How often have your plans been sabotaged? How many times were they sabotaged by you? What if I told you the CIA was behind it all. True story.
The wartime Government of the United States taught its citizens how to join the effort by becoming expert saboteurs. They did it with a manual that is now wholly declassified.
The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the foundation for the creation of America’s CIA.
In 1944, its Director, William “Wild Bill” Donovan, had select parts of the “Simple Sabotage Field Manual” declassified and disseminated to citizens of enemy states through pamphlets, targeted radio broadcasts, and in person.
The goal? To grind down efforts of the enemy through everyday actions that would frustrate, slow things down, and stop projects in their tracks.
Reading it today, you’d think it was a manual describing the average project management in many offices, schools and Government departments.
Of course, most people today use these strategies unwittingly, and end up sabotaging their own projects.
Pick any recent Government initiative to ‘transform the system’, in any country, and you’ll see these ones being perfected:
• Insist on doing everything through “channels”. Never permit shortcuts to expedite decisions.
• Whenever possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make committees as large as possible, never less than five.
• Haggle over precise wordings […]
• Advocate “caution”. Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reasonable” and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments … later on.
• Multiply paper work in plausible ways. Start duplicate files.
• Multiply the procedures and clearances involved… See that three people have to approve everything where one would do.
The tragedy is that most people are completely unaware of the sabotage they introduce to their projects.
That’s why they hire external people to consult them. An outsider can cut through the ‘tosh’, and shine a light on the (self)-sabotage.
And of course, there are a few bad eggs (or maybe just incompetent ones) who know precisely what they’re doing. It’s not sabotage to them, because being the saboteur puts you in charge of the sabotaged.