We help leaders build highly effective teams. Part of our work involves conducting TEAM HEALTH CHECKS and helping teams create TEAM CHARTERS, TEAM OPERATING MODELS, and TEAM DEVELOPMENT ROADMAPS.

We also help teams develop a suite of collective TEAM SKILLS.  In this blog we cover Red Teaming.

WHAT IS IT?

Originating in the military and now used more widely, notably in cyber-security contexts, red teaming is a way of testing systems, strategies, plans, policies, decisions etc. – and the underlying assumptions, biases, and world views including groupthink – by applying independent critical thought and alternative perspectives.

A red team can be contracted in (this maximises independent critical thought), or use the organisation’s employees, or a mix.

WHY DO IT?

It invites you to walk in the shoes and understand the world through the eyes of those you seek to serve as well as those who would seek to disrupt your operations; and to identify possible responses to and consequences of your intended action.

It challenges you to test the reliability of evidence you are using. It helps identify faulty logic and flawed analysis. It helps you and colleagues develop shared situational awareness.

It can help you identify critical gaps in knowledge, and the questions you need to find answers to.

In so doing, it helps you and colleagues recognise and step beyond the emotions, bias, and assumptions that are in play. Ultimately, it provides an opportunity for richer conversations, better decisions, more effective action, and improved resilience.

It also develops your critical thinking capabilities, useful across business and life!

HOW TO DO IT?

Create a team of critical and creative thinkers, subject matter experts, non-experts who can ask naïve questions, and role players (e.g. devil’s advocates). 9 maximum.

They do not all need to come from the leadership team. Involving other staff, including externals, will freshen things up and mitigate group think.

Conduct the red team event in three stages.

#1   Diagnostic Stage (Testing Beliefs). Is the information being used accurate, well-evidenced, logical and underpinned by valid assumptions?

#2   Creative Stage (Wider Possibilities). Is the definition of the problem that the system, strategy, policy, or plan etc. seeks to mitigate artificially constrained? Have all possible options been considered? What further builds and development are possible? Have the consequences been thought through?

#3   Challenge Stage (Robust Choices). Are the options offered robust? Are they resilient to disruption or external challenge? Which of the options is the strongest (and what criteria determines this)? What are the chances of a successful outcome? what more could/should be done?

HOW LONG?

Very simply, depending on the subject (and the level of risk involved), this can be run as a mini-workshop over a couple of hours or a more involved event over a couple of days.

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

In addition to our own experience we drew on the following UK Government publication.

CAN WE HELP YOU? YOU BET WE CAN!

To re-iterate the initial points around independence of critical thought and alternative perspectives, we can offer you the following support:

• Red team training.
• Facilitation of the red team process.
• Provision of external red team members, in-person and online.

INTERESTED?

Get in touch by emailing info@freshairleadership.com or calling +44 7776 153428.

You are wasting time, effort, and money! 

And you could be losing good people!

Dig deeper. Do the work. Be ready for what may be multiple causes. 

HERE IS ONE WAY…

A Multiple Cause Diagram will:

• Help you untangle your thinking.
• Identify causal relationships.
• Suggest effective points of intervention.
• Shine a light on unintended consequences that might arise if you take inappropriate actions.

And there is even more value:

• Do this as a team.
• Do this with stakeholders.
• It can help explain your thinking to others.
• They in turn can build on your thinking by spotting links you may have overlooked.
• A super-effective tool for collective pictorial dialogue!
• A tool that builds connection and common understanding.
• A tool that help minimise risk and spot opportunities!

