What if I were to tell you all of the Unwritten Rules of IBM Design?

It began with a struggle.

My obstacle was “how to become an IBMer.” Onboarding to a new tech culture. What to do to fit into the culture, figuring out what parts of the new information coming at me was important, and what all the cloud-related technology I was suddenly working on was, and what to do to play my role in the teams I was suddenly a part of, and what I needed to learn to do my job.

After my first year, I knew my boss probably saw me struggling to be productive. Productivity was a problem, sure, but that’s not how I saw it at the time. I knew I wasn’t producing a lot, but, to me, it felt like I was unable, or incapable of doing the work. It was as if I had a plug in my hand, but it was just flat wall around me.

From the outside, it likely looked like an otherwise awesome job, even though I had nowhere to plug into.

I felt like I was just culturally challenged. That I must be flawed in some way that makes me incapable of fitting into this place or feeling like I can be part of the culture here. Ugh, here we go again — I must’ve picked the wrong culture in the job interviews. Do I even know how to do that?!

It’s been a problem for me in every tech company I’ve tried to join in my career. I just didn’t understand how to join a tech company with its hidden expectations, its culture, its meetings, its vague business objectives.

I was reading Ryan Holliday’s “The Obstacle Is The Way” at the time, which taught me that the way to get around my struggle was to go through it. To embrace that struggle as the way, the direction, the path forward.

Then one day, I talked to some coworkers about my struggles, and Madeline agreed with me… It must not be just us… Maybe it’s just that something is missing. Some tribal, inside knowledge about how to fit in here is missing from our awareness. Maybe that information would help us be in the know like the other well-adapted IBMers around us.

If we can find that information, then it’s more likely that we can make it here.

Why isn’t anyone telling us this information? These rules aren’t written down — I think — because sometimes people see problems differently after they’re in the culture. They forget what it was like before they were part of the group… They forget that you struggle and even need to be told something to help you figure it out along the way…

The people who are now in the culture don’t remember what the front door looks like because they spend all their time in the house. They only opened that door once, and that might’ve been a long time ago.

Our struggle was onboarding to a new culture. Madeline and I partnered on discovering these “unwritten rules” for adapting to IBM’s culture to improve our experiences, and to share with others who similarly struggle.

Now, a candid conversation about “going to work” in tech.

Joining a company culture is a little like finding that house and making your way in. Unlike a house, though, you can’t go somewhere to put your hand on “the company” you work for. You think of going to work as if it were a place, but now you just go to work by opening your laptop. You’re not “at work.” You’re at home. But, there’s something called IBM that you’re now supposed to be part of.

I once read Donella Meadows’ Thinking in Systems. She teaches you to think about complex systems — economies, ecosystems, governments, corporations — as if they’re living things. She imagines a “systems zoo,” as if the complex systems were different types of animals, which she used to categorize and describe the various kinds of systems you’ll run into in life. Meadows teaches us a way to make the complex, invisible things concrete and detectable.

Let’s think about “going to work” like stepping into a zoo of invisible creatures. Imagine the parts of the company you work for all around you even though you can’t see them or touch them or find them. They’re powerful things with measurable impact on the economy. They’re companies, organizations, departments, teams, and business units.

To extend that metaphor a little bit: You want to see the things you encounter at work — companies, organizations, departments, teams, business units — as things that move around with size and shape. Make up whatever you need to see. Or, maybe you see them as whales that spout cash when they rise to the surface. Maybe they’re forests that sometimes bloom in various flowers/benefits/rewards — whatever you need to see. Just know that they’re there, and they’re real. You could imagine it as if they’re big, invisible fish swimming in invisible currents in this invisible river you step into when you “go to work.”

Imagine going to work is like learning to breathe under water. That’s what it means to join a company culture — you’ve got to learn a new way of sensing for the “work” part of your life.

It’s unfamiliar at first, just like you think breathing under water would be. It’s uncomfortable, but it just takes practice. You get used to it. Remember, other people got so used to it they forgot they struggled at first. So, I go forward trusting that I’ll adjust, too. I give myself time to adjust. Just go along with the currents, listen to what’s going on around you, give yourself time to get oriented, and it’ll all start to happen naturally.

You’ve gotta sense that these things are out there, learn these things by their behaviors, learn what they “feel” like with whatever senses you use to detect them. So, you’ve gotta learn a new way of sensing. And, that’s all. It’s just those things — invisible creatures and breathing underwater…

The struggles of working in technology companies.

When you look up “culture” on Wikipedia, it says it “encompasses the social behavior and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.”

Then, there comes this sad commentary when you look up “organizational culture,” you get this, “culture as root metaphor sees the organization as its culture, created through communication and symbols, or competing metaphors.” Did these people ever try to work for one of these cultures?! Did this definition help them?! It doesn’t help me. It leaves me with huge questions like, where are these communications? Which of the symbols or competing metaphors is most correct?

So, what are the unwritten rules? The unwritten rules are all the things about a tech company culture that nobody knows to teach us because they don’t remember it was a struggle for them to learn, and they don’t realize the wide variety of ways into the culture. The unwritten rules are the inside knowledge you have when you’re a member of the culture. The unwritten rules are the values, norms, guidelines, expectations, rituals, and knowledge you need to operate and contribute as part of their company culture.

