Assault Your Assumptions Through Red Teaming

Today's blog post is based on a podcast from The Art of Manliness:

We live in an age of disruption. Companies that were once stalwarts are overtaken by small, plucky upstarts. Our personal lives can also be disrupted. We lose a job or a business fails.

My guest today says that instead of waiting to be disrupted by outside forces, you’re better off using techniques developed by intelligence agencies and the military to disrupt yourself first. His name is Bryce Hoffman and he’s the author of the book Red Teaming: How Your Business Can Conquer the Competition by Challenging Everything. We begin our show discussing what red teaming is and the history of its development, from wargaming by 19th century Prussians to more sophisticated techniques developed by the US military during the war on terrorism. Bryce and I discuss the hidden biases that red teaming is designed to counter, and then get into the specific red teaming techniques you can start using today to challenge your assumptions, stress-test your strategies, identify unseen threats, and make better decisions in both your personal life and your business.

The podcast was really interesting and it talked about the history of red teaming and applications in your business and personal life

As it says above, this was mainly developed by the Prussian army after they were defeated by Napoleon.

They got their best generals together to figure out what they could do to defeat him in a future battle. They did this by dividing into two teams...since the Prussian army had blue uniforms, they were the blue team and the team trying to figure out how to beat the Prussian army (Napoleon's army) was the red team. The red team helped the generals figure out what their weaknesses were and what they could do to overcome them.

Crayola used to have a color called Prussian Blue:

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Listed below are the highlights from the show:

• What is “red teaming”?
• How the failures of 9/11 brought the idea of red teaming to the forefront
• How Prussians developed the idea of war games and the early concept of red teaming
• How red teaming has greatly enhanced America’s defense systems
• The ways that businesses — large and small alike — use these concepts
• What are the biggest errors people and organizations tend to make in their decision making?
• What Adam Smith got wrong with his rational choice theory
• The biases and heuristics that lead us astray
• Using red teaming ideas in your personal life
• What is a key assumptions check?
• The power of red teaming in a group
• What are the four ways of seeing?
• What’s a pre-mortem?
• How do you bring up contrarian views without stepping on toes?

One of the ways you can use this in your personal life is by doing a pre-mortem. A post-mortem figures out the cause of death after the fact, while a pre-mortem figures out "the cause of death" of your plans before they happen.

Former poker player, Annie Duke, talks about pre-mortems in this article from Marketwatch. Listen to this Art of Manliness podcast with her. I found both sources very interesting and have been reading her book "Thinking in Bets".

This is similar to the Plan B system that I talked about here.

Interesting days

Today - Maple Syrup Day and Wright Brothers Day

Tomorrow - Bake Cookies Day, International Migrants Day, Arabic Language Day and Roast Suckling Pig Day

Month long celebrations:

November 28 - December 31: A Blue Christmas

Next Tuesday - Christmas Eve and Eggnog Day

Month long celebrations:

November 28 - December 31: A Blue Christmas

January 17 - Ditch New Year’s Resolutions Day, Kid Inventors’ Day and Cable Car Day