SOME SIMPLE RULES…

• Write down the topic in the middle of a large piece of paper (or use software tools).
• Identify what the immediate causes are.
• Write these down, preferably on post-it notes so you can move these around as the picture emerges.
• Use arrows to indicate the direction of causality.
• Go “back” or”down” another level and consider what the causes are of these immediate causes, and so on.
• Consider whether there are any “lateral” connections between the causes.
• Are there any “feedback loops” emerging as a result of these connections? These might suggest effective points for intervention.
• Are there any groups of causes that taken together could be nailed with a single intervention? See example below.
• Also, consider what the topic itself might be the cause of.
• Use the other half of the paper to do this.
• Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

AN EXAMPLE…

Meetings are a necessary part of any business. And we have all experienced ineffective meetings. What if we could make things better? Check out this first pass at creating a multiple cause diagram. What would you add or amend?

A NOTE OF CAUTION…

Multiple cause diagrams are not reality. They are a simple high level representation of the world, or system, you and colleagues are experiencing.

But they are a whole load more valuable and helpful than fire-fighting a bunch of symptoms. 

You owe it to yourself and your business to give it a go. 

Let me know how you get on.

CAN WE HELP YOU? YOU BET WE CAN!

Get in touch now.

Dave Stewart

Founder & Chief Executive
dave@freshairleadership.com
07776 153428

You make decisions all the time, right?

But are you any good at making them? Who says? You? Colleagues? Others?

Are you noticing how you make them? Do you go on gut feel? Data? Others’ suggestions? Loudest voices? Favoured voices?

What is a good decision in your world? What criteria? What about readiness? Your mood? Your general wellness? And who do you include? How does it work across departments, functions, geographies?

For example, the Joint Decision Model is used by the Emergency Services to manage complex situations involving multiple different agencies with their different cultures and ways of working.

You will note the statement of common purpose in the centre. This acts as a reference point throughout the decision-making process i.e. each step MUST support “Working together. Saving lives. Reducing harm.” So, if waiting to get solid information risks lives, the Emergency Services leaders will press on round “the wheel” and take early action if necessary.

The “wheel” also makes it clear that leaders can/must continuously “go round the wheel” i.e. decision making in an evolving situation is not a single cycle as every decision and action affects the situation which then requires consideration and further decisions and actions until the situation has been resolved

A RUSH TO ACTION

We work with the leaders and teams of scaling, merging, and resetting companies.

You would be surprised, maybe not, that decision making is often poorly considered, if at all. There is often a rush to action.  Quality thought and collective engagement are absent.

Sometimes it works. Sometime it doesn’t. What are the avoidable costs of not making this a top issue?

MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY!

Sometimes decisions are COMMUNICATED AT colleagues. Fait accompli!

Sometimes colleagues are CONSULTED WITH about prospective decisions that are pretty much pre-determined.  Fait accompli too!

Sometimes they are a DEBATE between well defended positions. Winners and losers.

Sometimes they are made by an inner circle. Insiders and outsiders.

ANOTHER WAY

In high functioning teams, decisions are the outcome of genuine DIALOGUE where participants actively listen, and contribute without emotional attachment.

They create new understanding and novel insights in service of the business. Sometime this is not pretty but is embraced and valued as a creative process. Egos are parked elsewhere.

CREATING THE CONDITIONS FOR SUCCESS

What about the conditions for effective decision-making? How much thought goes into this? Location? Framing? Participation? Psychological safety? Process? Commitment? Communication?

CAN WE HELP? YOU BET WE CAN!

Let us look at the way decisions are made in your business. Let us help you develop a decision-making framework, one that helps you make consistently well considered decisions. A framework that recognises there are different types of decisions and different contexts. A framework that is flexible yet reliable. A philosophy as well as a process and practice.

If you are not making good decisions on a consistent basis, you aren’t really leading are you?

Be our client. Get in touch now.

Dave Stewart

Founder & Chief Executive
dave@freshairleadership.com
07776 153428

What?

Score orienteering, in the form that we use it, is an outdoor exercise in working together as a team to develop and execute a strategy.

We use small areas with good paths. No compasses or advanced navigation skills are required.

