Red-teaming your own narrative

The most dangerous critiques are the ones you never rehearsed

Narrative risk rarely shows up in a risk register. Yet narratives shape how boards, regulators, investors, employees, and the public interpret everything you do. A story that feels coherent internally can look selective, evasive, or misleading once it leaves the building.

Red-teaming your narrative is about deliberately occupying the perspectives of your most credible critics—before they speak. The goal is not to destroy your own story, but to remove its weakest assumptions and overclaims while there is still time to adjust.

What “red-teaming a narrative” actually means

In many organisations, “red-team” language is used loosely. Here we mean something specific: a structured exercise in which a small group is tasked with challenging the official narrative from the perspective of an informed, sceptical outsider.

Done properly, the exercise:

• Separates facts, framing, and spin inside your materials.
• Surfaces claims that are less supported than they appear.
• Anticipates high-credibility lines of attack and difficult questions.
• Strengthens the story without diluting the underlying truth.

A lightweight red-team drill you can run in under an hour

For high-stakes moments, a full red-team engagement may be appropriate. But even a small, disciplined exercise can materially improve your narrative. The following pattern is designed to fit into a 45–60 minute working session.

1. Define the narrative and the audience

Start by stating, in one or two sentences:

• The core narrative: the story you are telling.
• The primary audience: board, regulator, investor, partner, public.

Example: “We are presenting to the board that our AI deployment is controlled, well-governed, and aligned with our risk appetite.”

2. Assign credible critic roles

Ask a small group (ideally 3–5 people) to temporarily step into specific outsider roles. For example:

• A sceptical but serious board member.
• A regulator worried about precedent.
• An investigative journalist with time to dig.
• A key partner who bears some of the downside risk.

Their brief is not to be hostile for its own sake, but to become the most informed, fair-minded critic of the narrative they can imagine.

3. Mark the soft spots

Give the red-team the deck, memo, or talking points and ask them to annotate:

• Where claims feel over-confident relative to the evidence.
• Where language feels evasive, selective, or overly polished.
• Where key risks or trade-offs are underplayed or missing.
• Where numbers appear uncontextualised or cherry-picked.

This can be done directly in the document or on a shared board. The aim is not perfection, but density: quickly highlighting where a serious critic is likely to press hardest.

4. Formulate the “hard questions”

Next, each red-team role generates 3–5 questions they would ask in the meeting or follow-up. These should be:

• Pointed, but fair.
• Grounded in the materials provided.
• Focused on gaps, inconsistencies, or unexplained trade-offs.

For example:

• “You describe the risk as low, but what specifically would have to go wrong for this to become a serious problem?”
• “You emphasise the upside. Where does this show up in the downside scenarios we discussed last quarter?”

5. Run the mini-simulation

In the remaining time, simulate key moments of the upcoming interaction:

• Opening remarks or key slides.
• The most uncomfortable question from each critic.
• The follow-up when the first answer is not fully accepted.

Capture not just the answers, but where the team hesitates, contradicts itself, or has to reach for unprepared explanations.

What you do with the output

A red-team session is only useful if its findings are integrated promptly. The goal is not to make the story safer by stripping it of substance, but to align it more closely with reality.

1. Tighten claims to match evidence

Wherever the exercise surfaced over-confident statements, either:

• Strengthen the evidence, or
• Adjust the claim to match what you can actually support.

Often, slightly more modest but better-supported language increases credibility.

2. Put risks and trade-offs on the page

Many boards and regulators are more comfortable with a narrative that acknowledges real risk than one that appears to downplay it. Bring the key trade-offs and residual risks into the materials instead of hoping they will not be raised.

3. Prepare concise, honest responses

For the toughest questions, draft short, direct answers that:

• Acknowledge the concern without defensiveness.
• Explain what you know—and what you are still tracking.
• Clarify what action you are taking, and what would trigger a change.

Making red-teaming a normal part of preparation

The power of this discipline increases with repetition. When red-teaming a narrative becomes a normal part of preparation, a few shifts tend to occur:

• Less performance, more substance. Teams spend less time polishing weak claims and more time improving the underlying work.
• Cleaner internal alignment. Disagreements surface early, instead of appearing in front of the audience.
• Higher external trust. Boards and regulators recognise that uncomfortable questions have already been considered seriously.

The result is not a risk-free narrative—there is no such thing—but a story that can withstand challenge because it has already survived it internally.

Working with Verisonde

Verisonde supports leadership teams in preparing for high-stakes moments where the narrative will be closely examined. We help design and run red-team exercises, strengthen the underlying analysis, and align your story with the reality it is meant to describe.

If you have an upcoming board meeting, regulatory interaction, or public decision that would benefit from this kind of stress-test, we would be glad to talk.