Sabotage-proof your organization with these cultural values

Despite its age, the CIA's Simple Sabotage Field Manual offers timeless insights into behaviors that undermine organizational productivity, making saboteurs easy to spot. To protect their organizations and fortify their teams against disruption, management can reverse-engineer this manual. In this article, I am imagining what such protective cultural values would look like- ones aimed at minimizing bureaucracy, fostering efficient communication, empowering initiative, protecting focused work, encouraging experimentation, and cultivating a sense of ownership. Together, these values create an unsabotagable organization.

A highly relevant manual, 80 years later

In 1944, the CIA published the Simple Sabotage Field Manual, a formerly classified document now available in PDF straight from their website. It’s become an internet classic by encouraging energy-sucking behaviors in the workplace, most of which feel eerily familiar. Modern (home) office workers have much to relate to, despite its manufacturing focus and retro feel.

Beyond its entertainment value, this manual is very useful because it highlights behaviors conducive to sabotage.

See full document: The CIA’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual

I will focus on these 8 points because I’ve personally seen these behaviors in tech startups quite often. Of course, there are further points in the 32-page manual that I invite you to explore.

Spot the saboteur

Whether affiliated with the CIA or not, any employee who exhibits these behaviors is sabotaging your company. Analyzing these techniques in depth, they all seem to have three mechanisms in common:

• slow down momentum
• disempower workers
• demoralize workers

1. The Propper Channels

Insist on doing everything through "channels." Never permit shortcuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.

Sabotage effects

The saboteur seeks to block and crush initiative by weaponizing rules and bureaucracy against individuals who are trying to expedite the resolution of a problem.

2. Spotlight Monologue

Make "speeches", Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your points through long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences.

Sabotage effects

Beyond the obvious time wasting, the saboteur will successfully have sucked the air out of the room, leaving little or no space for others. A lengthy monologue will cause people to space out and disengage. The saboteur compounds their success the more people are in that meeting.

3. Death by Committee

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.

Sabotage effects

This is an attempt to slow down decision-making. Referring all matters to large committees wastes precious time and energy. On a psychological level, employees are not empowered to take action. This method is especially despicable because it weaponizes collectivism and the desire to reach a consensus against initiative. Unfortunately, cooperatives are known to suffer from this self-sabotage.

4. Mental Scatter

Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.

Sabotage effects

Listening to someone requires an effort investment. You’re going along for the mental ride, trusting that the speaker will take you somewhere that’s worth it. Irrelevant issues are not only another collective time-wasting tactic, but they also serve to disperse organizational focus and attention.

5. Nitpick

Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.

Sabotage effects

This tactic demoralizes the target, making them fearful that they didn’t do their job well. Nitpicking also distracts the focus from the main goals to be achieved.

5. Revisit

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

Sabotage effects

Revisiting past decisions can sap an organization's momentum. It can cast doubt and sow endless conflict, making people feel unmotivated and unable to move on.

5. Caution

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

Sabotage effects

Making people feel fearful is another way to slow the organization down. Fear lowers people's consciousness to survival mode, taking away their initiative and power to think critically.

5. Higher Authority

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

Sabotage effects

After fear has been planted, seeking guidance and protection from higher authorities becomes necessary. That way, one is absolved of personal responsibility as long as one does as one is told. This concentrates power around one or a few figures, slowing everything down and making it more error-prone.

The Anti-Sabotage Values

How to reverse sabotage behavior into values

We’ve seen how lethal the sabotage tactics can be. How can organizations fight saboteurs? After having delved into the saboteur’s mind, how can reverse engineer an unsabotagable organization? My answer: create anti-sabotage culture.

Many feel the need to improve their culture by defining values. While most come up with nausea-inducing fakery, the correct cultural values can act as an organizational immune system against the saboteur.

1. Nimbleness

While the organization should document its operating principles, values, collective habits, and best practices regarding rules and by-laws, these should be updated regularly and evolved. Rules, regulations and bureaucracy should be kept at a minimum and revisited often.