Teams earn points by navigating to check points on a course marked out on a map and/or satellite photograph.  Each check point has a different value reflecting its distance from the start/finish and how easy or difficult it is to find. They have unique letters which are recorded onto a team card. Teams can split into sub-teams of 2 people minimum (one aspect of a wider Risk Management Plan) to cover as much of the course as possible.

Here is the rub.

Teams are given a fixed time to achieve as much as possible after which penalty points escalate rapidly.

The test therefore is really about developing a strategy and executing a plan to maximise return on the skills of the team and a fixed investment of time!

Want to know more about how we can support you and your team? Call/message 07776 153428 or email dave@freshairleadership.com 

Why?

We use score orienteering in our leadership team programmes for a number of reasons:

• It is fun!
• It is a great way of switching up the energy during the day.
• The learning insights that emerge are strongly anchored to what is always a highly memorable experience.
• It engages everyone, whether fleet of foot or less so (as there are check points near and far), with a premium placed on the thinking and strategising that happens (or doesn’t!).

With good facilitation, it provides a memorable way into discussing team function. This, and other experiential activities we employ, are not vehicles for judging anyone’s performance. They are simply ways into carefully facilitated discussions.

• Psychological safety. Did team members feel included, safe to learn, safe to contribute, safe to challenge?
• How collaborative was the strategising, decision-making, and planning experience? How did people feel about what they experienced of their colleagues?
• What did colleagues notice about their team roles preferences (after Belbin). Who were the strategists, planners, resource managers etc? Did anyone feel left out?
• How well did participants appreciate the difference between the plan (the map) and reality (the ground). How might this apply back in the business?
• How were choices and trade-offs made in seeking an optimum route in an environment that presented opportunity and risk?
• How were team members employed on this task? How were skills and experience canvassed and used to best effect?

Where?

Here is an example of a control sheet we give to teams (showing map and satellite photo variants). In this case the area is around the House for an Art Lover in Bellahouston Park, Glasgow.

How?

On a safety note, events such as these need a thorough risk assessment and risk management plan. When we organise these, we use staff who are experienced and qualified outdoor leaders (through Mountain Training UK) and first aiders, and a risk management process which has been externally audited.

Can we help you?

Our core business is helping business leaders develop highly effective teams. This post about score orienteering is just one example of our experiential approach.

Want to know more about how we can support you and your team? Call/message 07776 153428 or email dave@freshairleadership.com 

Have you noticed how easy it is to jump to a wrong conclusion!? You are convinced you are “right”. Yet others are convinced they are “right” too!

The Ladder of Inference (after Argyris, C., ‘Overcoming Organisational Defences: Facilitating Organisational Learning’) provides a way of visualising how you go from experiencing an event to making a decision.

It reinforces the value of self-awareness around how we experience the world and the assumptions and biases in play. A note of caution, however. Models don’t claim to be “right” but they do offer a way into understanding a topic.

• Starting at the bottom of the ladder, an event happens which we take notice of as an experience. We sometimes refer to these as “facts”.
• Because of our many different biases, not least around how we experience the world through our different senses, we can’t experience the “wholeness” of an event. Rather we end up with a personal sample.
• We interpret what our sample of the event means by applying our assumptions, often without considering or even being aware of them.
• And from this meaning, we draw conclusions.
• Over time, and the multiple similar events which we interpret in a similar way to reach similar conclusions, we develop beliefs.
• Armed with these beliefs, we take actions that seem “right”.

The speed of this process is such that it can appear that we  “jump to conclusions”. Without pausing to reflect, check the data, consult with others, and engage in critical thinking, it can be easy to jump to the wrong conclusions and make poor decisions.

How to use this?

Use the concept of a ladder to challenge or validate your own and other people’s views on a subject. What exactly are the “facts”? What biases and assumptions are in play? Could different conclusions be reached and different decisions made by inquiring into the event more fully and re-framing our assumptions?

Whatever, it is good to talk things through. Always.

Have you noticed leaders who are anxious and confused around when to listen and when to act?

