Showing results for "Military Leadership" in Forecasting & Strategic Planning

Red teaming. It is a practice as old as the Devil's Advocate, the 11th-century Vatican official charged with discrediting candidates for sainthood. Today, red teams - comprised primarily of fearless skeptics and those assuming the role of saboteurs who seek to better understand the interests, intentions, and capabilities of institutions or potential competitors - are used widely in both the public and private sector.

The South African Special Forces achieved exceptional results with small groups of elite soldiers instead of larger, conventional teams. The Team Secret shows that the same principle applies to the business world – a small team has a greater chance at completing projects efficiently, within a budget and on time. Teams, rather than individuals, form the DNA of many companies, and they play a pivotal role in achieving strategic and financial success. Like Special Forces teams, they must function as a well-oiled machine firing on all cylinders.

In the early 1990s, General Gordon R. Sullivan, Army Chief of Staff, and Colonel Michael V. Harper, his key strategic planner, took the post-Cold War Army into the Information Age. Faced with a 40 percent reduction in staff and funding, they dismantled a cumbersome bureaucracy, reinvented...