves true, does it remain true

00:34:41.180 under all conditions? So that's the type of questions that we ask. And the important thing

00:34:45.840 is that it's not just saying, check your assumptions. It's a very systematic process

00:34:51.400 for checking your assumptions. You know, I mentioned the Development Bank of Japan earlier,

00:34:55.460 and when I taught this technique to some of the senior leaders of the Development Bank of Japan

00:34:59.080 and taught them how to do a key assumptions check, during a break, one of them said to me,

00:35:05.020 you know, this is really important because we have a written process of how we evaluate

00:35:11.040 investment targets. And one of the steps on that process is to check the assumptions that this

00:35:18.920 investment plan is based on. He said, the problem is, is that the way it works in practice is this.

00:35:24.580 We all sit around a nice conference table in our, in our office in Tokyo, and we get to that point

00:35:32.580 on the checklist and whoever's running the meeting says, have we checked the assumptions that this

00:35:38.060 investment plan is based on? And we all nod very earnestly at each other. And then we check that box

00:35:43.980 and we move on to the next box on the checklist. He said, the process that you've taught us doesn't

00:35:48.820 allow for us to escape that task because you have to go and ask these specific questions.

00:35:54.900 So that's why, why these tools are as, as, as kind of intense as they are, is to, is to really make

00:36:01.740 people do the work, not just say they did the work. So on a personal level, you can use this to,

00:36:06.880 if you're making a decision, should I buy a house? And there's some assumptions there when you say,

00:36:11.780 yes, I'll buy a house. Well, there's assumptions like, well, I'm assuming I'm going to be able to get

00:36:15.920 home insurance. I'm assuming the mortgage will get approved. I'm assuming that I'll have a job

00:36:20.340 in the future where I can pay the mortgage. And so that sort of check will help you make sure that

00:36:24.080 you've, you've stress tested and you're able to plan for contingencies where those assumptions

00:36:27.820 aren't true. Absolutely. What you've just pointed out there is really important, which is that while

00:36:33.300 there, these tools can be done in a very formal setting, they can also be used informally. Now let's be

00:36:40.360 clear on what the difference is though. If you, if you do what you just said, that's valuable and

00:36:46.660 it's a lot, you're much more likely to make a good decision by asking those questions that you just

00:36:51.740 asked than if you just said, Hey, I want to buy a house. Sounds like a good idea. Do I have enough

00:36:56.220 money in my bank account for a down payment? Sure. Let's do it. Pass my credit check. We're good to go.

00:37:02.440 However, I just want to be clear. It's not as good as having somebody else

00:37:07.580 look at your assumptions and ask those questions because like we talked about all of us, no matter

00:37:14.980 how smart we are, no matter how well educated we are, no matter how successful we are, can't see

00:37:20.380 what we can't see. You know, the Nobel prize winning economist Thomas Schelling said the one

00:37:25.620 thing that no one can do, no matter how smart they are is come up with a list of things that would

00:37:31.120 never occur to them. And that's what you get from red teaming in a group is another set of eyes that

00:37:38.600 looks at the problem, that looks at the decision and helps you see what you can't see. So that's

00:37:44.180 the difference. Still valuable, still incredibly valuable to ask those questions as an individual,

00:37:49.460 even more valuable if you can do it, even with a small group.

00:37:53.720 Well, on a personal level, one thing you can do to help you do some red teaming with someone else

00:37:57.600 is like on that house buying decision, have a personal financial advisor, consult them and

00:38:03.420 they can start saying, well, let's think about these. They'll, they'll start picking at it and

00:38:07.200 be like, well, let's check out these things as well. Exactly. Find someone you trust to ask you those

00:38:12.400 tough questions and to help you answer them honestly. That's, that's really what it's about.

00:38:16.160 But, you know, as we've, as we've rolled red teaming out around the world, you know, we found that

00:38:22.300 there are, there are companies like Verizon and like Development Bank of Japan and some of the other

00:38:26.120 large companies we've worked with who've been able to set up red teams in their organizations on an

00:38:31.200 ad hoc basis, train people in these tools and techniques, and then let them really spend several

00:38:36.860 days evaluating important strategic decisions. And that's incredibly valuable. But we found a lot

00:38:43.060 of other companies, a lot of other organizations, and a lot of individual leaders who say, I really

00:38:49.400 want to use these tools and techniques to make better decisions, but I don't have the ability to set up a

00:38:54.980 team. I don't have the ability to get, you know, half a dozen people trained in these techniques.

