One method of making decisions in the presence of complexity is the RED TEAM. The concept is used on proposal teams as well as organizations that deal with complexity as a standard process - the military for example.
The RED TEAM provides two critical elements to the decision making process. They look at problems from a different perspective than the mainstream decision makers. The mainstream process is looking to ways to achieve the goal. The RED TEAM is looking to avoid the worst possible outcome. The mainstream looks at the primary participants in the process. The RED TEAM examines the less contributors, externalities, and less likely scenarios. It is these externalities, when unaddressed that cause most of the problems in project work. Some might call them Black Swans, but I've suggested, when un-sought and un-addressed, just poor risk management. Unless the externality is actually unknowable - not unknown, not unknown-unknowns - but actually unknowable. When the risk does actually occur, you'd better have a handling strategy, because there is little in this world that is unknowable, with the right search technique, the right amount of time and money, and the right attitude toward risk management.
The second contribution of the RED TEAM is to create a space for questioning the common wisdom and a charter for the skeptic.
The analysis "before" the decision is the primary role for the RED TEAM. This role is seen on proposals. While there are PINK and BLUE teams and the BLACK HAT review, the RED TEAM review is where the hard part comes. It's a review of the ready to go proposal. This is the final check before going to press. It's not a check for typos, it's a check for successful content - the winning proposal.
The next critical value for the RED TEAM is to lead the Four Ways of Seeing. This is a simple methodology designed to highlight bias. Given a situation, the team picks two protagonists and tries to describe four perspectives: how the actors see themselves and their roles — how X sees X, how Y sees Y — and how they see each other: how X sees Y and how Y sees X. This helps identify sources of friction; that is, the ways each protagonist’s self-image differs dramatically from how his adversary views him.
Since all complex problems deal with human dynamics, getting inside the minds of the teams or key interest groups provides insights that the standard approach to a capabilities-based assessment approach can not. The capabilities based assessment asks and answers the question -what capabilities do we need to be successful? This results in some taxonomy of capabilities that then is turned into technical and operation requirements.
The RED TEAM's job is the take the lessons learned from past performance, question the decisions being made on the current engagement in light of this past performance and ask the REALLY HARD questions to decisions being posed by the decision makers.
Some might suggest that the RED TEAM is a group that just whines about why things won't work. This is only the case if the RED TEAM doesn't have alternatives for the decision makers. Mature organizations have come the realize that their leaders many times come to believe their decision making processes are without error. The RED TEAMs job is to add a second voice saying watch out for the big bump in the road, you may not have seen it coming.
Here's a collection of Lessons Learned sites.
This post is abstracted from a recent article in the Armed Forces Journal, title Goodbye OODA Loop, which speaks to the need to improve the decision making processes in the presence of complexity.
