Simple Sabotage

Unknowing Saboteurs

Saboteurs are everywhere. They undermine every business by stirring confusion, slowing production and sapping morale. These saboteurs aren’t enemy infiltrators. They’re ordinary, well-intentioned staffers who unwittingly convert everyday activities into acts of sabotage.

They don’t know it, but they’re following a strategy that the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS) outlined in 1944’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual. The OSS – precursor of the CIA – prepared the manual to help members of the European resistance undermine the Axis war effort. One section “General Interference with Organizations and Production” suggested that resistance fighters could sabotage enemy institutions simply by pushing everyday office behaviors to an extreme.

For instance, “Talk as frequently as possible and at great length.” A skilled saboteur could bog meetings down for hours with meandering orations. The enemy might feel bored and frustrated, but folks at a meeting would have a hard time identifying such behavior as sabotage.

Even model employees can easily, unconsciously become saboteurs. The manual cites simple, almost universal behaviors that ...