is it really easier to be the bad guys - woolley

8/7/2019 Is it really easier to be the bad guys - woolley

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Offense and Defense in Teams

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Is it really easier to be the bad guys?The effects of strategic orientation on team process in competitive environments

Anita Williams WoolleyCarnegie Mellon UniversityTepper School of Business

5000 Forbes AvenuePittsburgh, PA 15213Tel. (412) 268-2287Fax. (412) [email protected]

Authors Note: I wish to extend sincere appreciation to J. Richard Hackman for his

support and advice during the course of this fieldwork. Many thanks to Beth Ahern, Margaret

MacDonald, Ellen Powers, Allison Ounanian, Brigitta Rubin, Kerry Buckley, Alissa Allen and

the MITRE Corporation for support and research assistance. Helpful comments on earlier

versions of this paper were supplied by Linda Argote, Rosalind Chow, Matt Cronin, Amy

Edmondson, Martine Haas, Don Moore, Michael Boyer OLeary, and Laurie Weingart. Editorial

assistance was provided by Cathy Senderling. This investigation was also supported in part by

NSF Research Grant REC-0106070, CFDA No. 47.076. with support from Fred Ambrose and

the Intelligence Technology Innovation Center at the Central Intelligence Agency.


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Is it really easier to be the bad guys?

The effects of team strategic orientation on team process in competitive environments

Teams are frequently called upon to address critical situations in competitive

environments. However, current models of team process are insensitive to the effects of team

strategic orientation. This paper expands existing work on team process and strategic orientation

to introduce and explicate the constructs of offensive and defensive strategic orientations in

teams. The study takes advantage of a rare opportunity to observe eight counterterrorism teams

in the intelligence community that explicitly adopted an offensive or defensive strategic

orientation in evaluating current terrorist threats. The resulting inductive model suggests that the

strength of a teams strategic orientation was enhanced or inhibited by its perception of

oppositional strength and the problem scope it assumed in confronting the adversary. This in turn

had effects on the work strategy the teams adopted, the extent to which they relied on internal

versus external knowledge, and the norms for effort that evolved within the teams. The resulting

conclusions and action plans of teams on offense communicated deeper analysis and more

confidence and creativity, while the products of teams on defense incorporated a broader range

of perspectives but fewer firm conclusions. The observations suggest broader theoretical

implications for research on teams, as the offense and defense strategic orientations

influence fundamental team processes related to effort, performance strategy and use of member

knowledge and skill.


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When organizations face critical situations, their responses are frequently formulated and

carried out by teams. Teams are commonly used for responding to medical and humanitarian

crises (Klein et al. 2006, Milliken et al., Xiao et al. 1996), conducting military operations (Salas

et al. 1995), crafting organizational strategy (Burgelman and Grove 2007, Cohen and Bailey

1997, Hambrick and Mason 1984, Lyles and Schwenk 1992, Nadkarni and Barr 2008), and

gathering competitive intelligence (Ganesh et al. 2003). Furthermore, team failure in such

situations can be disastrous, as the inability to size up an evolving situation in the environment

can lead to widespread financial loss, job loss, and even loss of life.

Competitive situations are similar to dynamic or high-velocity situations in that they are

constantly changing and fast-moving (Eisenhardt 1989b, Faraj and Xiao 2006, Klein et al. 2006),

but with an important addition they also involve active adversaries (Porter 1991). The presence

of adversaries makes information about the plans and intentions of others, as well as how they

might counter ones own activities, highly relevant. Information collection and sustained high

motivation are both critical to a teams performance in these contexts. However, prior research

findings regarding the effects of competitive contexts on these processes are somewhat

conflicting. Theoretical and empirical work on threat rigidity suggests that threats in a

competitive environment constrain information processing (Dutton 1993, Griffin et al. 1995,

Staw et al. 1981), and in some circumstances teams can fail to gather enough external

information, thus basing decisions on less information than they should (Ancona and Caldwell

1992, Eisenhardt 1989b, Janis 1982, Tasa and Whyte 2005), to the detriment of their

performance. In contrast, other work suggests that competition and the stress it creates leads to

greateropenness to external information (Driskell and Salas 1991, Menon and Pfeffer 2003).


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However, teams can risk gathering too much information from the environment (Haas 2006,

Haas and Hansen 2005, Wong 2004) while failing to make appropriate use of their own

members knowledge (Stasser et al. 1995), also to the detriment of performance. Determining the

conditions under which teams might tend to gather too much or too little external information in

competitive environments is critical to creating the conditions for effective performance.

Furthermore, much of a teams ability to engage in the labor-intensive task of information

gathering and analysis is driven by its overall level of motivation (De Dreu et al. 2008, De Dreu

2007). Here again, the results of existing research on how competition might affect team

motivation is also somewhat conflicting. Classic work on the effects of intergroup competition

suggests motivational benefits (e.g., Deutsch 1949, M. Sherif et al. 1961). However, work on

self-regulatory focus suggests that individuals trying to prevent negative events from occurring

can experience low motivation accompanied by negative affect (Crowe and Higgins 1997,

Forster et al. 2001). Given the importance of motivation and information processing to effective

team functioning in competitive environments, the circumstances under which each of these

effects are likely to occur is important to sort out.

