Coaching practices for Red Team Action Items
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Red Team Action Items, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- We ran a real critique of the plan, found genuine holes, wrote them all down in a nice risk list
- I want someone to come at this plan with the explicit job of tearing it apart
- We did the exercise where we imagined it failing and listed why, but I have a nagging sense the most likely way this actually goes wrong is something nobody was willing to say out loud in the room
- My team is buried under recurring meetings and reports that everyone privately thinks are pointless, but no single person can just kill them
- My whole plan quietly rests on a handful of things I’ve just taken for granted
Practices that may help
- Require the plan to change, not just the risk register
A red team exercise that doesn’t change the plan has accomplished nothing.
Red Teaming: Stress-Testing Plans Before They Fail - Red Teaming: Stress-Testing Plans Before They Fail
Red teaming is the practice of assigning someone — or a structured thinking process — to actively try to break your plan, identify its assumptions, find adversarial responses, and surface the failure modes that optimism and groupthink suppress. It originated in military and intelligence contexts and is now used in corporate strategy, security, and product development. The evidence for its effectiveness is largely organizational and practitioner-based rather than from controlled trials. - Red-team your plan with a formal adversarial review
Assign someone the explicit role of finding every way your plan could be wrong or fail.
Confirmation Bias: Seeing What You Expect to See - Combine the pre-mortem with red team pressure
Run a pre-mortem and then ask the red team to find the failure mode the team missed.
Red Teaming: Stress-Testing Plans Before They Fail - Run a regular team elimination review
Periodically review what the team is doing that no longer serves any current goal.
The Eisenhower Matrix for Teams - Map and stress-test your key assumptions
Before executing, list the assumptions the plan depends on — then ask which ones would kill it if wrong.
Red Teaming: Stress-Testing Plans Before They Fail - Appoint an explicit devil’s advocate role
Give one person the formal job of arguing against the plan — making dissent structural, not personal.
Red Teaming: Stress-Testing Plans Before They Fail - Run the four-question AAR within 24 hours of any significant event
What was planned? What happened? Why the gap? What next? — answered while memory is fresh.
After-Action Review: The US Army’s Tool for Continuous Learning - Align around collective results, not individual status
Teams fail when members prioritize their own visibility or department’s success over the shared goal.
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Made Practical - After-Action Review: The US Army’s Tool for Continuous Learning
An after-action review (AAR) is a structured debriefing developed by the US Army that asks four questions after any event: What was supposed to happen? What actually happened? What caused the difference? What do we do differently next time? Applied consistently, AARs build a culture of learning from experience rather than simply moving on. The evidence base is primarily observational and practice-based; experimental studies are limited but supportive.
Related concerns
- Red Team Exercise
Red teaming is the practice of assigning someone — or a structured thinking process — to actively try to break your plan, identify its assumptions, find adversarial responses, and surface the failure modes that optimism and groupthink suppress. It originated in military and intelligence contexts and is now used in corporate strategy, security, and product development. The evidence for its effectiveness is largely organizational and practitioner-based rather than from controlled trials.
- Red Team Planning
Red teaming is the practice of assigning someone — or a structured thinking process — to actively try to break your plan, identify its assumptions, find adversarial responses, and surface the failure modes that optimism and groupthink suppress. It originated in military and intelligence contexts and is now used in corporate strategy, security, and product development. The evidence for its effectiveness is largely organizational and practitioner-based rather than from controlled trials.
- Competitor Red Team
Assign someone to genuinely think and plan as your competitor, not just describe them.
Simulate the adversary’s response to your move
- How To Act On Red Team Findings
A red team exercise that doesn’t change the plan has accomplished nothing.
Require the plan to change, not just the risk register
- Red Teaming Stress Testing Plans Before They Fail After A Loss
Run a pre-mortem and then ask the red team to find the failure mode the team missed.
Combine the pre-mortem with red team pressure
- Red Teaming Stress Testing Plans Before They Fail As A Caregiver
Run a pre-mortem and then ask the red team to find the failure mode the team missed.
Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.