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Official CIA advice on how to ruin an organization

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In the winter of 1944, the world was on fire. At the same time as Allied forces were engaged in
a shooting war thousands of miles away, back home, the American war apparatus was working around the clock to find every way to gain the upper hand. In the offices of what would later become the CIA (at the time, the Office of Strategic Services), one team was developing a particularly unique way to do just that, a guide for spies in enemy territory called the Simple Sabotage Field Manual. The mission of this highly classified publication was to “characterize simple sabotage, to outline its possible effects, and to present suggestions for inciting and executing it.” Pages and pages detail how to gum up factories, derail transportation networks, and interrupt power supplies. Spies or trusted allies are instructed to “change signposts at intersections and forks” and to “put several pinches of sawdust or hard grain, such as rice or wheat, into the fuel tank of a gasoline engine.”

But right there, among the devious lists of ways to ruin the enemy’s economy, are a set of instructions for ruining organizations: Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate “patriotic” comments. . . . Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible. . . . When training new workers, give incomplete or misleading instructions. . . . Give lengthy and incomprehensible explanations when questioned. In pursuit of making the enemy less productive and effective, to lower their morale and gain the upper hand, spies were taught to complicate matters. Does any of this sound familiar in our own lives?