One potentially important explanatory variable to consider in understanding the effects of

competition on group functioning is strategic orientation. I conceptualize the construct of team

strategic orientation as encompassing the strategic direction and perceptions a team develops

when operating vis--vis an opponent. Team strategic orientation can be characterized as

offensive, or focused on pursuing objectives whose attainment occurs at the expense of an

opponent, or defensive, and focused on preventing loss at the hands of an opponent. This

construct builds on existing work conducted at both the organizational and individual levels of


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analysis that suggests important consequences for team functioning. Research on strategic

orientation at the organizational level demonstrates that the strategic goals organizations adopt

vis--vis adversaries shape the manner in which they organize work and the emphasis they place

on innovation- vs. efficiency-oriented activities (R. E. Miles and Snow 1978, Rajagopalan and

Finkelstein 1992, Rajagopalan 1997). Research on related topics, such as self-regulatory focus at

the individual level, suggests that adopting promotion-focused goals (vs. prevention-focused

goals) can positively influence the level of effort and perseverance individuals exhibit in their

work, particularly in the face of negative performance feedback (Forster et al. 1998, Crowe and

Higgins 1997). While existing work related to regulatory focus and strategic orientation in teams

has focused on the emotional consequences of promotion and prevention goals (Faddegon,

Ellemers, & Scheepers, 2009; Faddegon, Scheepers, & Ellemers, 2007), as well as their

respective influence on levels of riskiness vs. conservatism in decision-making (Florack and

Hartmann 2007, Levine et al. 2000), prior research has not explored the implications of team

strategic orientation for how a team organizes its work, with associated consequences for internal

or external information use, performance strategy, and overall levels of motivation.

This study seeks to explore the question: How does team strategic orientation affect team

process in competitive environments? Given the theoretical and empirical limits of prior work, I

take an inductive, theory-building approach (Eisenhardt 1989a). This study capitalizes on a rare

opportunity to observe eight interagency counterterrorism teams in the intelligence community,

where I take advantage of a natural experiment to compare how teams confronted with the same

information about a threat evolve a different set of processes as a function of the strategic

orientation they adopt.


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Furthermore, my analysis reveals some new dimensions underlying a teams strategic

orientation, which allow us to characterize its strength as well as its direction. A key insight is

that while a teams strategic direction (i.e. offense vs. defense) sets a baseline of assumptions

teams adopt in facing the environment, the strength of team strategic orientation is reinforced by

teams assessments of (1) oppositional strength and (2) the scope of the problem they face.

Drawing on behavioral evidence, I find that these three elements of strategic orientationproblem

scope, oppositional strength, and strategic directionrespectively impact the strategy teams use

for their work, their emphasis on internal versus external knowledge in assessing their

environment, and the nature of the norms for effort that evolve (Hackman 2002). Team process,

in turn, reinforces team strategic orientation, and also has important implications for team

decision-making and performance (Eisenhardt 1989b, Peterson et al. 1998, Tasa and Whyte

2005) impacting the breadth of information, creativity, and confidence that is communicated in

team conclusions and action plans.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

The goal of this work is to shed light on how playing offense or defense affects team

process in competitive environments. Existing work on team strategic orientation as well as team

process provides important foundations from which to begin and across which to bridge.

Strategic Orientation

Existing work on strategic orientation has evolved independently but somewhat in

parallel at the organizational and individual levels of analysis (and, in some cases, using slightly

different names and terminologies). Both lines of research supply useful points of departure for

our evolving understanding of strategic orientation in teams.


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Work at the organizational level characterizes firm strategic orientations as

prospectors or defenders (R. E. Miles and Snow 1978) where prospectors are more

offensive, pursuing opportunities in their environment, while defenders are more focused on

holding their ground. These organizational strategic orientations have been shown to have

consequences for the internal activities that firms prioritize. Prospectors emphasize innovation

activities, particularly innovations that will steal market share from competitors, while defenders

emphasize efficiency, or practices that will prevent the loss of profit despite pricing pressures

and other challenges posed by competition (Rajagopalan and Finkelstein 1992, Rajagopalan

1997, Venkatraman 1989).

Research related to strategic orientation and self-regulatory focus at the individual level

characterizes individual strategic direction as promotion or prevention, with associated effects

for motivation and self- regulation (Elliot 1999, Higgins 1997, Keltner et al. 2003). This work

has demonstrated that the behavioral inhibition system associated with prevention goals is

activated by punishment, threat, and uncertainty, and evokes more negative emotion and

heightened vigilance and inspection of punishment contingencies. By contrast, the behavioral

approach system associated with promotion goals regulates behavior related to sex, food, safety,

achievement, and aggression and evokes more positive emotion and cognitive assessments of

reward contingencies in the environment. Individuals working on promotion tasks exhibit higher

levels of motivation and perseverance than individuals working on prevention tasks, particularly

in the face of negative feedback (Kruglanski et al. 1993, Pierro et al. 2006, Spiegel et al. 2004).

Concepts related to self-regulatory focus and strategic orientation have been explored to a

limited degree at the team level. The effects of promotion vs. prevention strategic directions at


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the individual level have been shown to converge at the team level and influence preferences for

conservative vs. risky action in group decision-making (Levine et al. 2000, Paese et al. 1993,

Tindale et al. 1993) and to direct members attention to gain- or loss-relevant information

(Florack and Hartmann 2007) as well as create convergence in group emotion (Faddegon et al.

2007). However, these studies were not conducted in the context of intergroup competition, a

situation we know can enhance group motivation (M. Sherif et al. 1961, Simmel 1955, Stein

1976). In addition, existing work on self-regulatory focus does not fully explain why some teams

are more open to information from their environment while others rely more on information from

members within the team, nor how strategic direction influences the strategy a team adopts to

organize its collective diagnosis and action planning. Thus, examining the evolution of team

process in the context of team strategic orientation, as well as factors that make a teams

orientation stronger or weaker, will provide some important insights on these issues.

Team Process

A well-rounded understanding of team process needs to consider use of member

knowledge and skill, team performance strategy, and management of member effort (Hackman

2002). While a lot of research has been conducted on each of these three components

independently, little has examined their co-evolution in team performance or their sensitivity to

competitive environmental dynamics. Below I briefly review what is known about each and

highlight existing gaps that the current study aims to address.

Member knowledge and skill

In order to operate effectively in a competitive environment, teams must make good use of

the knowledge and skills members hold (Eisenhardt 1989b, Faraj and Xiao 2006, Klein et al.


