Sabotaging Your Competitors

Charlie Stross was browsing through an old, recently declassified OSS manual on sabotaging the enemy’s production and started wondering about how you could apply the same principles to sabotage your competitors by injecting bad policies into their environment. He lists 10 policies that, if adopted, would tend to destroy an organization.

First on the list is Irreal’s longtime favorite policy for destroying morale and productivity: open plan offices. The others would be equally effective at causing mayhem in your competitors’ offices. Be sure to read the list.

Then read the comments. Warning: there are a lot of them—155 at the time of this writing. The comments are in response to Stross’ solicitation of further ideas. The result is a catalog of all the dysfunctional ideas that “management consultants” and other criminals have foisted off on our work places. You’ll probably start off laughing but by the end you’ll be shaking your head with tears in your eyes.

Most of these ideas are so ridiculous that your first thought is that no one would implement them. Then you’ll remember about open plan offices. Or, if you’re really unlucky, you’ll remember that awful company you used to work for—or maybe still work for—that does have policies like these. One of the most telling comments notes that the commenter no longer considers Dilbert funny because it just documents what is happening in many companies.

It’s an enjoyable post made all the more so if you have time to browse through the comments.

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