The Agile Manifesto captures this beautifully in their principle ”Individuals and interactions?over processes and tools”. For specifics, I recommend reading Humanocracy to learn how to put people first and fight bureaucracy: “Unfortunately, most organizations over-burdened by bureaucracy are sluggish and timid.“

2. Brevity

Organizations can fight “monologues” by seeking to communicate efficiently and clearly, taking little time. Special efforts must be made to organize organizational knowledge in a way that is easily accessible and clear for all members.

Time should be protected from rambly meetings and training sessions. Any collective time investments should be measured by asking participants to provide short feedback. I’m grateful to my product designer for having introduced me to the ROTI framework: Return on Time Investment. Learn more here.

Individuals should be encouraged to monitor how much they talk without seeking input or feedback from others. Overtalking can be a sign of social anxiety and eagerness for control.

Communication guidelines

• Unless it’s a special discussion (like requesting feedback), the other person should be encouraged to interject at least every 5 minutes.
• Ask open-ended questions.
• Choosing the right medium for the message. If there’s a lot to say, perhaps a memo can be published and read before discussions begin.
• Detail-oriented employees can be coached to abstract their ideas and develop a level appropriate for the occasion. Details can be captured in the documentation for later reference.

3. Initiative

The “death by committee” sabotage method can be bypassed by empowering individuals or small teams - less than 5, as per manual- to address the problem they have identified.

The book Reinventing Organizations shows a great example of this (see summary here). In the full, the author describes how an individual worker would go about solving a problem in a Teal organization: A worker has noticed a problem. Their organization empowers them to solve the problem. They have the direct incentive to fix it (as opposed to a 5+ committee), because it’s affecting them directly. To ensure they make the right decision, they must ask for advice from all other stakeholders who are or will be affected by the problem and its changes. Once they collected all perspectives, they are ready to make decisions and address the issue.

This is different from a committee because while everyone has a chance to contribute to the solution, the decision is not being held hostage. The project can move forward with the person who has the highest sense of urgency at its helm. This will ensure the highest level of initiative and unblock its course.

4. Focus & Flow

Every worker should be adamant about protecting their time, minimizing interruptions, context switching and maximizing focused work. Uninterrupted work in a focused manner is both efficient and pleasurable. Attempt to communicate and work asynchronously wherever possible to maximize worker autonomy.

Psychologist Mihaly C. has identified the experience of flow as a key driver of happiness, self-actualization, and a doorway toward creativity. He offers practical advice on how to reach this state more often in daily life.

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

5. Experimentation

Members will look for more efficient ways of achieving goals. If a member has an idea of how to improve efficiency, they must submit the idea to peers. Special resources must be set aside to experiment with ways to improve- like Keizen (inspired by Japanese manufacturing).

The outcome of the experiment should be closely measured, with enough time for the results to be valid. When a decision is made, there should be a commitment to try it out and measure the effects within enough time to gather new data. Only then can past decisions be revisited when new information is available.

Decision-making must move the organization forward. Second-guessing previous decisions should only happen once there is proof—for example, from experimentation—that the direction was wrong. If big decisions seem too risky, seek to build smaller experiments to validate the new direction.

6. Ownership

Ownership and individual agencies collaborate to empower the workers, giving them permission to lead initiatives. This includes approaching fear as “an informative feeling” as the Reinventing Organization Map put it.

Generally, ownership should not be questioned unless the goals are not achieved or the method goes against organizational principles.

The limits of culture

There is another definition of ownership that falls outside the realms of culture and into the systemic fabric of the organization. Who gets the final say? Who owns things? In corporate environments, the shareholders are the main beneficiaries, and they appoint the CEO to represent their interests. This can cause conflict with the empowered employees who have a different perspective on key decisions. True ownership in the workplace needs to be paired with actual ownership of the organization.

We can see this in the sad story of Zappos, who famously had a Holocracy culture, for it only to evaporate soon after it was sold to Amazon. The best way to have an effective system is for the empowered workers to operate within a worker co-op where the culture matches financial incentives.

Regardless of the ownership structures in your organization, as a worker, you have professional ownership. You can start speaking up against saboteurs slowing down your organizational goal. Espouse these values and cultivate them in others to shift the balance of power away from those who seek to sabotage.