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2006) as well as effectively search the environment for information about their opponents plans

and intentions (Prescott and Smith 1987). Much of the existing work on collective information

processing in teams focuses almost exclusively on how members manage information internally,

where information search entails surfacing information from fellow members. In this regard, a

large and growing body of work examines the conditions surrounding internal team expertise

recognition and knowledge sharing. Team members can be prompted or motivated to volunteer

what they know through role assignments (Stasser et al. 1995, Wittenbaum et al. 1998), formal

coordination processes (Faraj and Sproull 2000), epistemic motivation (De Dreu et al. 2008) and

leader inquiry (Tschan et al. 2006), as well as cues from the environment that activate relevant

knowledge (Bonito 2007). Mechanisms that trigger the recognition of expertise by fellow group

members include the status cues of expert members (Bunderson 2003), familiarity of members

with each other (Lewis 2004), frequency of communication among members (Lewis 2004, Lewis

et al. 2007), coordination processes that designate members as knowledge holders (Faraj and

Sproull 2000, Faraj and Xiao 2006, Stewart and Stasser 1995), and other features of the

knowledge holders or task situation that allow members to observe evidence of what others know

in order to identify the most knowledgeable members in a given situation (Baumann and Bonner

2004, Henry 1995, Littlepage et al. 1997, Woolley et al. 2008).

In terms of using information from the environment, i.e., outside of the team itself, prior

research has shown that executives are more likely to scan the environment when strategic

uncertainty is high (Daft et al. 1988, R. C. May et al. 2000). Teams engage in several different

types of external information-gathering, some of which are aimed at communicating with and

coordinating with the environment, while others are focused on gathering information and


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guarding against information release (Ancona and Caldwell 1992). Information gathering from

the environment is not uniformly positive, however; teams that lack sufficient structural diversity

are unlikely to bring in information that is novel or unique enough to offset the costs of the time

spent gathering it (Cummings 2004, Reagans and McEvily 2003). Consequently, some studies

suggest a trade-off between the gathering of external information and the processing of what

team members already know (Haas 2006, Wong 2004). However, we do not yet understand

when and why a team will be more focused on internal vs. external information. Given the

critical nature of environmental information and internal knowledge and skills to team

performance in competitive environments, understanding underlying issues that drive this

internal vs. external trade-off can be critical to improving team performance.

Team Strategy

Team strategy, a second major element of team process (Hackman 2002), has direct

implications for team information processing and performance. A teams strategy defines its

priorities and shapes its action plans for coordinating activities toward a goal (Ericksen and Dyer

2004, Hackman 1987). While strategic orientation describes the team's general goals vis--vis

others in its environment, a team's strategy describes the means whereby the team organizes

activities and intentions internally. Although existing work demonstrates that the strategic

orientation an organization adopts in a competitive environment influences the priorities it sets

among its internal activities (Rajagopalan and Finkelstein 1992), we do not know how team

strategic orientation affects or is affected by team performance strategy. Furthermore, while

existing work on team process examines patterns of development over time (Ancona et al. 2001,

Gersick 1988,Marks et al. 2001), there is little that examines the interrelation of team


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performance strategy, use of knowledge and skill, and member effort as mutually reinforcing

facets of team process.

Team strategy has particularly important implications for information collection and use.

Work on outcome- and process-focused strategies in teams (Woolley 2009a) has differentiated

the two and demonstrated their implications for the amount of information a team attends to in its

environment and how it makes use of that information. Outcome-focused teams allow desired

outcomes and objectives to take precedence over the processes for conducting work, while

process-focused teams allow processes to take precedence over and determine work products.

Outcome-focused teams set goal priorities and attend more selectively to information that is

relevant to their selected goals; process-focused teams identify sub-tasks and action steps,

connecting steps to members and over time, generally allowing members to collect more

information (Woolley 2009a, b). Thus, a teams strategy strongly influences how much

information it will collect, which has important implications for performance in competitive

environments where judicious collection and use of information are critical (Gilad 1991).

Team effort and motivation

Teams in any setting can struggle with managing the effort of members, as a long history of

work on social loafing and free-riding readily attests (Jones 1984, Latane et al. 1979, i.e., Karau

and Williams 1993). Work on the effects of competition in teams has generally demonstrated a

positive effect of intergroup competition on team levels of motivation and effort (Deutsch 1949,

Erev et al. 1993, Julian and Perry 1967, M. A. May and Doob 1937, M. Sherif et al. 1961, Stein

1976). However, as discussed above, work on strategic orientation and self-regulatory focus has

demonstrated that while the motivational benefits largely hold true for promotion-focused goals,


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prevention-focused defensive goals can result in reduced motivation and negative emotion in

groups (Faddegon et al. 2009, 2007, Florack and Hartmann 2007). Since these latter findings

have not been examined with respect to competitive situations, it may be the case that the

positive dynamics associated with intergroup competition (i.e. group cohesion, self-serving

biases) overcome the otherwise negative effects of prevention-focused defensive goals. Given

how demanding long-term competitive situations can be, a better understanding of the conditions

under which motivational decrements are likely to occur is critical.

Focus of Current Study

The purpose of this study is to develop a model of how team strategic orientation affects

team process. A rare opportunity was made available to examine the dynamics of strategic

orientation in a situation in which they exist naturallythe U.S. Intelligence Community (IC).

Intelligence analysts spend much of their careers predicting actions that other people or groups

may take and/or reasoning about the proper actions and responses of the U.S. government. Like

business organizations, the strategic analysis of teams in the IC occurs under tremendous time

pressure, sometimes with ambiguity about who exactly the competitor or opponent is, how much

to trust the information they have, and uncertainty about the full spectrum of results of their

actions. In addition to traditional analytic methods, the military and intelligence communities

have adopted an approach called red teaming, where teams intentionally adopt an offensive

posture in order to get a different perspective on a situation.

I had the opportunity to observe interagency crisis action teams as they were explicitly

asked to adopt an offensive or defensive strategic direction in examining a current, active

terrorist threat. Such an explicit adoption of strategic direction greatly enhances the ability to


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develop theory; in many business environments, the adoption of an offensive or defensive

perspective likely occurs much more implicitly and possibly with less consistency, making

analysis by an observer less tenable. In the current setting, despite membership drawn from the

same population of government and military personnel and providing the same background

information about a known threat, dramatically different processes evolved in teams playing

offense vs. defense. While these teams were notconvened for the purpose of my research, the

structure of their approach provided the perfect data to examine the guiding research question:

How does strategic orientation shape team process?

