The Rules of Work
Two decades ago, while passing through the Hong Kong airport, I noticed a book called The Rules of Work, written by British author Richard Templar [1]. With only a few years of industrial experience under my belt, and with a new role in engineering management, I was curious about this book’s title. I bought it, read it, and allowed most of it to influence the way I approached the last 20 years of my career. I’m glad I did, since the rules are generally true but unspoken, and rarely taught. These rules are often learned the hard way, and sometimes too late.
Templar wrote the book for young professionals wanting to climb their way up the promotion ladder. Templar provides 100 rules ranging from “Know your role” to “Dress well” to “Know the Psychology of Promotion.” Each rule is described in about 400 words, often with an anecdote. Although sometimes out-dated, written in British vernacular, and certainly not palatable to everyone, I still find the book unusually engaging and useful.
In this article, I share direct quotes from six of Templar’s rules of work. These rules are all centered on one of the book’s ten themes: “Act One Step Ahead”. Templar’s thesis for this theme is that if you are going to move up in the company you have to practice the “mannerisms, attitudes, and managerial traits of the position above the one you currently hold. If you already look as if you’ve been promoted, chances are you will be.”
Many of the remaining 94 rules of work not discussed in this article have also been valuable to me in my career, as has Templar’s follow-on book called Rules of Management [2], which is not reviewed in this article.
The following are excerpts of Templar’s exact words, spliced together for brevity.
Rule 1: Dress One Step Ahead
When I was an assistant manager, I dressed like one. When I wanted to be a manager I studied what the manager wore… opted to dress like [one] and was duly promoted… it is that simple.
Whatever job you are doing, you must have your eye on the next position up [and] know who has that job now. Study them. What do they wear? How do they dress? What style, level of smartness? Is there anything you can learn from the way they dress? Can you start copying it now?… if it means wearing a smart business suit, then get used to it.
Rule 2: Talk One Step Ahead
How does your boss talk?… it isn’t their accent or pronunciation — how they sound — but the content, what they say [that matters]. I bet you talk in terms of “I” whereas your boss will probably use “we” much more. You might speak from a worker’s point of view, whereas they speak on behalf of the company.
When problems crop up it is easy to see things from your own point of view — how it directly affects you. Once you make the leap to corporate speak, it gets easier to stop doing this and to start seeing problems from the company’s point of view. This doesn’t mean you have to become a company person hook, line, and sinker. In fact you are allowed to be honest and express your opinion. If it stinks it stinks — and you should say so. But say so from the company’s point of view, and not your own.
Rule 3: Act One Step Ahead
Look at the way your boss enters the office. Notice anything? Watch the way they answer the phone, talk to staff, entertain customers, hold their pen, hang up their coat, open their office door, sit down, stand up — anything they do. I bet you’ll notice that they move differently from say, the office junior or the maintenance team or the sales force or the marketing folk or the PR people. Acting one step up requires you to be more certain of yourself, be more mature, and be more confident.
Rule 4: Think One Step Ahead
Thinking one step up is about thinking expediently. You don’t have time to waste thinking:
How will this affect my tea breaks?
Will this mean I can still have my holidays?
Will I have to work harder? Longer?
Will I score kudos from this?
No, instead you will think:
Is this better for the department?
Will the company do well out of this?
Can we bosses sell this to the work force?
Are our customers going to be happy with this?
[Thinking this way], you will start to think like a boss and less like a worker. You will see things from the company’s point of view… [you will] see the big picture, see the entire picture, picture the picture, direct the picture, produce the picture, [and] stop being an extra.
[Why are these four rules so important?] You’ve got to become whoever and whatever it is you aspire to be. This isn’t mimicry but training. Study the job you aspire to. Who is doing it now? Learn to think of them as the person who is doing your job. How are they handling it? Learn to appraise those who are senior to you in the way they appraise you. Don’t moan or whine about how your boss does the job — observe instead their mistakes and learn and profit from them. Watch where they go wrong and swear never to make the same mistakes. Watch what they do superbly well and start practicing their smart moves now.