I want to retake that ground on “tech company culture” with this unwritten rules work. As much as we recognize work as having a cultural component, I need to understand the following parts of this company in order to be a functioning, healthy member of it:

• Values — what’s important, when, and why. what is sacred
• Norms — how groups of people function to do the work of this company
• Rules, guidelines, expectations — what I’m supposed to do, when, why, and how
• Rituals — the collective actions they take to be part of the this culture
• Knowledge — the technical stuff you need to know to work in “tech,” like how the cloud works, what stuff like microservices are, and why businesses use cloud computing

If you’re gonna hire us and expect us to join your culture, then you need to introduce us to all these things in the beginning. That’s what we need to know in order to know what to do, when to do it, why we’re doing it, and how to do it appropriately.

I see this unwritten rules project as the way to find the inside information people need to join IBM Design’s culture. We study the well-adapted IBMers we see around us, find out what’s worked for them, find out what advice they got, and we present that for others to learn and benefit from.

Just as quarantine began, I put a book up in my zoom background area on a bookshelf behind me. I placed it there as a totem to help me find my way. It was Alan Watts’ The Book. Just like Watts revealed the inside knowledge it takes to make it as a modern human, I knew there must be a way to distill — the inside knowledge it takes to join a tech company culture. I’ve found the way to do that by interviewing people who are well-adapted to the culture, hearing their story, and gleaning from it the lessons they use to operate in the culture. It’s not about their success, it’s about how to operate confidently and comfortable.

The list of unwritten rules for IBM Design, so far.

Since beginning this unwritten rules project, Madeline and I feel like we know how to be ourselves at IBM Design. We know what it looks like to be doing the right thing at the right time. We can tolerate new topics and uncertainty. We basically believe in ourselves now…

So, how did we get here? We got here with this short list of unwritten rules we’ve found so far by interviewing 6 well-adapted IBMers (we base this on being “well-adapted” as opposed to successful, because there are many types of success. We just wanted to find people who looked from the outside like they knew what to do, when, why, and how to do it).

you are not alone. / together we’re more successful than apart. / responsibility to others.
network. / create alignment. / diversity of perspective. / build bridges.
if you want something, talk to other people about it.

be who you were before here. / be you.
be transparent. / be vulnerable. / be curious.
don’t take change personally.

always find new challenges. / learn a few new methods each year.
find opportunity in the unexpected. / there’s no one way to do it.
continuous improvement. / listen until you learn. / you get the unofficial advice when you’re stuck.

show, don’t tell.

be comfortable with being uncomfortable. / be transparent in the face of ambiguity.
ask questions. / use the discomfort to drive you toward what’s important. / figure out ways to stay afloat.

be scrappy. / check the boxes.
you get what you give.

answer this question for yourself: what kind of IBMer do you want to be?

what do you want to be known for? / What is your superpower? / identify your passion.
you don’t have the answers, you find the answers. / find answers together.

I know when it’s working. it’s a feeling. it has an energy I can sense. / when the team has momentum.

These pieces of advice have already paid off for us. Now, granted, when we read these short-format rules it cues the the larger stories behind them. We publish them as a podcast so you can hear the full stories, too.

This is what’s so awesome… Those rules sound to us like what the front door to the house looks like when you need to find your way in. they make sense in context.

Remember when we told you to imagine a zoo of invisible creatures around you that you’d have to sense with new senses? Well, there’s the unwritten rule that goes, “I know when it’s working. it’s a feeling. it has an energy I can sense. when the team has momentum.” So, we hope the “sense invisible things” advice seems more plausible now.

Seeing the rules in our own work.

network. / create alignment. / diversity of perspective. / build bridges.

if you want something, talk to other people about it.

The first thing we did was to talk about our core challenge to other IBMers at a community meeting. Madeline and I networked — we showed up for a large team meeting. We were surrounded by a diversity of perspectives — everyone in the group was unique from the other. We built bridges — we spoke about our challenges in a constructive way that let others hear that we had a direction in mind for how to get out of the mess we were in. We wanted something, and we spoke about it to others.

you are not alone. / together we’re more successful than we are apart. / responsibility to others.

We found someone who shared our experience, and we wanted to partner up to do something about it! We were both just done with that struggle. And, we set out to help others who might face that struggle.

be scrappy. / check the boxes.
you get what you give.

Madeline and I made time to connect amidst doing our regular work. We set up some initial interviews. We wrote a list of questions to ask. We did the interviews and asked our questions. We recorded things. We took notes. We went back and listened to recordings and studied transcripts. We used our analytical methods and tools from research projects to do this project. We did what we could to just take the next step. step-by-step, at first.

be comfortable with being uncomfortable. / be transparent in the face of ambiguity.
ask questions. / use the discomfort to drive you toward what’s important. / figure out ways to stay afloat.

We worked our way through our interview notes to a first episode. We leapt forward at many moments just doing the best thing that occurred to us to create an episode. We recorded and edited the episode. We produced the episode. We shared the episode.

you don’t have the answers, you find the answers. / find answers together.

We just found the way forward — the way through our obstacles — together. We did it by asking other people. They shared. We learned. We passed it on. Others learned. It’s working. It’s working for us. It can work for you.

The way forward from here.

We hope our journey brings you some resolution. We hope to speed up the time you experience between hire date and comfortable-and-confident date. We hope these unwritten rules tell you what to do in your moments of uncertainty.

Our desire is to work on this project full-time as a way to build an experience-driven onboarding program for IBM Design. This is our calling, our mission, our purpose. We hope it helps you find your way.

Jay Morgan is a Researcher at IBM based in Austin, TX. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Jay is into cooking and fitness — so he can work off all he eats. He studied applied cognitive science at university, and works with those principles to proactively improve the mental health of work and collaboration.