See if any of those listed below \u2014 quoted but abridged \u2014 remind you of your boss, colleagues, or even yourself. <\/span><\/p>\n
Organizations and Conferences <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n- Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions. <\/span><\/li>\n
- Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. <\/span><\/li>\n
- When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committee as large as possible \u2014 never less than five. <\/span><\/li>\n
- Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible. <\/span><\/li>\n
- Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions. <\/span><\/li>\n
- Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision. <\/span><\/li>\n
- Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reasonable”and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on. <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Managers <\/span><\/p>\n\n- In making work assignments, always sign out the unimportant jobs first. See that important jobs are assigned to inefficient workers. <\/span><\/li>\n
- Insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products; send back for refinishing those which have the least flaw. <\/span><\/li>\n
- To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. <\/span><\/li>\n
- Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done. <\/span><\/li>\n
- Multiply the procedures and clearances involved in issuing instructions, pay checks, and so on. See that three people have to approve everything where one would do. <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Employees <\/span><\/p>\n\n- Work slowly. <\/span><\/li>\n
- Contrive as many interruptions to your work as you can. <\/span><\/li>\n
- Do your work poorly and blame it on bad tools, machinery, or equipment. Complain that these things are preventing you from doing your job right. <\/span><\/li>\n
- Never pass on your skill and experience to a new or less skillful worker. <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I’m sure that my dad, who spent much of his professional life as a consultant in management and organization, is familiar with these hallmarks of a dysfunctional organization.<\/p>\n
I’m also wondering just how surprised he is that these behaviors are indistinguishable from deliberate sabotage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Though I haven’t quite figured out what. The CIA has released a WWII manual on sabotage, and it appears to describe life in modern American businesses frighteningly accurately: In 1944, the CIA’s precursor, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), distributed a secret pamphlet that was intended as a guidebook to citizens living in Axis nations …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[962,1005,1062,1011,1058,1015],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-40yrs","category-business","category-espionage","category-history","category-sociology","category-weird"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181296"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}