00:38:59.320 What can I do? So we figured out a way to modify some of these techniques and teach people how to

00:39:04.440 do them individually or in just, you know, a couple, grabbing a couple of people going into a conference

00:39:08.660 room and using them on a less formal basis. Like I say, it's not quite as powerful as the formal

00:39:14.340 process, but it's still effective and it's still better than doing nothing. It's still better than not

00:39:19.640 challenging your own thinking. Another technique that can be used on an ad hoc basis that I thought

00:39:25.620 was, uh, could be potentially powerful is this four ways of seeing what's that. And what's the goal

00:39:31.180 there? That is a really cool technique. And it's really one that I think it's important for people

00:39:35.820 to use. And you are absolutely right. This is something you can do as an individual, even effectively.

00:39:40.100 So at the simplest level of four ways of seeing is something that the military created to deal with

00:39:47.680 the recognition that they often failed when they were putting together plans to consider how those

00:39:55.620 plans looked from other people's perspective than the U S armies. So I'll give you an example.

00:40:01.980 My instructor, when I went to the red teaming university, Colonel Kevin Benson was literally the

00:40:06.940 person, literally the head of the team who planned the invasion of Iraq. And, and so he'd seen

00:40:13.040 firsthand why we needed these tools. And when we were, when we were learning this tool, four ways of

00:40:19.260 seeing, he told our class a story. He said, you know, I, I led the team that planned the invasion of

00:40:25.220 Iraq and we made a lot of assumptions about the Iraqi people, even though we'd never talked with any of

00:40:33.240 them. And he said, one of the biggest and most damaging assumptions we made because it was so

00:40:39.900 colossally wrong was that we believed that inside every Iraqi was, and this was his, his exact words

00:40:50.760 inside every Iraqi was a little American just dying to get out. And he said, what that, what that belief

00:40:58.700 led us to do was to decide things like it's okay that we're going to black this country out, take

00:41:05.820 out its power grid. And yes, people are going to lose their air conditioning and the desert in the

00:41:11.760 middle of the summer. Yes. Their refrigerators are going to stop working and all their food's going

00:41:15.560 to spoil. Yeah. They're probably not going to be able to get clean drinking water for a while,

00:41:19.300 but they're going to be so happy that we've freed them from the, the, the boot of Saddam Hussein 0.91

00:41:26.540 that they won't care that they'll, they'll be good with that. He said, you know, as soon as you

00:41:32.720 look at it that way though, as soon as you, as soon as you say, is that really true? You realize

00:41:36.180 it's just complete BS, right? Because anyone who's familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs knows that

00:41:42.940 self-actualization is the top of the pyramid and things like food and water and shelter and security

00:41:51.640 are the bottom of the pyramid. And you can't get to the top of the pyramid without making a strong

00:41:55.760 foundation on the bottom of the pyramid. So in reality, if you don't have, you know, food and

00:42:02.500 water, you don't really care much about whether you're living in a dictatorship or democracy.

00:42:06.600 So they created this tool called four ways of seeing to force themselves to look at assumptions,

00:42:13.880 look at problems and look at plans from the perspective of other key stakeholders. Like in

00:42:18.580 the case I just gave the Iraqi people and the way it works, Brett is really simple.

00:42:22.540 You create a quad chart, typical business quad chart, though. It's important to remember on this

00:42:27.960 one, there's no right box. All boxes are equal in the upper left-hand corner. You, you look at how

00:42:36.160 do we view ourselves? Now we could be your company or it could be you as an individual

00:42:41.160 in the upper right-hand box. You say, how does X view X? X could be anyone. It's any stakeholder

00:42:51.840 you're looking at. It could be a competitor. It could be your customers. It could be your trade

00:42:56.080 union. It could be your boss. If you're doing this to figure out how to get a raise and you write,

00:43:02.580 how do they view themselves? Then in the lower left-hand quadrant, you write, how do we view them?

