CIA, WFH

How to covertly destroy an organization....

If you surf around the website for the United States Central Intelligence Agency – and yes, the CIA does have a website – you’ll find a copy of a declassified spy manual from 1944.  The document is entitled the “Simple Sabotage Field Manual,” and it’s basically a guide to driving your enemy nuts.

1944 was right around the time World War II was being fought in the towns and villages of Europe.  By that time, in the Pacific Theater, Japanese Imperial Forces were being pushed out of Southeast Asia and back towards their island homeland.  It was the phase of the war when spies were connecting with resistance fighters behind enemy lines, when acts of sabotage were being planned and executed, and underground networks were being activated. 

The manual covers a lot of ground.  Covert agents, it suggests, should aim to create discord in their workplaces and “adopt a non-cooperative attitude,” which “may involve nothing more than creating an unpleasant situation among one’s fellow workers, engaging in bickering, or displaying surliness and stupidity. This type of activity, sometimes referred to as the ‘human element,’ is frequently responsible for accidents, delays, and genera obstruction even under normal conditions.”

Someone, it seems, is putting that old manual to use in the modern business environment.   “Bickering, surliness, and stupidity” pretty much define the working conditions of anyone who works in a large modern corporation, with layers of management piled on top of each other, endless email chains, non-specific work requirements, and double-speaking senior management.

There’s even more eerily prescient advice about the best way to slow everything down, impede progress, frustrate decision-making, and undermine productivity.  

“Insist on doing everything through ‘channels,’” the manual recommends.  “Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions. Make ‘speeches.’ Talk as frequently as possible and at great length., Illustrate your "points” by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. When possible, refer all matters to ' committees, for ‘further study and consideration.’ Attempt to make the committees as large as possible - never less than five. Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.  Be worried about the propriety of any decision - raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated is within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.”

In other words, to destroy your enemy, infiltrate their defenses, hobble their efforts, undermine their progress, and ultimately bring them to their knees, make sure you have a lot of pointless meetings where nothing gets done, which describes every business meeting I’ve ever attended and every large corporation I’ve ever observed up close.

It also accurately describes the state, local, and federal branches of the United States of America, especially the United States Senate, which looks like it was designed by the authors of this manual.

To be totally honest, I’ve indulged in at least some of those behaviors, including (and I’m not proud of this) the one admonishing a saboteur to “cry and sob hysterically at every occasion, especially when confronted by government clerks.”  (This is a verbatim snippet; Google it and see for yourself!)

So here’s the question: are there clever “simple saboteurs” hiding within the ranks of every major corporation and government on earth, or are these behaviors – talking too much, putting off decisions, surliness, stupidity – simply normal human organizational behavior?

Realistically, of course, it’s probably the latter.  But it’s hard not to at least entertain the thought that some diabolical genius has read that old spy manual from 1944 and is busy implementing its suggestions through a vast network of .com and .gov saboteurs.

On the other hand, that all seems like a lot of trouble to go to, when all you want to do is slow productivity to a trickle.  

The simplest and fastest way to do that, as we all know, is make sure every employee has a laptop computer, a smartphone, and a fast internet connection.  And then all you have to do is tell them to work from home.