Sabotaging colleagues.

Where does it come from?

During the Second World War, the US Office of Strategic Services distributed the Simple Sabotage Field Manual in occupied Europe. It contained tips on how to sabotage companies.

When I stumbled upon the document years later, it became the inspiration for an exercise. Ask people how they would make their colleagues’ lives miserable. Then learn from the answers and do the opposite.

I use it before changing a way of working or an organisational structure to find the biggest sources of friction. I also use it to stress-test a proposed design: if we wanted this to slow people down, frustrate them or drain their motivation, how would we do it?

The reversed question gives people more freedom to complain about what is going wrong now. It also helps them imagine problems that have not happened yet. Instead of defending a proposal or finding polite ways to criticise it, the team can explore how it might fail.

I wrote more about the manual in The CIA guide to sabotaging companies.

My exercise. Inspired by TRIZ (Liberating Structures) and the Office of Strategic Services’ 1944 Simple Sabotage Field Manual. The sequence and five structural elements come from Liberating Structures. Further reading: The CIA guide to sabotaging companies, my article from 2020.