I wonder if some leaders are being overly influenced by the never-ending stream of books on leadership. Added to which is a lot of energetic chatter on platforms such as LinkedIn.

These talk of psychological safety and models such as servant leadership, compassionate leadership, distributed leadership, and more.

Written as if they are cosy, accountability-shielding concepts, set in a single, unchanging, operating context.

They talk to the need for creating environments and setting examples which enable everyone to feel included, able to learn, encouraged to contribute, and ultimately to constructively challenge the status quo. And that is good.

Very few talk about context, confidence, accountability, and action.

Context, Confidence, Collaboration

I have watched leaders nervously ask questions hoping to promote a discussion with their team or a wider staff group.

Their body language and eye contact, and their verbal hesitancy, fluency, and volume convey a lack of confidence in what they are saying and doing. They defer in a way that signals a hope the discussion won’t be difficult. They aren’t really clear about the purpose of their engagement, other than a vague notion of it being a good thing to do.

They are acting out someone else’s leadership model. Not very convincingly.

Confident and competent leaders sense the context and consciously choose to “communicate at” (i.e. my point of view), “consult with” (i.e. still my point of view but I will give you a shout), or “collaborate with” (i.e. how do we create fresh insight together?). These leaders have at least 3 modes of context-relevant engagement.

Less confident, less competent leaders will feel uneasy about any engagement. At best, they will cling to the comfort of control that “communicating at” or “consulting with” offers. Fearful and adrift.

Highly confident, less competent leaders won’t just cling to these two modes, they will stick rigidly to them with relish as it is all about them, their control, and sense of power. Fearful and attached.

Confident and competent leaders artfully create powerful questions, model active listening, and facilitate a dialogue. They are passionate about achieving a higher collective outcome, and detached from any sense of a personal starting position. They let go to let come. Passionate and detached.

Action, Accountability, After-Action

Confident leaders and their teams will have worked out why (context), how (modes of engagement) and when (time is so important) they must converge on a decision and take action.

No confusion or dithering.

There will be levels of trust that enable constructive challenge, commitment, and mutual accountability.

No “my way or the highway”.

And they will continuously review and adjust their decisions and courses of action.

No “fire and forget”.

All in the service of the higher collective outcome.

Passionately detached.

—

If you are interested in learning more about dialogue or how we can help you and your team become even effective in your world get in touch. Email us at info@freshairleadership.com or call +44 7776 153428.

Let me share our operating context first.

We help chief executives build the capability of their leadership teams, and so we are typically working with individuals and teams of up to 12 or so. Small populations. Working closely together.

For us, psychometrics don’t work for a number of reasons:

• Some participants can hide behind labels that excuse dysfunctional behaviours. They can believe their labels are enduring statements of truth about how they show up. “I am a Red WXYZ, and that’s just the way I operate”.
• They are a seductive waste of time. It is human nature to respond to an online questionnaire carefully and perhaps defensively, and then closely study the well-presented report all about us.
• They can seduce facilitators too into believing they are doing good work for their clients. Following the contents of a scripted report is not the same as stepping into the messy and difficult space “between the noses” where the elephants roam!
• Many psychometric tools seem to have dubious foundations. How can they accurately capture the complexity of being human in demanding leadership roles in multiple, ever-changing contexts?
• Lack of context is a problem. They present a snapshot, ignoring that we present different versions of our deepest selves under different conditions at different times.
• For executive leadership teams the appetite for these tools can be dulled to the point of resentment or disregard if executives have been subjected to these over several years. Especially with different results. This in turn can introduce risk to the success of subsequent development work.

There are far more powerfully self-aware ways into illuminating conversations about how we individually and collectively show up at work, or wherever. For us these include context-specific first and second person reflective narratives and verbal testimony, workplace observation, experiential simulations of workplace scenarios, constellations etc..

What do you think?

Are clients missing out on some richness that is worth their time and money?

Do we need to revisit our position on this?