00:43:09.440 And in the lower right-hand quadrant, you write, how do they view us? And you spend some time filling

00:43:17.540 these boxes out. And what you get from this, Brett, is a better understanding of what other

00:43:24.800 people's perspectives are, what their pain points are, what their issues are. And then you can craft

00:43:30.800 your message. You can craft your plan to address some of those if you want to make it more likely to

00:43:38.820 succeed. So if you're using this at the simplest level to figure out how best to approach your

00:43:43.660 boss and get a raise, by doing this, you might find out, for instance, that your boss is under

00:43:50.880 tremendous pressure to keep costs where they're at. However, your boss is also under tremendous

00:43:56.580 pressure to increase sales in your department by 12% this year. So you're more likely to succeed then

00:44:05.700 if you go to your boss and instead of saying, hey, I'm a hard worker, give me more money to say,

00:44:10.220 hey, look, I recognize that you're under a lot of pressure to keep costs down. But I also recognize

00:44:16.860 that you're under a lot of pressure to increase sales. I've been working my tail off. I've been

00:44:21.320 putting in extra hours to help you do that. And I'm willing to continue to do that.

00:44:25.760 But to do that, I need to get a little bit more on my end as well. So if you will give me what I'm

00:44:35.160 asking for, I'll commit to you that I will help you achieve that goal next year. And here's what

00:44:39.580 I'll do to do that. So you see, you're tailoring your message to meet their needs. You're speaking

00:44:43.900 to their needs rather than your needs. And that can be really effective. That can be a real powerful

00:44:48.880 technique.

00:44:49.640 Another technique you highlight in the book that I've used personally is a pre-mortem analysis.

00:44:55.480 What's that?

00:44:56.600 This is one of my favorite techniques, Brett. It's a technique that was developed by Dr. Gary Klein,

00:45:02.080 who I've had the pleasure to work with both while researching the book and since then.

00:45:06.340 And this is a technique that is basically all about contemplating failure to answering the question,

00:45:13.040 what's the worst that could happen? But not stopping there, not just saying what's the worst that

00:45:17.300 could happen. But then working backwards and looking at what are all of the steps that would

00:45:24.300 have to happen between that colossally bad failed state that I've now envisioned and the present day.

00:45:35.700 So when we do this technique and practice, we usually put a timeframe out there. So we'll say,

00:45:40.860 for instance, the plan we're looking at, it's going to launch on January 1st, 2020. Let's assume

00:45:46.220 it's January 1st, 2022. And our plan has failed colossally. It hasn't just failed to meet its

00:45:56.340 target. It's actually caused real damage to our organization. And then you think about what does

00:46:03.120 that look like? What does that look like? And then you work back and say, okay, what are the steps that

00:46:08.800 would have to happen from this moment from January 1st, 2020, when we say yes to this strategy to

00:46:15.840 January 1st, 2022, when this colossal failure has occurred? The value in doing that is it shows you

00:46:22.820 the things that could lead to a bad outcome earlier in the process while there's still time to avoid the

00:46:30.760 bad outcome. So if you, for instance, find that one of the things that led to that colossally bad

00:46:36.860 outcome was hiring additional staff and not giving them proper training, well, two things can happen

00:46:43.040 as a result of that. One is you now know that you should make sure when you're, before you approve the

00:46:47.880 plan, that you include adequate training resources for the staff you're planning on hiring. You can also

00:46:53.700 put a flag post out there in the future and say, after we've hired these folks, let's find a way of

00:47:01.320 checking after three months to make sure they've got the skills they need to be effective in their

00:47:06.480 new jobs so that we make sure that they got the adequate training. So it's a way of identifying

00:47:11.700 ways that you could prevent that failure from happening more than just figuring out what that

00:47:17.640 failure looks like. So yeah, I've used that. So you could use this on an individual level. I think

00:47:22.180 a big decision that people often make is, should I quit my job and go all in on my business? And yeah,

00:47:30.360 you got to have some optimism to do that, but it also helps to think about, okay,

00:47:33.640 let me ask this question. The business has failed. What happened to cause the business to fail? And

00:47:40.280 then you can start, yeah, you started using your imagination and then figuring that out and then

00:47:45.320 finding, creating plans to prevent those possible failure points to occur.