I begin with observations of interagency crisis action teams explicitly asked to adopt an

offensive or defensive strategic direction, and then relate these observations to concepts from the

existing literature to build a process model describing the dynamics of strategic orientation in

teams. The resulting framework suggests a number of hypotheses for future research as well as

potential interventions that could help to offset the potential biases or difficulties inherent in each

strategic orientation.

METHODResearch Site

Eight interagency crisis action teams, four Red (offensive) and four Blue (defensive, to

symbolize their government and law enforcement ties) operated for one week each to analyze

one of four current terrorist threats. The four threats are referred to as Maritime/Chemical,

Biological, IED, and Air/Sea, and each threat was worked on by one Red and one Blue team.

Each team involved five to eight experienced defense and intelligence analysts from a variety of

agencies, and each team could make use of a research support cell convened specifically to


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support the work of these teams. All teams were provided current information on the threat,

including extensive background information on the suspects involved.

Although the teams were not convened for the purposes of this research, the setting

provided a natural experiment, since each of the four threats was examined simultaneously by

both a team adopting an offensive perspective (i.e. Red) and a team adopting a defensive

perspective (i.e. Blue). This approach was used in order to help interested agencies by

providing two different perspectives on each situation. The objective ofall teams was to provide

an estimate of the likely plans and intentions of the terrorist group being investigated. Red teams

were instructed to do so while adopting the perspective of the adversary and plotting against the

United States using the threat information provided, while Blue teams examined the same threat

information from the U.S. perspective to discern what the group under question might do and

what preventative measures should be taken. At the end of the week, teams provided briefings on

their estimates of the terrorist cells intentions to one another as well as to the sponsoring

intelligence agency representatives. Implicitly, teams competed not only against real-world

adversaries but also against each other, as Red teams tried to come up with an attack that Blue

teams would not anticipate, while Blue teams tried to anticipate Reds most likely courses of

action. In some cases, teams plans were predictive of real-world events, in that they

foreshadowed activities of terrorist groups that were observed or thwarted in the months that

followed their work.

While traditional game theoretic analyses of competitive situations suggest that players in

the defensive position have an inherently greater probability of failure than offensive players, the

use of information about the opponent and appropriate analytic techniques can alter those


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probabilities substantially (Armstrong 2002, 2001, Green 2002). In this situation, Blue (defense)

was given in-depth information on a relatively defined group of people to consider, while Red

was asked to plot something that would evade detection by all of the defensive assets of the

United States. Thus, the potential number of scenarios each side could consider was potentially

vast, but could also be circumscribed given the knowledge at hand. The degree to which the

model proposed here will generalize to situations in which greater or lesser asymmetries of risk

and reward exist is an important empirical question for future research.

Data Collection

All teams worked face-to-face in a secure facility. Due to the sensitivity of the

information involved, members were not permitted to remove any written materials nor discuss

the project outside of the facility. The facility was open and available to teams 9 hours per day,

and thus teams were limited in the extent to which they could conduct work requiring access to

sensitive materials. Each team was audio- and video-taped for the duration of their week-long

collaboration, yielding an average of 32 hours of video footage per team or 256 hours of video

total.1

1 Access to videotapes of team work in the intelligence community is extremely rare; we are indebted to

project managers at the MITRE Corporation for undertaking the lengthy bureaucratic process of obtaining approvalfor recording the teams.

All teams were also observed by cleared social scientists on-site, who were there to

observe the teams for other purposes but whose notes and observations were available to me for

this analysis. This yielded 632 pages of observational notes. Six of these observers wrote a

summary report of their impressions and findings, which were also factored into my analysis of

team process. Teams final reports and video footage of their 10-minute presentation of their

conclusions were reviewed by two experienced government intelligence professionals, who

evaluated them for the level of depth and breadth of coverage.


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Data analysis

I was present on-site during the work of four of the teams, making my own observations

that were discussed and triangulated with those of other on-site observers. The remaining four

teams were observed by other social scientists, who made detailed notes and created summary

reports of their observations. Initial observations (both my own and observers') of the first few

teams suggested fairly stark differences in the behavior of Red and Blue teams, prompting

further in-depth analysis. I elected to use a multiple case approach which would allow me to

identify constructs that distinguish both between and among offensive and defensive teams, and

test the relationships across different cases, yielding a more robust, generalizable, and testable

theory (Eisenhardt and Graebner 2007).

Complete video recordings were available for all eight teams, and sanitized transcripts

were also available for four of those teams. I initially conducted exploratory analyses using

videos, transcripts, and observer notes for four teams (two Red, two Blue), two of which I

observed personally. I began formulating a tentative model through the method of grounded

theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967). As Miles and Huberman (1994) suggest, my notes and

interpretations were guided by my explicit prior assumptions, namely that there would be

distinctions in the processes adopted by offensive and defensive teams. After a period of open

review and note-taking, I re-reviewed the videos of these four teams and created written

summaries of each distinct work period (generally clustered as hours before and after lunch, or

between noteworthy breaks), conducting within-case analysis as recommended by Eisenhardt

(1989). I noted elements of team process that were salient or evidenced significant change or

transition in each period. These were shared with other observers of the teams to obtain


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verification of evolving impressions.2

Performance strategy was described using the constructs of outcome and process focus

developed by Woolley (2009a). Early team conversations and interactions were evaluated for

how early objectives and priorities were discussed and decided upon (as indicators of outcome

focus) vs. discussion of analytic frameworks and processes for guiding the collection of

information and coordinating members efforts (as indicators of process focus), based on notes

from video tapes and observer notes. The timing of discussion about and degree of emphasis on

desired outcomes or work processes determined the level of outcome or process focus evident in

each teams strategy, respectively. Use of knowledge and skill was captured through a

combination of observations of the extensiveness of members initial self-introductions to the

team and the amount of inquiry or deference among members regarding areas of expertise, plus

measurement of the teams reliance on the support cell to provide external expertise (based on

records of the number of requests for information (RFI) the teams issued). Effortwas captured by

observer notes regarding how quickly teams got to work each day, how many breaks they took,

The summaries were then used to search for cross-case

patterns (Eisenhardt 1989a) and isolate a smaller number of major categories of similarities and

differences across teams, following the explanation-building logic described by Yin (1994).

