Part of me wonders to what degree the authors of this were in on the joke. Bill Donovan was known to prefer independent-minded and creative people as OSS agents

Part of me wonders to what degree the authors of this were in on the joke. Bill Donovan was known to prefer independent-minded and creative people as OSS agents, and while the advice here is genuinely useful I wouldn’t be surprised if the authors were also intentionally satirizing the sorts of corporate and government bureaucracy that they had likely chafed against throughout their lives.