The invisible rules that run every organisation
Every organisation runs two systems at once — one written in policy and org charts, the other living in trust, narrative, and the rules nobody names.
Former Big 4 Partner • Organisational Observer
Nagaraj spent twenty years inside organisations, and as a former Big 4 consulting partner he watched decisions form where no policy could record them — in the conversation before the meeting, in reputation, and in the quiet exchange of trust.
He has spent a lifetime studying games: chess, cricket, and the ones nobody names. A FIDE-rated chess player, he also holds ICC Cricket Umpire Accreditation at Foundation Level, and he is an investor. Pattern, timing, and the reading of a room run through all of it.
He lives in Dubai with his wife and son. Unwritten is his invitation to see organisational life twice — the system written down, and the one that runs beside it until you learn to look.
Every organisation runs two systems at once. The first is written down, in policies, org charts, job descriptions, and performance reviews. The second is never written anywhere. It lives in the conversation before the meeting, in relationships, narratives, rituals, reputation, and the invisible currencies nobody names but everyone uses.
Unwritten explores the gap between those systems. Across sixteen chapters, Nagaraj takes an anthropological look at organisational life — why the meeting before the meeting is often the real meeting, what the win email is actually for, why a story can be written before the result arrives, and how influence travels through networks that rarely appear on an org chart.
This is not a guide to office politics. It is an invitation to see the organisation differently. Drawing on twenty years across consulting, he traces the patterns that repeat: whose story travels, who receives credit, who decides who is heard, and what happens when the formal system meets a human one.
Every organisation has a system you can see, and another one you cannot — until you learn to see it. Understand the invisible rules. See the invisible conversations. Then choose your own terms.
Reputation is a currency no ledger will name.
Influence travels the paths an org chart cannot draw.
See both systems, and choose your own terms.
Write to Nagaraj about the invisible rules, the meeting before the meeting, or a question the book leaves open.
