6 Unwritten Rules of Business

There are a lot of issues in our society and addressing any of those issues can get you started, all you are supposed to do is look, look closely.

Businesses are what drives the economy of the country. Businesses are the way forward as it paves the path towards the creation of more jobs and thus, more employment opportunities are generated. Businesses just do not come into being, they are a result of need identification in the market. Those who tap into those needs to find them themselves enacting a business.

When businesses come into being, they are governed by certain rules and regulations. Some of these rules are written explicitly whereas others are unwritten. What are those latter rules? Read on to find out below.

1.      Sending prep materials before a meeting

Where there are businesses, a number of meetings are conducted to ensure operations run smoothly. Business meetings are crucial as members of the management committee (most of the time) sit together, to sort things out. They discuss things how the business operations will be furthered and what resources will be required to achieve these objectives.

So imagine you have this big meeting coming up tomorrow and you are entrusted with the task of seeing things through, it is imperative that you send out the meeting details before 5 pm and a day earlier. Nobody will spell this out for you, these are just the things are and is one of the unwritten ones out there.

2.      Requesting a meeting with at least a week’s notice

Another one of the unwritten rules is intimating the party of a meeting at the eleventh hour. Even if you inform the person earlier in the day it is just not the same. You do not know if the party is available in town or has his hands full with some other engagements. Therefore, you ought to exercise care.

No matter if you are being polite or is scheduling a meeting at a dinner or at coffee, intimating the concerned party at least a week earlier is the way to do things. There is no way around to it unless of course the matters are really pressing and ought to be discussed on an urgent basis. Point being, you cannot take others' time for granted.

3.      Know the answers in a board meeting

Okay, this one is fun. If you happen to be a CEO of the company and you are is in the presence of your management committee members, never ask a question out loud. The unwritten rule here states that act like you know the answers to everything that is going in the board meeting. You can later refer to your close aides and seek answers to the questions you thought you needed clarification about.

4.      Sending meeting invites

If you are in a position of scheduling meeting between you and the other person, it is your duty to send the invite with a subject line that will make sense to the receiver. And if you are a facilitator setting up the meet between two or more parties than the subject line should make sense to both of them.

Now you must be wondering what would be an appropriate title, well, let me first tell you what would be an incorrect title, “Call with Greg” or “Catch up” are few of the titles that would make no sense whatsoever to either of the parties involved gearing up for a meet. Hence, the correct title would be “Meet with Craig/sender’s name followed up with the idea for the meeting." Believe you me, setting your subject line straight will bring you huge favours in the business.

5.      Manage financial forecasts

Business forecasts usually fail and by failure, I mean on the negative side. Experts hope forecasts to surpass their expectations but they seldom do. So it is from them we have learned that financial forecasts are a tough business.

Thus, to face forecasting errors right after having garnered funding is a BIG ‘no’ and should be avoided at all costs. It is because you can come back from missed forecasts but there is no coming back from lost trust.

6.      Be transparent with your edits

There will be times when certain contracts are drawn up because businesses work in liaison with other businesses and MoUs are traded where each business states it terms or code of conduct with another. It could also be other forms of documents too and not necessarily contracts.

Care should be exercised that whatever edits you have suggested to the other party they should be clearly identified with red showing where the changes will be incorporated. Alongside, send a clean version where only your suggested edits are shown. Do not just send them the clean version to figure things out on their own.