How To Disrupt An Organization

These suggestions are from a 1944 manual put out by the OSS (precursor to the CIA) on how to sabotage the enemy’s war effort and delay production if you are working as a spy. How many of us still see these used today?

Organizations and Conferences (starting at page 32)

• Insist on doing everything through "channels." 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. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate "patriotic" comments.

• 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.

• Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.

• Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.

Managers and Supervisors

• Demand written orders.

• "Misunderstand" orders. Ask endless questions or engage in long correspondence about such orders. Quibble over them when you can.

• Order high-quality materials which are hard to get. If you don't get them argue about it. Warn that inferior materials will mean inferior work.

• In making work assignments, always sign out the unimportant jobs first. See that the important jobs are assigned to inefficient workers of poor machines.

• When training new workers, give incomplete or misleading instructions..

• Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.

• Multiply paper work in plausible ways. Start duplicate files.

• Multiply the procedures and clearances involved in issuing instructions, pay checks, and so on. See that three people have to approve everything where one would do.

• Apply all regulations to the last letter.

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