Dave Stewart
Managing Director
The Fresh Air Leadership Company

27^th July 2023

Here are 3 ways in which you are unconsciously screwing your business and some thoughts around how to fix things.

PROBLEM #1. YOU’RE LIKE A PIG IN SH1T!

You love the rough and tumble of operations. Doing stuff. Fixing things. Hearing the applause. Heroic. And at the back of your mind, you know two things.

STRATEGIC THINKING AND POOR EXECUTION EARN YOU A DANGEROUS RIDE, AND EXECUTION WITHOUT DIRECTION LEADS TO STASIS AND IRRELEVANCE.

Solution:

Take time out of the business. Explore the bigger picture.  What are the trends? The important timelines? What are the threats? The opportunities? How will you evolve a roadmap to communicate and guide the development of the capabilities you are going to need?

Go offsite. Find a place that will inspire imaginative thinking and courageous conversations. Hire an external facilitator. One that will guide you through a structured process. One that will call you out when your thinking gets narrow, biased, or sloppy. One that will help you make sense of complexity. One that will help you converge on a way ahead.

“Thank you both so much for an exceptionally powerful and enjoyable couple of days. It has very much jump started our thinking and given us confidence that what we are planning is heading in the right direction supported and bolstered by the ideas we generated with your guidance.”   James. CEO. Training & Events.

Want a strategic planning framework to kick start some big conversations? Email me on dave@freshairleadership.com or call 07776 153428.

PROBLEM #2.  YOU’RE LOSING IT!

More sales. More hires. Your business is growing. But something isn’t right.

THINGS ARE BEGINNING TO DRIFT. HIGHER COSTS. LOWER PROFITS.

You’re losing that unity of effort and common purpose you and your people had when you were smaller. And you’re spending more and more time pulling things back.

LESS AND LESS ALIGNMENT. MORE AND MORE FRICTION. LESS AND LESS BUZZ.

Solution:

You need to look at your operating system. The whole way your business hangs together. Not just your sales model.  Where do leaders and teams focus their effort? What are the predictive metrics that matter? How do you know what works? How will you evolve performance and strengthen resilience?

Find a space that will allow you and your senior team to do some focussed work on this, yet also provide for reflective interludes. An offsite venue that has out-the-door-access into great countryside is perfect. Again, hire an external facilitator to help you define your operating system and your engagement plan for communicating it.

This workshop (or series of workshops) is going to throw up a series of activities and projects that will need the personal sponsorship of senior team colleagues. A well-run workshop won’t conclude until tasks, ownership, success measures, and governance have been agreed and committed to.

“This was an eye-opening few days for us. By looking at our business as a human system and building our understanding of it up from foundational needs such as “Stay True” and “Stay Well”, and addressing others such as “Stay Relevant”, “Deliver Unforgettable” and “Stay Ambitious” we have thoroughly refreshed the way we work together, and what it means to lead this business effectively!”  Neil. Managing Director. Professional Services.

Want to know how we can help you build a better operating system? Email me on dave@freshairleadership.com or call 07776 153428.

PROBLEM #3.  SHINY SQUIRRELS!

So, you have done something about Problem #2, and you’re on the way to defining or re-tuning your operating system.  But performance is still stalling. Patchy success perhaps.  But no consistency.

LEADERS AND TEAMS AREN’T THINKING AND ACTING AS IF YOUR BUSINESS DEPENDS ON IT.

They are good people, but they are easily distracted by shiny squirrels.

EXECUTION LACKS DISCIPLINE AND RIGOUR.

Solution:

Understanding the operating system is just a first step.  People need to get beyond this and actively use it.  To learn by doing. To develop expertise. To collectively adapt and improve it. To own it.

The boring truth is that once you have a system that works, you need to keep turning the handle on it. You need to deliver on the inputs in order to get the outputs. And you need to have metrics in place to understand and optimise this relationship in the context of your strategic intentions.

