What rules are really running your organisation? Every workplace has them. Nobody wrote them down. Nobody formally agreed to them. Yet everyone seems to know them, and they can be more powerful than anything in your values statement, strategy or staff handbook. They are the Unwritten Ground Rules, or UGRs®: the unspoken expectations that determine who speaks honestly, which standards genuinely matter, what leaders are allowed to ignore and ‘the way we do things around here’. In The Rules Nobody Wrote, workplace-culture specialists Steve Simpson and Stef du Plessis reveal how these invisible rules take hold, why they persist and how leaders unknowingly reinforce them through everyday decisions and behaviour. Drawing on compelling true stories gathered across more than three decades, from boardrooms and mine sites to hotels, factories, warehouses and one of the world’s most exciting automotive companies, the authors make organisational culture tangible rather than theoretical. You will discover: how unwritten rules shape behaviour, trust and performance why stated values so often differ from workplace reality what leaders communicate through the things they tolerate how damaging rules survive long after the people who created them have left practical ways to uncover, discuss and reshape your organisation’s UGRs This is not another abstract framework for culture change. It is a practical way of seeing what is already happening in your organisation, including the signals leaders send, the assumptions people make and the patterns that quietly become normal. Because when the values on the wall and the rules in the room disagree, the room always wins. The question is whether your culture will remain a product of luck or become a product of design.
