How to sabotage an organization

How to sabotage an organization is a different title but… Today we’re going to twist things around.

Usually on this page I come up with tips and ideas that you can easily apply to make your life and your team’s life easier.

But that’s only part of it. I mean, it’s not just about doing a few things — it’s also about avoiding other behaviours, like anything that can slow you and your team down — basically, don’t shoot yourself in the foot.

So the twist of today is looking exactly at the best bet that you have to do a terrible job and be a horrible leader, and we’re going to take this information straight from the experts — the CIA

See, some time ago some documents from world war 2 were declassified, and among them there was one called “The Simple Sabotage Field Manual”.

It was a collection of tips for people that wanted to help the allies and could do so from within an opposing country, and the idea behind them was to enable them to slow things down however they could.

Now, most of it as you can imagine is now obsolete, but the chapter called “General Interference with Organizations and Conferences” is still surprisingly accurate to this day — which also says something about how little work has evolved in the past 80 years, but that’s a topic for another time.

So, what I’ll be doing today is present you with 8 field-tested best practices that you can use to make sure you sabotage processes and bring everything to a stall.

And if you want to play a game, see how many you have already seen in action somewhere and maybe check which ones you also may have been applying in some version or another!

CIA’s 8 points on how to sabotage an organization

1 — Insist on doing everything through “channels”. Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.

Decisions must be properly weighed in, after all — and you need to make sure that everyone is always in the loop and process is followed to the letter.

That’s how you make the right decision.

Even if it takes forever, at least you know you’ve made the right choice. You could also take a shortcut, implement your decision faster and, in case you need to, correct course — but that’s not proper protocol, so maybe avoid it.

2 — Make “speeches”. Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your points by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences.

In other words, make sure the focus is always on you. Your team will understand and appreciate how deep your knowledge goes and will not only be captured by your stories, but they will learn from them.

Of course they are still expected to finish their tasks on time, the learning you generate for them via your speaking is a lesson you grant them for free, it doesn’t count as work time.

To read the rest of this story, head over to the original article.

Originally published at https://ebz-coaching.com on May 5, 2020.

I’m a leadership and communication trainer and consultant.

I offer Leadership Coaching, Leadership Development Workshops, Team Development Workshops

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