Rule 5: [Learn by Spending] more time with Senior Staff
No matter what level you are in the company you can spend more time with senior members of staff… Remember as a child you could attend grown-up parties if you stayed quiet. They forgot you were there. Its the same as a junior. You can hang around and learn, but don’t blow it or you’ll be sent back to bed metaphorically.
When I was a junior I noticed that senior members of staff tended to hang back after meetings sort of chewing the fat amounts themselves. The juniors scuttled off leaving these big wigs to chat. I found that if I hung around also, sort of tidying up the table… and keeping quiet, then I got to overhear a lot and was even consulted on the odd occasion — ‘ah Richard, you’re part of the new invoicing procedures, what do you think of them?’ This was my chance to shine. I blew it of course… [but] next time I got it better and eventually got it right. There came a time when I was asked something and I was coherent, confident, and mature… I was also whisked up the promotion ladder quite rapidly very soon after.
Rule 6: Get People to Assume You Have Already Made the Step
Act like a general manager and people will accept you as one. Act like an office junior and that’s what people will think you are. Basically what you have to do is to get people to recognize you as a heavyweight and not a lightweight. Be serious, mature, grown up and adult. This doesn’t mean you have to be a geek, a nerd, a shot, a goody goody or a bore. You can still take a joke, enjoy a laugh, smile [and] be light hearted… You need to project a mature but fun image. You need to make people aware that you know the job, are experienced, are serious, are reliable and responsible, are trustworthy, [and that] you are the job [e.g., general manager] you want to be.
From here forward in the article, I am no longer quoting Templar.
Aside from what may be more obviously extracted from Templar’s six rules shared above, I find two things particularly interesting. The first is centered on a somewhat expanded definition of the mentor-apprentice relationship, where “apprenticeships” can be carried out overtly or covertly. In an overt apprenticeship, both the mentor and the apprentice are aware of the apprenticeship, and the mentor actively guides the growth of his or her apprentice. This is the traditional understanding of the apprenticeship. In a covert apprenticeship, however, the apprentice is directing his or her own growth by quietly observing people they aspire to be like, and then trying to be more like them.
Templar says “this isn’t mimicry but training.” I agree. The beauty is that covert apprenticeships are completely up to the apprentice — the mentor doesn’t need to agree, the apprentice does not need permission or need to be chosen, the mentor doesn’t even need to know. I have generally practiced covert apprenticeship with every senior colleague and many junior colleagues of mine. These observations have inspired me and helped me to grow in various ways. I make these observations when I attend a lecture or listen to a talk or see how a colleague interacts with others… I always ask “what is one thing I see this person doing that I want to emulate, and what do I see that I will make sure I never do.” Under this model, I take control of my growth. Anyone can be my teacher and I can be continuously learning. It’s up to me.
Observation is not enough though. To get promoted you need to get noticed. Templar has other rules about this, but they’re not discussed in this article.
The second takeaway is similar to the first but completely centered on the product being designed by the team. In a real way, before a manufactured product exists, it evolves from a simple embryonic state to a finished manufacturable design — just like a young professional evolves from a junior contributor to a more capable, senior leader over time. Thus another parallel can be made to Templar’s rules; the embryonic idea aspires (as it were) to become more like the successful products that preceded it. To quote Templar yet again, “this isn’t mimicry but training.” This kind of thinking is generally thought of as competitive benchmarking. If we want our products to compete with or walk the walk as Templar would say, we need to absorb into our current designs the best bits of competitive products and abandon or dramatically fix the worst parts of those competitive products.
In this article, I’ve shared a small bit of Templar’s rules of work. He has nine other themes and 94 other rules. I believe they are worth reading and letting them influence your career — to whatever degree you feel right.
References:
[1] Templar, R., “The Rules of Work: A Definitive Code for Personal Success,” 2003, Prentice Hall Business.
[2] Templar, R., “The Rules of Rules of Management: A Definitive Code for Managerial Success,” 2005, Pearson Prentice Hall.