These categories paralleled the conceptual categories of effort, performance strategy, and use of

knowledge and skill, three processes identified by prior studies to be critical elements of team

performance (see Hackman 2002). As the measures were developed and teams assessed on each,

they were triangulated among observer notes, video transcripts, my own observation, and

artifacts created by the team (documents, flip charts, member notes, etc.)

2 These observers were cleared social scientists who were on-site for other purposes, but who were kindenough to provide support for analysis for this research, as it was not possible to involve research collaborators whodid not have the required security clearances.


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and quotes from video recordings and transcripts suggesting that members were carrying on

work outside of stated work hours and/or providing evidence of members withdrawing and

allowing others to carry the load.

After completing the exploratory analyses on the initial four teams, I used the categories

and the associated behaviors to review and document the work of the remaining four teams based

on my own observations, videotapes of their interactions, and observer notes, during which no

additional categories of discrimination between offensive and defensive teams were evident.

Summaries of the observations of these teams were then shared with other team observers for

corroboration.

While initially the main focus was on identifying factors differentiating Red and Blue

teams, a third review of the data for all eight teams revealed variance among teams playing the

same role (e.g. offense or defense), adding further dimensionality to the notion of team strategic

orientation. These differences related to perceptions teams had about the strength of their

opponent, as well as how comprehensive they felt they needed to be in assessing the situation

(i.e., "problem scope"). These perceptions surfaced relatively early in the work of the teams,

though some work sessions were punctuated by debate regarding one or both of these issues.

Notes, transcripts, and video recordings were reviewed for a third time for all teams to capture

evidence of their perceptions of oppositional strength and problem scope, largely revealed

through team member comments. Teams were characterized with respect to their standing on

these issues, and the overall strength of their offensive or defensive strategic orientation was

examined in relation to the other aspects of group process to identify any overall patterns.


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Finally, as a secondary analysis, teams final products (which included a brief report and

presentation), plus their spontaneous verbal reports about their work, were considered in drawing

conclusions about the effects of offensive and defensive strategic orientation on teams work

products and experiences. Given the impossibility of nailing down analytic team performance

definitivelyindeed, a frequent quip of career analysts is that when we do our job well, nothing

happens assessments of work products by veteran analysts, as described above, provide some

clues to the potential strengths and weaknesses of offensive and defensive strategic orientation.

A PROCESS MODEL OF STRATEGIC ORIENTATIONThe process model of strategic orientation developed here focuses on how the elements

of strategic orientation affect the subsequent dynamics that evolve within the team. These

processes, in turn, have implications for the products of team work. What became clear in

examining the teams was that, in addition to the strategic direction of their assigned position (i.e.

offense vs. defense), differences in their perceptions regarding problem scope and oppositional

strength affected the overall strength of their strategic orientation, including their level of

outcome vs. process focus and their reliance on internal vs. external information as well as the

norms for effort that were evident in their work.

In short, the stronger the teams offensive strategic orientation, the easier it seems to be

on offense (i.e. the bad guy), as the mutually reinforcing perceptions of a narrower problem

scope and lesser oppositional strength led teams to adopt a selective, outcome focus and make

use of the readily accessible internal knowledge of fellow team members, reinforcing cycles of

positive affect and high effort. By contrast, the stronger the teams defensive strategic

orientation, the harder it seems to be on defense, as perceptions of a broader problem scope and


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greater oppositional strength led teams to adopt a broader, process focus, emphasize the use of a

large volume of knowledge collected from the environment, and enhanced cycles of

hopelessness and reduced effort.

---insert Figure 1 here ----

Figure 1 portrays the relationship among the elements of strategic orientation and team

process, and the resulting characteristics of team work products. Below, I walk through each

element of the model and discuss the evidence associated with each.3

Strength of Strategic Orientation: Oppositional Strength and Problem Scope

While teams strategic direction was established by the perspective they were assigned to

assume in working on the problem (i.e. offense vs. defense), comparisons among the group of

offensive and defensive teams suggested that the strength of their orientation was reinforced by

two additional aspects of the competitive environment they were working within: their

perceptions of oppositional strength and the problem scope they assumed. Enhanced perceptions

of oppositional strength and broader problem scope strengthened defensive strategic orientation,

while reduced perceptions of oppositional strength and narrower problem scope strengthened

offensive strategic orientation.

Oppositional strength refers to both the degree and the range of activity that the opponent

is judged to be capable of initiating or mustering in response to an attack. While work on group

potency has demonstrated its importance to group performance (e.g., Lester et al. 2002), here the

focus is on perceivedoppositional strength, as this determines the extent to which information

needs to be collected about the adversary, regardless of the skills and expertise of team members.

3 Given the security implications associated with the topics of the teams work, use of quotes and examplesis limited and portrayals of conversations sometimes include summaries of comments and placeholders for redactedmaterial instead of verbatim transcriptions.


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Perceptions of oppositional strength were measured using quotes from transcripts and observer

notes portraying assumptions that teams made about the adversaries they faced. Oppositional

strength is of relevance to teams in both offensive and defensive positions, as the nature of the

moves being planned would logically differ as a function of the opponents capabilities relative

to ones own (McRaven 1996, Porter 1991). While oppositional strength is somewhat related to

work on perceived threat (Carr 1974, Foa and Kozak 1986), the latter focuses on the degree and

probability of loss associated with potential events initiated by others, but not possibility of gain.

