What are the Unwritten Rules in Your Organization?

The batter digs into the batter box for his at-bat to lead off the seventh inning.  The pitcher looks in at the catcher to get his sign, goes into his wind up, unleashes a fastball that leaves the batter no room for escape.  BAM!  The batter gets plunked by the fastball.

What just happened?  Most times, the pitcher is just wild and hitting the batter was unintentional.  However, some times, the pitcher is "dispensing justice" for a previous violation of one of the unwritten rules of baseball.

Citizens Bank Park, circa 2006

What are the unwritten rules of baseball, you ask, and why aren't they written down?  Some examples of these unwritten rules in baseball are:

• Don't show up the pitcher by jogging around the bases too slowly when you hit a home run

• Don't steal bases when you have a large lead late in the game

• Don't bunt for a base hit when the opposing pitcher has a no-hitter going late in the game

• Don't celebrate too vociferously during the game in such a way as to show up your opponent

• Don't peek at the catcher signs as a batter or as a runner on second base

• Don't swing at a 3-0 pitch when you have a large lead late in the game

• If we think you intentionally threw a pitch at one of our players, we have to then plunk one of your batters to defend and protect our teammate

• If you are not a pitcher, don't step on the pitcher's mound when you are running on or off the field between innings

• Don't stand on your opponent's side of home plate to try to time your swings as a pitcher is warming up

• Don't talk about an in progress no-hitter (more a superstition than a rule)

As to why they are not written down in the rule book?  I guess it is assumed that everyone was brought up "properly" and knows the rules.  And whoa to the unwitting player who never learned the rules and finds himself on the receiving end of "justice."  The bright side is the offender will learn about the existing of the unwritten rules very quickly!

Many of you might find the unwritten rules of baseball silly and can't understand how something like this takes place.  However, I'd be willing to guess that there are unwritten rules being enforced in your organization today.  What are some examples I've seen?  How about:

• Don't schedule meetings on Friday afternoons, especially in the summer

• Don't break the build then leave the office

• Don't reheat food that has a strong smell in the office microwave

• Wear a purple shirt on Thursdays (shout out to Dustin Fioravanti for this one)

• If you take the last cup of coffee from the pot, make a new pot of coffee

• Don't submit a ticket without first consulting with X

• Don't schedule a meeting with this executive right before lunch because they are grouchy when they are hungry

My favorite Purple Shirt Thursday shirt

Every organization has its unwritten rules, and most teams have their own set of unwritten rules.  So what to do?

One solution would be to include an introduction to the unwritten rules when onboarding a new person to your team or organization.  This could be the responsibility of a "buddy" assigned to mentor the new person or something that is covered in an orientation session.  This at least gives the new person the benefit of awareness before they potentially run afoul of one of these rules.

Another solution is to make these unwritten rules explicit by writing them down and making them highly visible around the organization.  There are two advantages to this approach.  First, the rules are equally accessible to all in the organization regardless of their tenure or experience.  Second, by taking the time to collect and write down these rules, we have an opportunity to consider whether we still want  each of these rules.  If one of these rules has outlived its usefulness, we can simply eliminate the rule.  That's harder to do when the rules remain unwritten and scattered throughout the organization.

Shouldn't we just make all of our rules explicit?  We can certainly try, but in practice, this may be impractical and inefficient for a couple of reasons.  Rules sometimes change, are added, or are eliminated.  Being explicit creates a cost or friction to adopting or modifying our rules which likely means we won't always adapt or amend our rules as needed given the cost of making it explicit.

We also don't want to become a bureaucratic, everything by the book company where people are afraid to take action lest they run afoul of the legion of rules.

A better strategy is to make all of the truly important (regulatory, legal, high risk, high impact) rules explicit in employee handbooks, in training materials, in behavior modeling, and in process guard rails.  These are the rules that are absolute and always need to be followed.

Transitory, local, or less impactful "rules" are fine to keep informal, with "enforcement" of the rules entrusted to peers governing each other.  None of the unwritten rules of baseball strike at the integrity of the game.  Rather, these unwritten rules deal with the decorum of playing the game, so leaving the enforcement of them to the players has worked out well.  We have similar “etiquette” rules in our organizations. We don’t need to write these down explicitly, but the better we get about educating our newer colleagues about these, the less likely they unintentionally run afoul of the collegial “justice.”

On an individual team level, especially when creating a new team or when the membership on the team has changed significantly, it is probably worthwhile to have the team convene to create a team charter, outlining explicitly how they want to interact and collaborate with each other.  (See Heidi Helfand's book, Dynamic Reteaming for some good suggestions on how to do this.) This puts everyone on the same page with no unwritten rules to have to navigate, especially during the fragile periods as they learn how to work with one another.  This can also serve as a bonding and identity-building experience for the new team and a dose of autonomy.  If there are any artistically-inclined team members, the team charter can include the creation of a team crest to further develop the team's identity.

Cover Image created by Giorgio Trovato - @giorgiotrovato