SYSTEMISATION AND FOCUSSED EXECUTION. NONE OF THIS IS HIGH TECH. IT’S ABOUT LEADERSHIP AND TEAMWORK.

Who is going to do all of this? Hire an external consultant to provide critical oversight, some coaching perhaps, and who will hold you and colleagues to account. Longer term consider establishing a Chief Operating Officer role with a seat on the senior leadership team to ensure strategy and operations remain aligned.

“I am excited by the senior leadership team and I can see it growing into a very strong force. The work you have done with them to systemise our business winning and project management processes has created something that feels like a cool and compelling brand! The XXX Way! Thank you.”  Paul. Executive Chairman. Engineering and Technology.

WHAT NOW?

If you are not regularly EXPLORING the wider environment and EVOLVING ways in which to remain relevant, nor paying attention to the quality of operational EXECUTION, then you are probably NOT leading the business as effectively as you want to be.

Let’s explore how we can help you. Get in touch with me now on dave@freshairleadership.com or call 07776 153428.

Best wishes,

Dave

Dave Stewart
Founder and Chief Executive
The Fresh Air Leadership Company

We help newly appointed CEOs build highly effective leadership teams.

Based in Scotland, operating UK-wide.

As a leader, being able to ask questions that get to the bottom of problems is important. Right?

Questions, and the way we phrase them, have the power to shape our lives.

Have you noticed how the kinds of questions we ask end up framing the quality of our interactions with family members, friends, and work colleagues?

Have you ever asked your partner, “how was your day?” Or a child, “how was school?”

Odds are that you received a curt, disinterested, and uninteresting reply. Maybe just a stare and a grunt!

Instead, try something like, “What was the best thing that happened today?’ Or in the words of M People, “What have you done today to make you feel proud?”

You’ll engage a quite different part of the brain and will be much more likely to fire up a conversation of surprising energy and passion. One that brings forward the positive stories that would otherwise remain untold.

Turning a negative into a positive

In business, paying attention to how we ask questions is super-important.

There’s a great story about a company that was experiencing a high rate of turnover. Fifteen percent of the workforce was leaving every two years.

The management team ran some staff engagements and found a long list of complaints and concerns. They enlisted the help of an external consultant.

On arrival the consultant asked a different question to the original one. “What is it about the company that makes 85% of employees want to stay? “

Further work uncovered hundreds of positive stories, many of which revealed factors that most of the management team had forgotten about or hadn’t even considered.

Surfacing and sharing these stories prompted a further engagement with staff to collaboratively inquire into a second big question, “How do we need to be to be right together? Right people. Right fit. Right company. Right together.”

Fixing things isn’t a bad approach but is unlikely to move your company much beyond where you were before you had problems. A sort of ‘not bad’ to ‘quite good’ transition. But tapping into what is already strong and using this as a launchpad for enhancement can be transformative and take you from ‘good’ to ‘great’.

Strengths-based questions and a tool to help you

Forming that initial strengths-based question is at the core of the super-powerful leadership philosophy and process of Appreciative (or Strengths-Based) Inquiry.

Appreciative Inquiry is a way of looking at organisational change which focuses on identifying and doing more of what is already working well, rather than looking for glitches and trying to sort them out. Strategic change is fuelled by focusing on the core strengths of an organisation and then using those strengths to reshape the future.

Next time we’ll explore this in more detail via an outdoor workshop we ran in the Scottish Highlands and give you a tool to help you run your own transformative team and staff engagements.

Can’t wait? Need help now? Then get in touch on +44 7776 153428 and dave@freshairleadership.com

Best wishes,

Dave

Dave Stewart
Founder and Managing Director
The Fresh Air Leadership Company
Email: dave@freshairleadership.com
Mobile: +44 7776 153428

The Fresh Air Leadership Company helps leaders and teams figure out who they are and what it is to lead well in their worlds. We do this by creating bespoke no-bullshit thinking and development experiences for leaders and teams in amazing Scottish spaces with exceptional and unconventional coach-facilitators.