A second aspect of strategic orientation that had an impact on team process is the

problem scope teams assumed, that is, the extent to which team members believed they needed

to be comprehensive vs. narrow in their approaches to information collection and action planning

in the situations they were analyzing. A comprehensive offense entails assaulting the opponent

on multiple fronts, while a comprehensive defense entails being ready to counter an attack on

multiple fronts. Teams beliefs about problem scope were captured in the data from transcripts

and observer notes of relevant statements made by team members about their assumptions, as

well as observations of the number of potential courses of action teams considered in their work

(as evidenced in their working notes and final report documents).

The perception of oppositional strength and problem scope had direct implications for

team process, differentiating both between and among offensive and defensive teams. The

problem scope teams assumed influenced the extent to which their performance strategy was

more outcome- vs. process-focused. A narrower scope led to a more opportunistic search for

possibilities and an outcome focus; once a team found a solution that met its narrowly defined

objectives, it could then use that to guide the remaining planning activities. In contrast, a


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comprehensive scope demanded a team strategy that would guide an exhaustive and systematic

search of available information; generally, these teams gravitated toward established or

improvised analytic frameworks to guide this search, leading to a process focus.

In parallel, perceptions ofoppositional strength influenced the kinds of information

teams searched for, where an opponent perceived as weaker allowed teams to rely more on the

knowledge and skills of members of their own team, while a stronger opponent demanded

collection of more external information. Both problem scope and oppositional strength together

exacerbated the effects ofstrategic direction (i.e., offense vs. defense), which activates the

approach vs. inhibition tendencies predicted by existing literature (Elliot 1999, Elliot and

Harackiewicz 1996, Keltner et al. 2003).

It became evident over the observation period that whether a team was assigned an

offensive or defensive strategic direction resulted in a different baseline for the teams

perceptions, which was enhanced to a greater or lesser degree in the course of the teams work.

Highly defensive teams perceived greater oppositional strength and became more frustrated and

withdrawn as they collected more and more information from their environment in their attempts

to be comprehensive. In contrast, highly offensive teams became more energized and confident

against an opponent they perceived as weaker, as their more selective approach allowed them to

focus in on a limited set of objectives drawn from their personal bases of expertise. Evidence

associated with both strength of strategic orientation and associated team processes is

summarized in Tables 1 and 2. These cycles differentiating offense from defense are illustrated

below, and then in the next section we explore a bit further the variance among offensive and

defensive processes evident in the teams.


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Defensive Team Process: Looking everywhere and looking nowhere.

The Blue Maritime/Chemical Threat team provided one of the more extreme examples of

defensive team strategic orientation. Transcripts documenting team members comments in their

first hours of work conveyed the sense that they felt they were facing a strong opponent: These

people have a completely different mindset . . . they know stuff we dont know and we cant

even relate to what they are thinking. These impressions were triangulated by observer notes,

including the comment, "The team is intimidated and doesnt know where to begin."

Subsequently, the team set to work with the implicit assumption that they needed to identify all

possibilities and nail down the finite details of what the terrorists might be planning so that they

could apprehend them and thwart their plans a comprehensive problem scope: We need to get

our arms around this thing if we have a prayer of getting these guys. In the first morning of their

work together, the team developed a guiding set of categories of information they wanted to

collect and from that point forward became highly process-focused. They divided the categories

up among members and used the framework as their touchstone through the rest of the week,

beginning sessions by checking off parts of the framework that seemed complete. Filling in the

framework meant collecting an enormous amount of information, generally from outside of the

team. Records of the support cell indicated that the team issued 166 RFIs during their work

together. This approach quickly grew tiresome; by the end of the second day, the observer notes,

The team seems a bit burnt out. On Day 3, some members began to add more and more

categories of information for the team to collect, to the frustration of others.

Videotapes of the team's work space revealed flip charts taped to the wall all over the room

with lists and matrices to keep track of their analyses. The number of flip charts increased


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steadily over the course of the week, as categories were added, but the team did not rule anything

out as time went on. It appeared that in the course of collecting this external information, team

members overlooked some key internal resources and expertise. In particular, in the final hours

of their work as they finished up their briefing materials observers noted that the team learned

that one of its members had a graduate degree in physics, an area that was fairly central to the

threat they were examining. On the first morning of their first day together, this member had

been set to work mining a database of information on communication patterns and had remained

focused on that aspect of their work throughout the week. However, prior to this discovery,

another member lamented the lack of technical skill on the team: We do not have enough

expertise on our team. In the end, they are going to tell us we got it all wrong.

The Blue Biological Threat team also exhibited a moderate to high level of defensive

strategic orientation, with similar patterns in team process. Comments made by members early in

their work revealed perceptions of a comprehensive problem scope: We need to solve this thing

and roll these guys up. Their strategy from the first hours of their work was characterized by a

high level of process focus, in that they identified all of the categories of information they would

need to collect to identify all possibilities and attempt to solve the plot. The first two hours of

their work together was spent outlining the framework that would guide their data collection. As

their work ensued, the team remained highly process-focused, working systematically through

each of the categories: Ok, weve exhausted our leads relating to [redacted], now we should

really focus on [redacted.]

Members also made comments throughout their work indicating that they perceived that

they were working against a very strong opponent: These guys could do this stuff anywhere,


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any time . . . and if they did, it would be chaos. The team collected an enormous amount of

information from outside of the team about what it was the adversary might know or be doing.

Team records include an extensive spreadsheet maintained by one member who attempted to

track all of the information the team sought, which was more than 20 pages long. The team

issued 151 RFIs in the span of three days, asking some questions that were likely already known

by members of the team given their functional backgrounds and their experience with this type

of threat, yet transcripts and observer notes indicate that little discussion of these issues occurred.

Observer notes further commented on the teams focus on collecting external information

and their apparent lack of interest in discussion and integration: The team seems focused on

trying to find a golden nugget from someplace else. [A] member who has extensive knowledge

of [redacted] seems withdrawn. Nobody is asking for his input. Over the course of the week the

team got increasingly tired and frustrated, directing a lot of its frustration at what it perceived as

a lack of good information coming to it in response to their RFIs. There were long periods of

silence during work periods as members waited for more information to come from the outside,

rather than discussing what was already known. Observers noted that three team members

became increasingly withdrawn over the course of the teams work, a fact corroborated by the

lack of any commentary by these members evident in the videotape of the team. In the end, the

team tried to cover its lack of insight by writing its report using sufficiently broad language that

could be spun in multiple ways by those who received it. One member commented during their

final work session: It feels like we have been looking everywhere and looking nowhere.