00:47:50.860 Absolutely. By the way, this exercise is a lot of fun too.

00:47:53.920 No, it is a lot of fun. But I think one of the dangers with pre-mortem analysis is that if you're

00:47:57.440 neurotic, it can, it can make you like, it can be unproductive in a way if you're not careful

00:48:02.620 because what you start doing is you start thinking like the sky's falling. You let that

00:48:06.620 negativity bias go on, like hijack your thinking. But with pre-mortem, like you're thinking worst

00:48:12.240 case scenario, but also thinking of solutions to those, those problems you come up with.

00:48:18.420 Well, you raise a really good point, Brett, which is that when you're doing a pre-mortem analysis,

00:48:22.600 and then really when you're doing any of these red teaming tools, the point of doing this is not

00:48:28.400 because you think you have a lousy plan and that your plan's going to fail. The point of doing this

00:48:33.420 is you think you have a good plan, but you want to make it better. And that's really the point of

00:48:37.480 red teaming. It's job of a red teamer is not to make a better plan. The job of a red teamer is to

00:48:44.480 make the plan better. So by doing these tools, instead of courting disaster, you're really trying

00:48:51.900 to ensure success and you have to approach your work that way, both as an individual and as a group

00:48:56.780 when you're red teaming. That raises my next question, which is, I think a lot of people

00:49:01.800 or organizations avoid red teaming because it is contrarian in nature and it brings up conflict.

00:49:07.540 So let's say you're doing this within a small group, like your small business or the group you

00:49:12.340 belong to in a larger corporation. How do you bring up contrarian views that come about through red

00:49:19.780 teaming without them being rejected and stepping on toes? Another really good question. So one of the

00:49:26.400 things that we stress, and it's so important for successful red teaming, when we teach people

00:49:32.000 how to red team, we don't just teach them these tools and techniques. We teach them how to communicate

00:49:36.460 the results effectively. Because if you don't, it doesn't matter how great the insights you come

00:49:42.200 up with are. If the people who are going to be making the decisions can't hear and act on what

00:49:47.580 you've recommended, then your whole red teaming exercise has just kind of been a collective navel

00:49:55.300 gazing excursion. So to avoid that, it's really important. It's critical, whether you're red 1.00

00:50:03.080 teaming in a group or as an individual, to approach the work of red teaming in a constructive and

00:50:08.000 collegial manner. And to recognize that there's a difference between being a skeptic and being a

00:50:14.600 cynic. There's a difference between being contrarian and being critical. So a skeptic doesn't

00:50:24.320 necessarily believe that the plan is bad. They just want to be shown and see the proof that it's

00:50:30.260 good. A contrarian doesn't want to rip things apart for the sake of ripping things apart. A

00:50:37.840 contrarian wants to look at things from different perspectives to make sure that the problem has been

00:50:43.360 examined from every facet. So when you are approaching your work as a red teamer, you need to

00:50:50.320 be approaching it with the mindset of helping the people who develop the plan. If you're working in

00:50:56.080 a group, helping the people who develop the plan, make that plan better. Not from the perspective of

00:51:01.860 showing everyone that you're smarter than them, that you are more clever than them, that you saw what

00:51:07.140 they missed. It should be constructive and collegial. If you're doing red teaming individually too,

00:51:12.720 if you're going to share your work, don't be a jerk. That's kind of our ground rule. It's real 0.99

00:51:20.080 simple. If you're going to share your red teaming work, don't be a jerk. If you're a jerk about it, 1.00

00:51:24.900 nobody will listen to what you're saying. The first rule that I learned when I was going through the 1.00

00:51:30.000 red teaming training in the army was rule number one of red teaming is don't be an asshole. 0.99

00:51:34.160 Because if you go to the group that has asked you to do a red teaming analysis and you say, 1.00

00:51:43.140 you know what, we looked at your plan and it's really stupid. You guys failed to account for 1.00

00:51:49.300 these three things. And by the way, what would happen if X happened? You didn't think about that,

00:51:54.380 did you? Well, we did. And here's what would happen. That will guarantee that A, no one listens

00:52:00.300 to your red teaming analysis and B, that you will never get a chance to do another one.

