Over my career I observed this behavior in more than one company; the only difference between one company to another is how prevalent this behavior is. Its a cancer that slowly spreads in the company kicking out all the none toxic behavior until the entire organization seizes and productivity drops to zero.
- Always create a dependency on someone else.
- Always leave an open action item pending on someone else.
- Make sure to include as many people into the project as possible. i.e. Generally speaking if a project includes more than 10 people it comes to a stand still.
- Raise open ended questions to external parties with little or no background on the project on hand. ex: looping in security team/compliance.
- Make sure that the last email in the chain is not addressed to you.
The main directive here is to make sure that the project is always late, because of other people of course, and is not delivered. The product of an undelivered project can not be assessed and the more critical it becomes with delay the importance of the people handling it increases.
The worst thing about this toxic behavior is how the number of people practicing it seems to increase exponentially, with the good employees either turning or simply leaving the organization.