Offensive Team Process: Keep it simple


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objectives. The team was highly energetic in its work, and at the beginning of each work

session members commented on work they been carrying out work independently between work

sessions, after the facility closed at night and during breaks.

The Red IED threat team exhibited many of the same qualities as Red Biological.

Members frequently repeated the mantra keep it simple, reiterating the belief that there were a

large number of ways in which they could meet their desired objectives and any one of them

would work, conveying a sense of a relatively narrow problem scope. The team also exhibited a

highly outcome-focused approach to its work, selecting its key objectives within the first hour

and a half, which allowed them to narrow even farther the range of alternatives and information

they needed to consider. These objectives became the guiding framework for the rest of their

work, as each possibility that arose was tested against its fit with their objectives. They also saw

the opponent as relatively weak, as conveyed through comments such as, It is quite easy to

create an unsettling sense, and that is exactly what we want. The team brainstormed and listed

all of the ways to make a population feel unsettled, reinforcing their sense that it would be a

fairly easy task. The team then focused on matching team members knowledge and expertise to

their plan. One member explicitly observed and commented on the complementarities among

members expertise, fitting together a plan based on what members already knew and reducing

the need for the team to reach out to the external research cell for information. As the team went

deeper into the details of their plan, members continued to acknowledge the expertise of other

members: We should really leave target selection up to him, since he is an expert in [redacted.]

The Red IED team also exhibited a very high level of effort and energy in its work. The

team needed repeated reminders to break for lunch before the cafeteria closed or to leave the


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facility at the end of the day. When the team reconvened for a work session, some members

appeared to have worked during the break, either during lunch or in the evening, and members

communicated a lot of optimism about their work; on at least three different occasions, members

were overheard commenting, This is going to be really fun.

Variance in Strength of Strategic Orientation

While similar patterns were evident to some degree in all offensive and defensive teams,

there was variance observed in the apparent strength of strategic orientation. Comparisons

among the group of offensive and defensive teams suggested that the strength of their orientation

was influenced by their perceptions of oppositional strength and problem scope.

For example, as discussed above, the Red Biological Threat team exemplified a

perception of low oppositional strength and a narrow problem scope, commenting on the amount

of low-hanging fruit that existed, and how shockingly easy it would be to accomplish its

objectives. In contrast, a more moderate level of offensive strategic orientation was exemplified

by the Red Maritime/Chemical Threat team. This team exhibited a high level of awareness of the

defenses it was up against in attempting to carry out plans. One member commented, Its going

to take a lot of assets to accomplish these plans against [the adversary]. They are pretty well-

protected, suggesting that team members estimated oppositional strength to be quite high. Given

the target it selected, the team also developed the view that if it didnt completely succeed on its

first attempt, the mission would be a failure, assuming a comprehensive problem scope: I think

we only have one shot at this, so we better make it count and take the whole place down. As soon

as we expose those assets, were done. The team also took a very different approach to their

work than was exemplified by the Red Biological Threat team. Unlike other Red teams, this


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team developed a matrix of potential targets, and spent the first day and a half of their work

systematically evaluating them, before selecting one and moving forward with their plans.

The Blue teams likewise exhibited variance in the strength of defensive strategic

orientation. As discussed above, a high level of defensive strategic orientation was observed in

the Blue Maritime/Chemical Threat team. The team conveyed a sense of being out-witted by the

adversary from the start (i.e. We cant even relate to what they are thinking) and the need to be

comprehensive in evaluating all possible threats the opponent posed. In contrast, a more

moderate level of defensive strategic orientation was evident in the Blue Air/Sea Threat team.

After beginning to review the backgrounds of the members of the terrorist group and an

assessment of its likely plans, one member declared, I dont think they really understand

[redacted] as well as they think they do suggesting a more moderate view of oppositional

strength. Other members agreed. As the group began to refine its own understanding of its

objectives, one member suggested a narrower problem scope: We cant nail down exactly what

they are going to do. We need to identify the highest probability scenarios and limit their area of

access. The group agreed, although members raised the question again later on in their work:

Arent we limiting our scope too much? to which another member responded, Yes, but trying

to do everything is doing nothing.

While oppositional strength and problem scope appeared to go hand in hand in most of

these teams, this was not always the case. For example, the Blue IED threat team explicitly

decided to deal with a strong opponent by targeting areas in which focused success could be

achieved. One member told the others, We cant look everywhere, we need to pinpoint key

indicators and then figure out how to limit their operations, conveying a sense of a narrower


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scope; team members viewed their work as focused on identifying as many key indicators as

they could and limiting the threat, rather than comprehensively preventing all possible threats.

Team Products and Trade-offs

As discussed above, team strategic orientation was associated with markedly different

sets of perceptions and processes unfolding within the teams. In addition, team members' own

sense of their work and their final products took on a very different character. The result was a

narrowly scoped but relatively deep set of recommendations from the Red/offense teams, and a

broadly scoped but more vaguely developed set of recommendations from the Blue/defense

teams. While neither was a slam dunk in the opinion of the expert evaluators, the two offered

potential synergies for developing a more balanced view of the competitive environment.

Offensive Team Experiences: They are not going to know what hit them!

As the teams went about their work, the differences discussed above were associated with

differences in overall confidence in their conclusions. The quote above was from a member of

the Red IED Threat team and is representative of statements made by members of all of the Red

teams near the conclusion of their work. The focus that these teams enjoyed in determining their

target early and narrowing the range of information they sought afforded them the luxury of

collecting confirming information and becoming more confident about the brilliance of their

plans. However, at the time the Red teams were conducting their work, no external criterion

existed regarding the quality of their plans; thus, the expressed confidence is rooted more in the

affective dynamics of the team itself rather than external indicators.