00:52:04.660 The way to approach it is to say, hey, we looked at your plan. We looked at your strategy. We think

00:52:10.180 you guys came up with a really good plan here at base, but we see some key areas where it could be

00:52:15.840 made even stronger. And here's what those are. So it's really about how you present your findings,

00:52:21.600 how you approach your work and to be constructive and collegial.

00:52:26.660 And another thing that you pointed out that I thought was useful too in the book is let's say you're a

00:52:29.840 leader and you have a group of people doing red teaming, coming up with contrarian views and

00:52:35.320 showing weaknesses. That doesn't mean you have to take their advice and put it into action, right?

00:52:44.300 Like it's just more information for you. Like you're still the leader. You still get to make the

00:52:47.580 decision. Absolutely. Red teaming does not take away any decision-making authority from leaders

00:52:55.660 because red teams don't make decisions. Red teams provide leaders, provide decision-makers 0.50

00:53:01.480 with additional information so that they can make better decisions. That's really what red teaming

00:53:06.400 is about. And it's important to understand that it's not about, about saying, here's what you have

00:53:13.220 to do. It's about saying, here's another option, or here's another way of thinking about this problem

00:53:19.300 that you may want to consider before you make your final decision. That's very different.

00:53:23.860 And that's about empowering leaders, not about taking away their decision-making authority.

00:53:29.020 And I think another thing too, like you have to red team, you're red teaming sometimes as well,

00:53:32.520 because I can see a situation where a red team makes a suggestion or they show a leader

00:53:37.740 contrarian information, but like they don't have all the information, right? There's other factors

00:53:42.460 that the leader is taking into consideration when making the decision, but the red team didn't even

00:53:46.740 think about that themselves. Absolutely. And that goes back to this point that red teaming is not

00:53:51.100 about coming up with a better plan. It's about making the plan better. So you're just simply

00:53:55.240 offering some additional observations, some additional insights. Maybe they're not valid.

00:54:00.400 Maybe they are. The point of a red team is not to be right. It's to make the organization think 0.93

00:54:06.520 more deeply. So if you look at it, you know, the Israelis, for instance, have a red teaming 0.78

00:54:12.160 organization in their military intelligence directorate called Ipsa Mitzabra, which I don't speak

00:54:17.040 Aramaic, but I'm told in Aramaic translates into on the contrary, the opposite is probably true.

00:54:23.620 And one of the things that's been key to the success of this organization, and I've talked with

00:54:29.140 Israeli intelligence officers who've explained this to me, that the people who are in this group

00:54:34.360 are not rated by how often they are right and the organization is wrong. They're rated on how much

00:54:41.960 their analysis gets the organization to think more deeply about its own conclusions.

00:54:48.040 Well, Bryce, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book

00:54:51.020 and your work?

00:54:52.560 So the book, Red Teaming, How Your Business Can Conquer the Competition by Challenging Everything

00:54:57.260 is available on Amazon or wherever books are sold. And you can come and visit our website,

00:55:03.100 redteamthinking.com. Redteamthinking.com will tell you more about red teaming,

00:55:08.060 give you more resources, and also give you information about upcoming workshops that we're

00:55:12.420 offering if you're interested in getting trained in some of these tools and techniques.

00:55:16.040 Fantastic. Well, Bryce Hoffman, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:55:18.620 Likewise, Brett. Really enjoyed the conversation.

00:55:21.060 My guest today is Bryce Hoffman. He's the author of the book, Red Teaming. It's available on Amazon.com

00:55:25.280 and bookstores everywhere. You can find out more information about his work at his website,

00:55:28.380 brycehoffman.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash redteaming.

00:55:32.620 You can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic.

00:55:38.060 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast. Check out our website at

00:55:45.900 artofmanliness.com where you can find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles

00:55:49.400 we've written over the years about personal finances, how to be a better husband, better

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00:56:19.860 reminding you not only to listen to the AOM Podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - November 27, 2019

#564： Assault Your Assumptions Through Red Teaming

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