This was written as a concept that might be fun to carry forward in reality.
Criminal activities are only criminal if used for malicious intent. But to fight fire with fire, it may turn out to be a force for good. Earlier in the year, I took inspiration from arsonists and the notion of creating burning platforms internally within organizations for people to feel the heat and hopefully move towards building a new and better organization in the ashes of the old(https://medium.com/product-team-tonic/corporate-arson-13fe67e20752). Sadly, despite best efforts, that never quite materialized and continues to live on as a thought experiment. That got me thinking and seeking other criminal activities that would serve to be an inspiration for corporate cultural change and it dawned on me that arsonists tend to be individual, however terrorists operate in groups. The chance of success on a larger scale is more successful with a full deployment of trained terrorists inserted into organizations.
Recruiting terrorists
As with any terrorist recruitment, there needs to be disillusion, dissatisfaction and disavowed operatives from various organizations just looking for vengeance against corporate and managerial injustice. This group of people do not need swanky youtube productions, the key to heaven or a promise of double digit virgins to attract them to the higher cause. They just need a chance to do better and leave a legacy (the good type not the crappy type by IT). Most of the time, these members can be found in meetups and are looking for a greater purpose in their drudgery.
Training terrorists
The hired agents should all have their own expertise in their field so that inserting them into various departments of the organization would not be difficult. (Minimally they do need to pass an interview to be accepted). Training probably will cover code words and protocol for intelligence gathering and exchange without alerting the general population.
Team structure
Bring your own team (BYOT) has limited impact in larger organizations. Processes and people will kill off the team like white blood cells against foreign entities. My hypothesis is that the infiltration of singular sleeper agents across departments and teams will form a tree root system that seems benign on the outside but are insidiously planning beneath the clam surface. This would make up a clandestine cell system within the organization as change agents that are waiting for the signal to carry out hits. It could also follow a resistance military model of guerilla warfare depending on the organization. However that is a lot more resource intensive.
Day to day
Day to day agents are able to collect humint on the ground, interacting directly with the people of the department. Yet at the same time they are not alone to fight the cultural inertia as John Rambo. They will have the support of a clandestine network that is just waiting to be activated. Most other information can be found online such as osint can be easily found online. Techint and finint tend to reside somewhere within the intranet somewhere (https://medium.com/@mryitch/the-work-algorithm-for-corporate-survival-a0ee517129a1). A sharing portal such as slack or a facebook group is good enough (we are not looking at actual terrorism so there really is no need for national security grade message exchange). This would help to look at various parts of the organization and zero in on targeted departments to restructure.
The hit
As with most terrorist plots there it takes meticulous planning for a single target. The intelligence gathered would be used to identify the key pillars that supported the old structures that have now decayed and become nothing more than appendixes that need to be removed. The reason for a full team versus a single criminal (/arsonist) is because the hit needs to be coordinated to take down the old structure cleanly similar to planting bombs of structural pillars of old buildings that need to be torn down.
Applications
It would be cool if this concept were to take off like management consulting at the turn of the century. I kinda envision this to be like the team from sneakers that gets hired to test security systems but in this case to implement change in the organization without the need for a costly restructuring and outplacement firms. If done right, the old structures that stood in the way would implode without the outside world ever knowing and in it’s place hopefully a more modern business model would take its place.
