Shadow Policies: The Rules Everyone Follows (But No One Wrote)

Every workplace runs on two sets of rules. There are the official policies - polished, lawyered, tucked neatly into the handbook - and then there are the rules everyone actually lives by: the unwritten, unvoted, quietly enforced norms that shape who gets opportunities, whose voice carries, and how decisions really get made. No one wrote them. Everyone feels them. And, left unexamined, they more accurately define your organizational culture than any value statement framed in the lobby.

Shadow policies often appear deceptively practical: “Real work happens during shared 'core' hours.” “Stretch projects go to people who've already shown they ‘get it.’” “Run this by Mark first; if he’s good, we’re good.” They can also read like suggestions instead of edicts - "you might want to rethink taking PTO in Q4," or "no need to loop in Legal before you’ve pre-sold the answer," or "might not be a good move to contradict the top sales earner in public" – and woe to the unfortunate soul who does!

Some started as helpful shortcuts. Many hardened over time into invisible gatekeeping. And all of them siphon energy when employees must take the time to decode top-secret company etiquette before they can make a move.

Finding the Shadow Policies

Spotting a shadow policy is part anthropology and part pattern recognition. Start with the moments that move people, process and (company) politics. What stalls or accelerates work and careers? How are “prestige” items - stretch assignments, travel, budget, visibility - determined? When a decision is “made in the meeting,” which conversations shaped it earlier, elsewhere … and with whom?

You may want to listen for phrases that signal an unwritten rule is standing in for a real policy. “It’s better if you socialize this first” can be a smart nudge - or code for “the answer is predetermined so don’t even bother coming up with your suggestion.” “We don’t do that here” might protect quality…but it could just as easily be the ghost of a 2018 failure that has nothing to do with today’s reality.

Shadow policies thrive (and multiply) in silence, and identifying these “hidden” policies is about putting on your detective cap and seeking to swap folklore for clarity.

Match Game

It’s important to connect what people say is/should be happening with what the data shows or what you see playing out in real life. Why is Lucy organizing all the team offsites even though it isn’t her job? How is it that Glen’s team always lands the high-visibility projects?

Furthermore, we need to watch for the macro signals that there may be a drift between company slogans and company reality:

• we tout “flexible work” on our careers page yet praise 12 hours days and midnight emails
• we list “open” and “collaborative” as company values, yet every department head hoards information inside their own kingdom
• we encourage employees to use their PTO …but side-eye anyone who does

And when, finally, these “shadow rules” see the light of day, it means that leaders must first acknowledge them and then either accept them with purpose,,,or retire them with grace.

Should you Codify or Kill?

Of course not every unwritten rule is a villain. Some are useful norms that got lost on the way to documentation - like “share meeting agendas 24 hours in advance” or “discuss contracts with Cindy in Finance before committing to a customer discount.” Others are one-offs that somehow became the company gospel, and so we maintain an outdated process while pretending to be efficient.

To help you determine what should stay and what should go, ask yourself these questions:

• Does it create clarity? If the norm helps people work faster with fewer surprises, that’s a point toward codify. If it breeds guesswork, it leans kill.
• Is it equitable in practice, not just theory? Check who benefits. If a norm concentrates opportunity in a familiar circle, it’s likely a problem no matter how “neutral” it sounds.
• Can it be explained without euphemism? If you need code words - “culture fit,” “executive presence,” “knows the business” - you might have a proxy for bias.
• Does it reduce risk without throttling learning? Guardrails are good. Invisible tripwires are not.
• Would you be comfortable writing it down? If naming it makes you flinch? That’s instructive and a big old yikes…and a sign to kill.

If a shadow policy passes the test, codify it minimally and visibly. If it fails, kill it cleanly (this may take more than just an announcement!) and replace it with a visible and better alternative that leaders will model on day one.

The end state isn’t a world without any shadows; we’re humans and we will always improvise. But our goal should be to bring enough of that which is hidden into the light so that employees don’t need a decoder ring before they can contribute, grow, and make decisions.

So name the rules everyone follows. Codify the ones that make the work truer and faster and kill the ones that shrink possibility or rely on nostalgia to justify inclusion. And when in doubt, apply the simplest standard of all: if it needs secrecy to survive, it shouldn’t.