In 1944, the Office of Strategic Services (pre-cursor to the CIA) published a Simple Sabotage Field Manual to help allies disrupt enemy operations from the inside.
To cripple an organization, the manual advised saboteurs to:
- Insist on doing everything through official channels and forbid shortcuts.
- Refer all decisions to large committees for further study and consideration.
- Haggle over the precise wording of communications, policies, and minutes.
- Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible in group discussions.
- Urge caution, demand consensus, and warn against acting with undue haste.
It’s amazing how relevant this advice is today.
The high value we place on thoroughness, alignment and risk mitigation can create a culture where drag, friction, and decision paralysis become the norm.
True saboteurs aren’t our challenge. The issue is that we that train high-performing people to play defense. They learn where they need to wait for permission, where they need to seek concensus and that they are successful when they play safe.
If your team’s operational rhythms feel like they were designed by an enemy operative, it doesn’t have to be that way.
