Disrupting Your Workflow, CIA Style

Disrupting Your Workflow, CIA Style

In 1944 the CIA put out a Simple Sabotage Field Manual (https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2012-featured-story-archive/CleanedUOSSSimpleSabotage_sm.pdf) chock full of advice on how to incite and execute simple sabotage. Point (c) in the introduction highlights “A second type of simple sabotage requires no destructive tools whatsoever . . . is based on universal opportunities to make faulty decisions” and leads to “General Interference with Organizations and Production.”

Reading through this list, it’s easy to imagine these things happening every day in regular business. Take a look for yourself.

It reminds me of a favorite quote from Niels Bohr, “The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.”

Let’s take a look at a few of these points through that lens:

1. Insist on doing everything through channels. If that slows down the decision making process, then “insist on nothing being done through channels” will speed up the decision making process. It’s empowerment while the CIA suggests dis-empowerment. Double check your internal channels.
2. Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible. Distracting your people from the important issues keeps everyone busy and impedes progress. It’s opposite is to bring up relevant issues as frequently as possible. Major in the majors as some might say. Is your team focusing on your most pressing issue?
3. Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision. The CIA is suggesting a pattern here, keep everyone busy on unimportant issues. It’s opposite is to attempt not to re-open the question of advisability of decisions. The effective organization picks a path and moves forward. Are you dwelling on past decisions or making new decisions based on past experiences?
4. Be worried about the propriety of any decision. This is a killer. Sabotaging an organization by suggesting that some higher power may not approve of the decision being made. It’s opposite is not to be worried about the propriety of any decision. Back to empowerment. Are your people being held back from making decisions because saboteurs suggest that you might not approve of the decision?

It’s great exercise and if you actively promote the opposite, your organization will avoid faulty decisions, take more action, and avoid the unintentional saboteur.

Good stuff.