How to sabotage a company

BoingBoing, Enterprise 2.0 and Joho the Blog are all covering a talk given by CIA folks at the Web 2.0 conference about the Intellipedia, or how to kill a company in some easy business oriented steps. Quoting an old 1944 “Simple Sabotage Field Manual” from the US Strategic Services, they quote, most of the things we do today in business. There is a sense of Irony here, and most of it can be seen in many of the larger organizations that we either work at or have visited.

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

(2) Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of per¬sonal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate “patriotic” comments.

(3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and considera¬tion.” Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.

(4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.

(5) Haggle over precise wordings of com¬munications, minutes, resolutions.

(6) Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.

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

(8) Be worried about the propriety of any decision — raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the juris¬ diction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.

Source: Joho the Blog

While amusing, the scary part is that a lot of this is stuff we either see every day, in many companies, or we don’t see in smaller companies that have a well defined goal, with everyone pulling towards it. No wonder the startup community does cool things, while larger companies, or companies on their way to largeness at some point fall over and loose, until they streamline and get smaller again.

I can think of car companies, camera companies, big blue companies, software companies, and some search engines that are immediately coming to mind.

Says something about staying small.

Tags: intelipeida, cia, sabotage, business, fun, idea