Are you sabotaging your own organization out of good will?

💡 If you can recognize your own behavior in some of the bullets below, you are actually acting according to CIA’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual: A Timeless Guide to Subverting Any Organization with “Purposeful Stupidity” (1944).  

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

👉 “Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.”

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

👉 “Insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products; send back for refinishing those which have the least flaw.”

👉 “Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.”

👉 “Multiply the procedures and clearances involved in issuing instructions … See that three people have to approve everything where one would do.”

💡 The fact that you can find the statements above in a sabotage manual is a good argument for having a look in the agile manifesto e.g: “…we have come to value: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools”