Strategy 090

An Steering Committee

Sabotage is an art.

The kind of art that slips beneath the surface, pulling threads in ways you don’t notice until the entire structure starts to sag. A recently unclassified manual of sabotage — now a stunning print project by Scott Boms — catalogs several of these various methods with dark precision: delay decisions endlessly, over-explain until clarity drowns, demand outdated processes with religious fervor, and so on.

The Simple Sabotage Field Manual from the Office of Strategic Services.

An Exploratory Counsel

But here’s the twist: these same tactics, once the ‘tools of resistance’, often already exist throughout the various systems of power.

In management.

In bureaucracy.

In leadership that insists it’s doing its best.

It’s subtle.

It’s polite.

It’s wrapped in the language of “best practices” or “protocol.”

Yet the result is the same. Stasis. Frustration. Erosion of creativity. Sabotage doesn’t always wear the mask of rebellion—it often looks like the status quo.

So the question is: how do we spot it? And what do we do when the saboteur is the system itself?

Eerie.

Tools.

In limited supply.

Limited Edition

Here Boms has managed to assemble a beautiful reprint (though I wouldn’t call it a ‘reprint’ since it’s a complex work of art) of the declassified doc using a variety of production techniques into one primo example of power, using some delicious typefaces (see link for more info). Boms has been making complex print projects for years, but he’s only recently started selling the editions via his shop in the last few years. There were only 35 made, so you’ll likely have to stay vigilant for the releases. Get yourself a Field Manual and dig into the sabotage of old. It’s new again for quick reference.

…and with a fused ‘dynamite’ bookmark. 🧨

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