Rules of Everything

THE RULES OF WORK

The Rules of Work was the very first Rules book. I’d spent decades working in the kind of organisations that employed dozens, hundreds or even thousands of people, in some kind of hierarchical structure. Pretty much everyone in these organisations aspires to climb the corporate ladder, but logic tells you that with far fewer people at the top than at the bottom, most people won’t make it. Over the years I’d worked out that the trick – beyond being very good at your job – was to understand the unspoken rules: the ones that no one tells you, but which the people at the top of these companies had followed in order to get where they were.

I’d taken to watching what these people did and didn’t do, in common with each other, to ...