Title: Are We Sabotaging Ourselves? Lessons from a 1944 CIA Manual on Sabotage.

Let’s start with a small favor: set aside your personal views about the CIA for a moment. Instead, focus on this fascinating piece of history, a field manual from 1944, created to guide individuals in simple sabotage techniques. The goal? Disrupt enemy organizations through behaviors that, at first glance, seem harmless.

Here’s where it gets interesting: many of the sabotage tactics recommended in this manual, like procrastination, bureaucratic inefficiency, and fostering workplace discord, are behaviors still alive and well today (what?!). Not as acts of war, clearly, but as unintentional roadblocks within our organizations, cultures, and individual practices.

The question is: are we (still) sabotaging ourselves without even realizing it?

A - Organizational Sabotage: The Culture of Inefficiency

The manual’s advice on organizational sabotage is shockingly relatable, even today, at almost 2025. Here are some of the “suggestions”:

• “Insist on doing everything through ‘channels.’ Never permit shortcuts to expedite decisions.” 

• “Refer all matters to committees for further study. Attempt to make committees as large as possible.” 

• “Haggle over precise wordings of communications.” 

Sound familiar? These behaviors often crop up in workplace cultures that prioritize process over progress. Overly bureaucratic systems, endless meetings, and a fear of challenging the status quo create toxic environments where innovation dies.

Signs of Sabotage in Organizational Culture today:

• Decision paralysis due to excessive hierarchy. - Innovate… but don’t change anything.

• Reluctance to adopt new practices because “we’ve always done it this way.”

• Micromanagement disguised as “attention to detail.” (This also ties into the Leadership section)

• Dead by meetings & committees - Are you still holding endless, full-day, packaged-agenda “team meetings/offsites” with pretty much everyone on the distribution list, and still wondering why nothing gets done afterward?

Breaking Free!

Organizations need to actively identify and dismantle these behaviors. Create feedback loops where employees can call out inefficiencies without fear. Foster psychological safety that allows teams to challenge norms and propose innovations. At its core, building an inclusive, innovative culture requires stripping away the structures that unknowingly sabotage progress.

Also, start using design thinking and sprint methodologies to increase collaboration, make decisions faster, and cut down the number of useless meetings.

B - Leadership Sabotage: Ineffectiveness at the Top

According to the manual, managers and supervisors are key players in sabotage campaigns. Some recommended tactics include:

• “Demand written orders for everything.”

• “Misunderstand orders deliberately and engage in endless clarification.”

• “Assign unimportant jobs to the most skilled workers and the critical tasks to the least qualified.”

• “Promote unqualified workers while ignoring or underappreciating competent ones.”

When applied to modern leadership, these behaviors reflect the opposite of effective leadership. Using tools like Leadership Circle 360, which measures reactive versus creative tendencies, we see how reactive leaders may unintentionally sabotage their teams by hoarding power, failing to delegate, or avoiding tough conversations. Promotions based on favoritism or fear of conflict rather than merit not only demoralize capable employees but also weaken organizational capacity.

All Well-known Ineffective Leadership Behaviors:

• Over-reliance on controlling or autocratic decision-making - Delegation? What’s that?

• Avoiding conflict or difficult decisions to “keep the peace.” 

• Promoting individuals to leadership positions based on personal loyalty or convenience rather than competence - This one for sure sounds familiar!

• Failing to align team goals with broader organizational objectives - As long as we’re making money or no one’s bothering us, we’ll just keep doing what we want.

Turning It Around, and fast:

Leaders should assess their own behaviors and seek coaching to overcome reactive tendencies. Tools like Leadership Circle 360 can provide actionable insights into how leadership behaviors influence organizational health & employee experience. By prioritizing growth, making thoughtful promotion decisions, and empowering teams, leaders can shift from being roadblocks to becoming enablers of progress.

C- Employee Sabotage: Fixed Mindsets and Stalled Development

The manual also highlights how individual employees can contribute to sabotage:

• “Work slowly. Take unnecessary steps to increase the time required to complete a task.”

• “Pretend not to understand instructions.”

• “Complaining that tools and equipment are insufficient to do the job.”

While these might sound intentional in the context of sabotage, they are a textbook example of behaviors associated with a fixed mindset: avoiding challenges, fearing failure, and resisting change. These attitudes hinder both individual development and team success.

Self-Sabotaging Employee Behaviors We Still See Today:

• Blaming external factors for lack of progress - Victim mindset vs Protagonist mindset

• Resisting upskilling or adopting new technologies. - Change is here to stay, jump on it!

• Focusing on perceived limitations rather than opportunities.

Adopting a Growth Mindset:

Employees can combat self-sabotage by embracing continuous learning and development. Here are a few strategies:

• Reframe challenges as opportunities for growth.

• Seek feedback to identify blind spots and areas for improvement.

• Celebrate small wins to build momentum and confidence.

Breaking the Cycle: Moving Beyond Sabotage

It’s fascinating, and sobering, to see how behaviors intended to disrupt enemies in wartime still resonate in today’s workplaces. But we’re not powerless. By recognizing these patterns, we can consciously choose to break free:

• For organizations, this means auditing culture and systems to identify inefficiencies.

• For leaders, it requires cultivating awareness of reactive tendencies and investing in leadership development.

• For employees, it’s about embracing a growth mindset and committing to self-improvement.

Ready to Break Free?

If you or your organization are ready to identify and dismantle sabotage behaviors, bix a beel can help! Our workshop facilitation tools can audit and transform your culture into one of inclusion and innovation. For leaders at all levels, our coaching services provide tailored strategies to unlock potential and foster growth.

Let’s move beyond sabotage, together!