Defensive Team Experiences: This is pretty vague . . . and meaningless.


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In contrast, Blue teams exhibited much less optimism and confidence in the statements

they made about their final products. This quote, from a member of Blue Maritime/Chemical,

reflects the sentiment of members of many of the Blue teams. Similarly, a member of Blue

Air/Sea commented in the teams final work session The more I read, the less confidence I have

in what we concluded.

The evaluations of teams final products displayed in Table 3 provide additional evidence

of the breadth vs. depth and creativity trade-off embodied in the work of offensive and defensive

teams. As shown in the table, Blue teams reports exhibited more evidence of opinion diversity

and use of external resources, while Red teams exhibited better use of member expertise and

more creativity. Evaluators of the teams' final products admired the breadth of information the

Blue teams were able to cover, and expressed concern over some of the courses of action that

Red teams did not explicitly consider. In their final reports, Blue teams presented a lot of

different options they considered, and often they had considered many more options in their

discussions than were included in their final reports. In contrast, Red teams went very deeply

into their selected plans of attack, and while two teams made mention of a few other possibilities

they had considered and discarded, the other two teams made no mention of alternatives.

---insert Table 3 here ---

DISCUSSIONThis paper develops a process model of team strategic orientation based on a rare

opportunity to look at analytic work in the intelligence community. The data in the current study

support the conclusion that the strength of offensive or defensive team strategic orientation

initiates a self-reinforcing cycle, where teams on offense embrace an outcome-focused strategy

encouraging a narrower search of information already held by members and energizing high-


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effort norms, while teams on defense follow a process-focused strategy, identifying more

external information to be collected and evolving low-effort norms. Consequently, teams exhibit

a breadth vs. depth trade-off in their work products, in which teams on offense feel quite

confident that they have arrived at the perfect solution, while teams on defense are left with

many possibilities but fewer conclusions.

This model extends what we know about strategic orientation in individuals and

organizations to teams, and has significant scholarly and practical implications. For scholars, the

discrepancies in how these teams behaved given relatively similar inputs suggests the need to

evaluate the extent to which offensive or defensive strategic orientations moderates other

dynamics commonly observed in teams. For example, the lack of confidence demonstrated by

defensive teams runs somewhat counter to work on group decision-making. Existing research on

confidence in teams suggests that putting decision-makers in a group to work on a problem

together translates into higher confidence in the ultimate decision (Sniezek 1992, Sniezek and

Henry 1989), especially if the group is cohesive (Lee et al. 2002). The current study suggest that

team strategic orientation may moderate this effect.

Furthermore, creating a team offensive or defensive strategic orientation may occur much

more subtly in other settings than was true in the current context. While the teams examined here

were assigned to offensive or defensive roles, it is likely that members' interpretation of their

environment (Dutton et al. 1983, Dutton and Jackson 1987, Thomas and McDaniel 1990) could

lead a team to instigate an offensive or defensive stance in situations in which they could choose

either approach. Future research could examine the environmental cues that lead teams to fall

into offensive or defensive behavior patterns.


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This study also builds on the large and growing literature on the approach and inhibition

systems in human behavior (Elliot 1999, Elliot and Friedman 2007, Keltner et al. 2003), and

related work on self-regulatory focus (see Higgins 1997 for a review), which has more recently

been extended to teams (Faddegon et al. 2009, 2007, Levine et al. 2000). The current work

suggests that simply knowing that a teams goal can be broadly characterized as promotion or

prevention will not allow us to predict team behavior without knowing more about the

assumptions members hold about the opponent or the problem they face. Problem scope and

oppositional strength appear to have direct implications for team strategy and the use of member

knowledge and skill vs. external knowledge, apart from overall strategic direction.

In terms of practical implications, it is possible that the training and work of government

intelligence analysts is too idiosyncratic to generalize to other organizational settings. However,

parallels with work on entrepreneurial decision-making at the individual level (i.e. Moore et al.

2007) and the rise of competitive intelligence functions in business organizations (Ganesh et al.

2003) suggest that playing offense or defense is not exclusive to the military and intelligence

communities. Furthermore, it could be argued that the task facing the Blue teams in the current

situation was inherently more difficult than the task facing Red, which could account for the

observed behavior apart from their team strategic orientation. While the observations suggest

variance in the difficulty perceived both between and among Red and Blue teams, future

research in more controlled settings should examine how altering the complexity and relative

probability of success or failure of teams, independent of strategic orientation, contributes to the

behavioral patterns observed.


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In addition to situations in which teams explicitly play offense or defense, the model

developed in this paper can help us better understand the behavior of teams in which these

orientations evolve more subtly, change over time, or even when facing a non-human opponent,

such as the spread of a disease or a natural disaster (such as Hurricane Katrina; Milliken et al.

under review). Teams in these situations may implicitly adopt an offensive or defensive strategic

orientation, with implications for the perceptions and behavior that subsequently evolve. Thus,

those charged with leading teams in competitive or adversarial situations should be cognizant of

the possible consequences of playing offense or defense and be prepared to counter them.

Most standard analytic techniques used in both government and business settings (Heuer,

1999) encourage the analyst to think more broadly in an effort to counter the tendencies of

decision-makers to develop tunnel vision and confirmation bias (Wason and Johnson-Laird

1968). Such techniques may be helpful when playing offense, where the natural tendency is

toward too narrow a focus, but need to be supplemented with techniques to encourage more

selective focus when playing defense. For example, recent work in forecasting demonstrates that

using metaphors and role-playing are effective tools for filtering qualitative information and

narrowing the options for predicting the likely activities of an opponent (Armstrong, 2001, 2002;

Green, 2002). Similar approaches may be useful for helping to focus the activities of teams

playing defense, where the potential for overly broad analysis exists most. While future research

should further explore the interventions that will be most helpful, what is clear is that continuing

to manage teams without considering the implications of team strategic orientation is likely a

losing course of action, with potentially dire consequences.


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Table 1: Analysis of Strength of Strategic O

is it really easier to be the bad guys - woolley

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