Simple Sabotage

In 1944 the OSS, the precursor of the CIA, wrote a “Simple Sabotage Field Manual” for the resistance against the Nazi occupation. Most of it is about the kind of sabotage you would expect. But some of the advice is more stealthy, and page 28 is about meetings.

I read it and could not decide whether it is a manual for destroying productivity or a description of the modern workplace. Academia, I’m looking at you.

Here are the instructions, in order, with what came to mind while reading them.

Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit shortcuts to be taken in order 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. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate “patriotic” comments.

Professors are very good at those speeches. And at the patriotism too, only the fatherland is their own field of research!

When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committees as large as possible, never less than five.

“We should involve department X in this process…” I might have heard this.

Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.

No comment on this one.

Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.

Yes, been there.

Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to reopen the question of the advisability of that decision.

This one is funny because it is an advertised technique nowadays! The meeting starts by going through the minutes of the last meeting, and off we go, opening the discussion again!!

Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reasonable” and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.

Clearly you should never hurry a decision after everything has been talked through only three times.

Be worried about the propriety of any decision – raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.

I first read “the policy of higher education”.

I learned about the manual from episode 4 of “Boss Class”, the Economist’s podcast about management. It is behind a paywall, but very very good. The original document is easy to find, for instance via golem.de.

First posted as a thread on Mastodon in December 2023.