Rick Reilly, a sportswriter for ESPN, penned a great column in 1995 entitled, Unwritten Rules. The piece laid out many of the great “known” rules of sports –things that athletes know to be true, but which cannot be found in any rulebook.
There are also “unwritten rules” for business. Those who manage these rules well can be substantively more effective in their interactions with others, and can often achieve their goals by using common sense in appropriate situations.
Here are the Unwritten Rules of Business:
- Sending prep materials before a meeting: Sending out slides or an agenda before a big meeting (e.g. a Board meeting, a monthly team meeting, etc.) requires that they be sent out prior to 5 PM the day before the meeting. In fact, sending them at 11 PM the night before the meeting is the same thing as not sending them at all. Actually, it is actually worse than not sending anything out. It is simply CYA and comes across as such.
- Requesting a meeting with at least a week’s notice: If you are seeking a meeting with someone else, sending a note that says, “Hi, I’m arriving in town tonight – can we get together for an hour in the next two days as this is the only window I will be in your city?” is not enough time for the receiving party to consider the invitation. You might be surprised, but the receiving party might already have meetings scheduled for the next couple of days.
- Know the answers in a board meeting: As the CEO you should never ask a question out loud in a board meeting to which you don’t already know the answer. Ever.
- Sending meeting invites: If you set up a meeting with someone and take on the responsibility of sending a meeting invite, you should send it with a subject line that makes sense to both parties. For example, if you and I agree to a business call and you send me a meeting invite, examples of inappropriate titles for the meeting would include, “Call with Rob” (means nothing to me when I see it on my calendar) or “Catch up” (means nothing to either of us). “Call with Rob/’Yourname’ re: business idea” is an ideal title.
- Corollary – Updating meeting invites: If you own the meeting invite on other people’s calendars and the meeting changes the time or date, it is your responsibility to send an update within a few hours of the meeting being changed. Waiting several days to do so and therefore making everyone else’s calendars incorrect can only cause problems for others.
- Manage financial forecasts: All business forecasts are wrong – usually to the downside. People experienced in business expect it. However, you never want to miss a forecast by a substantive amount immediately after closing a round of funding – this puts trust at risk amongst all parties. And while missed forecasts can be managed, lost trust can be fatal.
- Be transparent with your edits: If you are trading versions of a document (e.g. a contract), send back both a clean version and a red-line from the last version after you make changes. Do not send only a clean version and require the receiving party to figure out what you changed.
- Manage documents so your readers do not have to: Name documents logically and use version control if you are iterating so that the receiving party knows with what version of the document they are working.
- Be nice to administrative assistants and office managers: Most assistants are doing their best to help you while at the same time balancing their responsibilities to those people whom they support. Treat them well – even if your position is higher than theirs on the org chart, being polite is the right thing to do.
Read the original article in Forbes for more unwritten rules.
