Team sabotage - CIA style

This week I was sent a link to the CIA Simple Sabotage field manual which after many years being under wraps as a tool of the secret service - is now out in the public domain. It was secret, you see, as it was given to agents working in communist countries in 1944 at the end of WWII as a guide on how to covertly disrupt the back door. By disrupting business and bringing it to a slow treacle-like pace.

The book gives agents hints and tips for how to undermine society in subtle everyday ways. The idea was that the agents would recruit local citizens to perform small acts of rebellion in the workplace known as simple sabotage. People would commit these acts in their daily work to cause disruption and demotivation. And in doing so would slow down business. But look at how familiar many of these are over 75 years later.

See how many you recognise in the modern workplace; it's quite scary. 

The list of simple sabotage actions suggested in 1944 by the CIA to bring work to a standstill:

• Insist on doing everything through "channels." Never permit short-cuts to be taken 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 committee 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.
• Advocate "caution." Be "reasonable" and urge your fellow-conferees to be "reasonable" and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.
• In making work assignments, managers always sign out the unimportant jobs first. See that important jobs are assigned to inefficient workers.
• Insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products; send back for refinishing those which have the least flaw.
• To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions.
• Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.
• Multiply the procedures and clearances involved in issuing instructions, paychecks, and so on. See that three people have to approve everything where one would do.

The vertical world of work

Of course, in 1944 we didn't have email, social media, collaboration tools or the internet And if the CIA was writing a field manual today, I'm sure they could add a few more.

Sending unnecessary emails, using cc or hitting ‘reply all’, spending hours creating endless presentations, and always needing to seek approval of others, especially when it comes to the budget would be good ones to add. 

Yet it is startling how many of these practices to waste time, effort and energy have become the norm in the world of work today. It offers us a moment to reflect.

The CIA sabotage manual was designed to cause disruption within a vertical world of work.

Vertical leadership came from the start of the industrial revolution when one person owned the company; another single person was in charge of a few middle managers, who then told the workers what to do. And in those times, it worked. They are giving great advice on how to disrupt that vertical siloed culture that drove the transactional world of work.

My recent blog talks at greater depth at vertical leadership and the social norms that uphold it. But work is changing. And we're re-writing the rule book.

A horizontal workplace

The workplace is starting to look different. In a world where there are no set answers anymore, the person at the bottom, doing the job, has more insight into a better way of working. They can see a more productive method of working. They know their job better than anyone else. And that is what organisations are looking to harness - the power of teams and a chance to do things differently.

Which comes with a new set of norms:

• Stop the slow and inefficient hamster wheel of long escalation paths.
• Empower teams to make mistakes and allow them to make decisions based on what they've learned from those mistakes.
• Bring diverse teams together to hear more voices, coming up with creative solutions to complex problems.
• Change meetings norms to focus on learning and collaboration.
• Let it be okay for people not to know and to ask for the help they need.
• Empower teams to take risks to find new solutions. 
• Not expect one person to have all the answers.

Moving away from being likened to the Simple Sabotage list and into a more horizontal workplace comes from the styles of leadership you adopt. It means creating a new style of working. A whole new team culture.

Organisations that are changing these old practices are creating a fabulously different world of work. One where people collaborate as teams, feel safe to speak up and innovate and make things happen faster than ever before. And that has got to be good for everyone; the teams, the individuals, and the companies.