rotmanmagazine.ca / 55Dr. Michael Hallsworth is Managing Director,
North America of the Behavioural Insights
Team (BIT), based in Brooklyn, New York.
Dr. Mark Egan is an Advisor working across
BIT’s Health and Research teams, based in
BIT’s London office. Jill Rutter is Program
Director at the Institute for Government,
based in London. Julian McCrae is an Associ-
ate at the Institute for Government. The
complete paper on which this is based,
“Behavioural Government: Using Behavioural Science to Improve How
Governments Make Decisions”, is available online.assist the end user to make a better informed decision or produce
a more robust product’. While red teams are a good idea, our con-
cern is that involving an ‘out-group’ in this way means that their
recommendations are more likely to be dismissed defensively.
Instead, evidence shows that people are more likely to accept
criticism from someone who is part of their own group, or who
identifies with it. Therefore, we propose that part of a strategy
team splits off to create a ‘red team’ at a point when plans have
been developed, but not fixed. Note that the team should consist
of more than one person, since having a single person acting as
‘devil’s advocate’ is not always effective.
If there are a number of challenge points, different sets of
team members could act as challengers for each, to reinforce the
message that this is a ‘team’ not an ‘outsider’ behaviour. An inter-
esting example of collaborative red teaming came in May 2018,
when the UK prime minister divided her cabinet into two teams
to critique potential policies for leaving the European Union.
Each team of three ministers contained two opponents of the
proposal to be discussed and one supporter.
In closing
We are learning more each day about how behavioural science
can shape strategic decision-making in government organiza-
tions for the better, and we believe that our findings can be ap-
plied to organizations of all types.
Importantly, reforms to a decision-making process cannot
focus on individuals in isolation: They must incorporate how sys-
tems, processes and institutions combine to create behaviours. If
we truly care about improving decision-making, sustained effort
will be required from politicians, officials and leaders generally.
The good news is that we now have a clear guide as to where to
focus our efforts.