Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization?

by Aaron Dignan

In 1944, at the height of World War II, William J. Donovan was the director of the United States Office of Strategic Services (the precursor to the CIA). He was looking for ways to undermine and destabilize enemy states, particularly those that figured prominently in the war. To that end, he commissioned a new field manual to be developed by the agency. The manual would be provided to ordinary citizens inside enemy territory who were sympathetic to the Allies. It would have a singular focus: helping these citizens carry out acts of “simple sabotage” that would destabilize their own communities and businesses. When completed, the so-called Simple Sabotage Field Manual was wide-ranging. It covered everything from damaging buildings and infrastructure to interrupting supply lines. But there at the end was a little section focused on disrupting day-to-day business operations. As you may have deduced by now, the instructions in the list on the previous page—the ones that sound so eerily familiar—were copied verbatim from that manual, written in 1944. And yet here we are. We see our organizations in those instructions. We see our colleagues. We see ourselves. Somehow, in less than a lifetime, modern work has become indistinguishable from sabotage.