Stay with me, this is well worth reading!
Not only are there some great suggestions to help undermine your opponents there is some great comedy.
Maybe the sickest jokes is what was considered sabotage in 1944 is now accepted as good management practices. I found this on Boing Boing and they put it this way: Sabotage manual from 1944 advises acting like an average 2008 manager.
Anyway, Boing Boing dug up a pdf of a now declassified report from 1944 advising ways to sabotage organizations.
I just love stuff like this. I couldn't help but laugh reading most of the suggestions.
SIMPLE SABOTAGE FIELD MANUAL
Office of Strategic Services
Washington, D. C.
17 January 1944
This document is a damn good.
Here are some highlights! The parts I quote below start on page 28.
Advice for General Interference with Organisations and Production:
(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 personal
experiences. Never hesitate to make a few
appropriate "patriotic" comments.
(3) 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.
(4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently
as possible.
(5) Haggle over precise wordings of communications,
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.
For managers and supervisors it advises:
(1) Demand written orders.
(2) "Misunderstand" orders. Ask endless
questions or engage in long correspondence
about such orders. Quibble over them when you
can.
(3;) Do everything possible to delay the
delivery of orders. Even though parts of an order
may be ready beforehand, don't deliver it until
it is completely ready.
(4) Don't order new working materials
until your current stocks have been virtually exhausted,
so that the slightest delay in filling
your order will mean a shutdown.
(5) Order high-quality materials which are
hard to get. If you don't get them argue about
it. Warn that inferior materials will mean in
ferior work.
(6) In making work assignments, always
sign out the unimportant jobs first. See that
the important jobs are assigned to inefficient
workers of poor machines.
(7) Insist on perfect work in relatively un
important products; send back for refinishing
those which have the least flaw. Approve other
defective parts whose flaws are not visible to
the naked eye.
(8) Make mistakes in routing so that parts
and materials will be sent to the wrong place in
the plant.
(9) When training new workers, give in
complete or misleading instructions.
(10) To lower morale and with it, production,
be pleasant to inefficient workers; give
them undeserved promotions. Discriminate
against efficient workers; complain unjustly
about their work.
(11) Hold conferences when there is more
critical work to be done.
(12) Multiply paper work in plausible ways.
Start duplicate files.
(13) 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.
(14) Apply all regulations to the last letter.
For employees it suggests:
(1) Work slowly. Think out ways to in
crease the number of movements necessary on
your job: use a light hammer instead of a heavy
one, try to make a small wrench do when a big
one is necessary, use little force where consider
able force is needed, and so on.
(2) Contrive as many interruptions to your
work as you can: when changing the material
on which you are working, as you would on a
lathe or punch, take needless time to do it. If
you are cutting, shaping or doing other measured
work, measure dimensions twice as often
as you need to. When you go to the lavatory,
spend a longer time there than is necessary.
Forget tools so that you will have to go back
after them.
(3) Even if you understand the language,
pretend not to understand instructions in a
foreign tongue.
(4) Pretend that instructions are hard to
understand, and ask to have them repeated more
than once. Or pretend that you are particularly
anxious to do your work, and pester the foreman
with unnecessary questions.
(5) 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.
(6) Never pass on your skill and experience
to a new or less skillful worker.
(7) Snarl up administration in every pos
sible way. Fill out forms illegibly so that they
will have to be done over; make mistakes or omit
requested information in forms.
(8) If possible, join or help organize a group
for presenting employee problems to the management.
See that the procedures adopted are
as inconvenient as possible for the management,
involving the presence of a large number of
employees at each presentation, entailing more
than one meeting for each grievance, bringing
up problems which are largely imaginary, and
so on.
Finally, what is called "General Devices for Lowering Morale and Creating Confusion":
(a) Give lengthy and incomprehensible explanations
when questioned.
(b) Report imaginary spies or danger to the
Gestapo or police.
(c) Act stupid.
(d) Be as irritable and quarrelsome as possible
without getting yourself into trouble.
(i) Cry and sob hysterically at every occasion,
especially when confronted by government clerks.