Sabotage your workplace!

I just caught a post on Boing Boing about a 1944 manual (36-page pdf) from the Office of Strategic Services (a forerunner of the CIA) on how to sabotage your workplace. I’m linking to it here because the advice reminds me so much of actual practice in some of the committees I’ve been on. Here’s a list of the procedures advised by the OSS dirty-tricksters:

1. Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.


2. Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of per sonal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate “patriotic” comments.


3. 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.


4. Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.


5. Haggle over precise wordings of com munications, minutes, resolutions.


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


7. Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reason able” and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.


8. Be worried about the propriety of any decision — raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the juris diction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.

This is offered by Boing Boing in mockery of current management practices. And I can see where this sort of behavior burns up a lot of time. But it also seems that sometimes some of these things might be useful, like #1, #7, and #8. It seems to me that this list also reflects the “git 'er done” military/utilitarian mindset behind bad actions like the Bay of Pigs in which the ends were presumed to justify the means.

        On the other hand, I’ve firsthand experience that forming a seven-member committee approaches self-sabotage. (But again, I wonder how much the tough-guy, git ‘er done attitude is behind this preference for efficiency against consensus.)