Building Skills for Better Decision Making in Crises

Delegates from around the world have been briefed on an emerging crisis. They only have a day to develop their country’s policy position on how to respond. Emotions run high as they ask, what are we supposed to do? 

Such a scene took place last month on Fletcher’s campus as part of the Red Team exercise. For four years, Fletcher’s International Security Studies Program has facilitated Red Team to provide students with invaluable experiential learning. Taking place over the course of one weekend, the exercise runs twice annually on campus as well as at GMAP residencies around the world. 

“Red Team is a series of tools that help broaden your thinking about a particular problem and how you might address it,” said Abigail Linnington, associate dean of curriculum and professor of the practice of international security. 

In some contexts, Red Team means acting as an adversary or devil’s advocate during a war gaming exercise. At Fletcher, the exercise is designed to help students learn how to be collaborative group members, glean wisdom from a team, and ask better questions. One of its primary functions, Linnington notes, is raising awareness of individual cognitive biases that exist as people try to learn about a problem in a crisis management situation. 

“We want to make people aware of their biases – how do you work in a team to mitigate biases so that you ask better questions?” said Linnington.

“You state concretely what your assumptions are about the future. Whether you're thinking through the lens of a nation state, an international organization like the United Nations, or a regional organization like NATO, you think through the tools of statecraft at your disposal and how you can work on either a unilateral or multilateral solution to a crisis.” 

Red Team University – A History

“Red Team education developed in the U.S. Army in response to acknowledged planning failures leading up to Operation Iraqi Freedom,” said Steve Rotkoff, one of the program’s founders. “Initially, the founders experimented with lots of different means of changing our planning culture. Eventually we landed on four major themes.” 

The program is designed to target groupthink mitigation, applied critical thinking, cultural apperception and alternative future analysis. Red Team University offers the program for business leaders, global affairs practitioners and students alike. 

“Students want experiential courses that show how classroom tools can be applied to the real world,” said Whitney Hischier, lecturer in strategy and innovation at the Haas School of Business and Goldman School of Public Policy at U.C. Berkeley, who coordinates the program at Fletcher with Rotkoff. 

“Doing this in a simulated environment with a potential realistic scenario allows them to consider how they would make decisions in a policy or operational role in a time-constrained environment,” added Hischier. “The tools are deceptively simple –  the key is understanding timing and choreography in terms of when to use them, who to include, and time bounding the activities.”

Linnington recognizes that Red Team offers a powerful complement to coursework in security studies. 

“I introduce some of these concepts in the classroom, but the students aren't going through a scenario where they're one of the players,” she said. “The Red Team exercise gives them the opportunity to be the decision maker and craft the strategy themselves as a team working under time pressure.”

Responding to a Blockade of Taiwan

This year’s program examined a future scenario in which China imposed a partial blockade on Taiwan. 

Student participants represented various interested states who would be impacted by such a blockade: the Philippines, Japan, the United States and India. Teams were briefed with a white paper written by Fletcher PhD students and provided with background on their country’s relationships with both China and Taiwan. 

The scenario tasked them with assessing their country’s interests in light of various political, military and economic concerns. With the semiconductor industry presenting an extra dimension of interest to the actors, students had their work cut out for them. 

India – A Surprise Mediator

Hamed Al Ghaithi F26 was surprised by how competing interests evolved through the exercise. 

Prior to enrolling in the MALD program, Al Ghaithi worked in his home country, Oman, first as a geneticist and also in literary translation. His work as a translator piqued his curiosity in diplomacy and international relations, leading him to study International Security Studies and International Business. After Fletcher, he hopes to work at a think tank or as a consultant in second channel diplomacy. 

“It was quite surprising that both within and across groups, the options could be far apart,” said Al Ghaithi. “We can't assume that allies will follow suit automatically because one of their allies is threatened.”

Al Ghaithi, who was on the U.S. team, had assumed that the country’s allies would be aligned in standing up against China whereas India may remain on the fence. 

“India opted to mediate between the aggressor and the victim, which surprised me,” said Al Ghaithi. “They explained it quite beautifully in that India has a lot of interest at stake. They are not willing to sacrifice these interests easily.”

Joining the Red Team exercise introduced Al Ghaithi to cognitive tools he hopes to employ in his future work. 

“We need to  make sure that we are aware of and mitigate biased thinking. We need to make sure that our policies are checked on different levels before they are officially formulated,” he said. “All these cognitive tools will help me to tackle problems, not only in the field of security, but in everyday life when it comes to making personal, career or business decisions.”

Transformative Military Thinking 

Through her summer internship at the United States Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii, Rachel Lynch F25 understood she needed to get involved with Red Team this year to pursue her career goals. 

“I heard a lot about Red Team from both civilians and military members within my office,” said Lynch. “They all spoke about it as formative in understanding how a team works and how to figure out national security interests in a complex problem.”

As a MALD student, Lynch studies International Security Studies and Technology and International Affairs. Lynch participated on the Philippines team, which provided her with an opportunity to evaluate the thinking behind her capstone, a project in which she is investigating different strategic military options in the South China Sea. 

“It was really nice to work with a diverse set of perspectives, especially with our military fellows,” said Lynch. “We worked in a collaborative process alongside fellows who had in-region expertise and learned from them, as well as our instructors and professors for the weekend.”

After graduation, Lynch hopes to continue examining and shaping military strategy for the Indo-Pacific in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. The opportunity for experiential learning through Red Team, for Lynch, is a testament to Fletcher’s role in preparing students for dynamic careers around the world. 

“I’m a firm believer that Fletcher’s experiential learning puts it far and above a lot of other graduate programs in international relations,” she said. “These programs are really transformative and allow us to have hands-on experience.”

Read more about Fletcher's International Security Studies Program.