In 1944, the U.S. intelligence community published a guide explaining how ordinary people could quietly destroy organizational productivity.

The Simple Sabotage Field Manual, produced by the Office of Strategic Services, taught resistance fighters how to slow operations from the inside using small, everyday actions.

Actions like:
* Hold meetings when work should be done
* Refer decisions to committees
* Insist everything go through proper channels
* Revisit decisions already made
* Demand perfect information before acting

Sound familiar?

Many of these sabotage techniques will feel uncomfortably recognizable to anyone who has worked on a modern engineering team.

In this satirical “training session,” we’ll explore real sabotage techniques from the OSS manual and compare them with common habits in modern workplaces that unintentionally achieve the same result. Along the way we’ll look at why organizations drift into these patterns—and how well-meaning teams accidentally recreate them.

You’ll leave with a new lens for spotting hidden productivity killers in meetings, processes, and team culture—and the slightly unsettling realization that the fastest way to sabotage a project might simply be to follow what everyone assumes are “best practices.”

By the end, you’ll know exactly how to sabotage productivity the CIA way… and how to avoid doing it.