Managing in the Age of Uncertainty
How to Establish Credibility as a First-Time Manager
How to Establish Credibility as a First-Time Manager: It’s All about Consistency.
Summary: My experience has taught me that walking the talk is the hardest part of managing. The consistency between your words and actions is always the most difficult part of the job. I've managed about 5,000 people in my career and was consistently ranked in the top quartile of all managers at Cisco, one of the world's best places to work. Here's what my research found after talking to thousands of millennials and gen-z at companies like Amazon, Google, Disney, and DoorDash: consistency is the number one predictor of whether your team will recommend you as a manager. How consistent you are is your greatest source of credibility as a manager.
If you’re like me, you love managing people.
I love being part of a team, and I love it even more when my team finishes first.
Anyone who has managed a high-performance team knows this: the secret to success is our people.
I’ve walked in your shoes; I’ve managed about 5,000 people in my career — I’m not a consultant or academic. I was consistently ranked in the top quartile of all managers when I was at Cisco, one of the world’s best places to work.
If you are an aspiring manager or an experienced manager looking to get better, a lot better — especially for this moment in time — welcome to my newsletter, Managing in the Age of Uncertainty.
Want to know how consistent you are as a manager? Take the free Six Drivers self-assessment
Why first-time managers are navigating the age of uncertainty alone
I left Cisco to answer this question: What does the manager of the future look like?
What are millennials and gen-z seeking in a manager? Which behaviors, tactics, skills or processes matter? What’s it going to take to attract and keep the best people over the next decade?
I had written The Collaboration Imperative, and I was Cisco spokesperson, which meant I spent a lot of time in front of customers. Many of the world’s great companies were telling me the employer-employee relationship was changing, especially as these new and large demographic cohorts started replacing boomers.
I’ve spent the past several years researching and talking to hundreds of companies about this transition, with the added dynamic of artificial intelligence. The research involved thousands of young people working at great companies like Amazon, Visa, Microsoft, McDonald’s, Salesforce, Cisco, Google, DoorDash, Nike, Disney, Starbucks, to name a few.
I’m writing this newsletter to focus on one topic only: to share what I learned about what it takes to be a great manager in this moment in time, both as millennials and genz take over the workforce, and as AI starts to impact jobs. What I’ll be discussing won’t be theory stuff or endless links to click on. I want to be a source of original ideas for readers with this newsletter.
What happened to the corporate ladder — and what replaces it?
For many younger readers, they might be surprised to know that from around 1950 to just into the early part of the 2000s, companies and employees shared an explicit “social contract”; where if you gave your best, you were likely to have lifetime employment, working your way up. That’s the genesis of the phrase, the “corporate ladder.”
It’s a whole new game for managers now. The “ladder,” to quote a company leader I know, has “vaporized.” The “era of efficiency” and AI taking on human workloads have made career planning challenging — at best — for those entering or those growing up in this workforce.
As a result, no one should be surprised to read that a lack of career growth or advancement is the number one reason why someone leaves a job or an organization today.
I call it the “Age of Uncertainty” — meaning, if the industrial age was about taking predictable steps up the ladder, the age of uncertainty is about finding or discovering the path of a career without any predictable steps, without an obvious ladder.
The best people - the people you want on your team - already know this. They are charting their own course and taking charge of their careers themselves.
Therein lies your opportunity. You have a team and resources. You manage an organization and a budget. You have opportunities to grow and advance people with job roles that will be recognized and rewarded. In return, you’ll be populating your team with the people it needs to finish at the top.
But — it will only happen if you have a reputation as a manager who understands and acts on what today’s employees care about.
Why the manager of the future must be a career dot-connector
That’s why I believe the manager of the future must be a “career dot-connector” to attract and retain the best people. Connecting the dots between the roles on your team to the career opportunities of your people is what it means to manage in the age of uncertainty.
Let’s keep it simple: the best people today are looking for managers who engage in their career success. It’s an incredible opportunity to help people — and help yourself.
What first-time managers need to know right now
In short, expectations have changed — dramatically.
There’s no time to waste.
In my next post, I share the results of the research — and the fundamental role consistency plays in managing in the age of uncertainty.
Manager Thought of the Week
“Tell people the truth.”
What former General Electric CEO Jack Welch told me when I asked him the key to being a good manager. I really enjoyed reading Power Failure about the history of GE.
How to be a Great First-time Manager: The Culture Platform
The only purpose-built learning and development system for first-time millennial and gen-z managers.
The corporate ladder has been dismantled rung by rung by AI. For millennials and gen-z, the predictable career path has vaporized — and most managers are navigating it alone, without any formal training.
I’ve managed about 5,000 people in my career, and was consistently ranked in the top quartile of all managers at Cisco, one of the world’s best places to work.
I left Cisco to answer one question with research and evidence: what does the manager of the future look like?
My research — conducted with thousands of young people at companies like Amazon, Google, Disney, and DoorDash — identified Six Drivers of Consistency that separate great managers from the rest, with a 95% confidence interval.
That research became The Culture Platform: a complete learning and development system — Framework, Feedback, and Tools — purpose-built for first-time managers who want to separate themselves and be a great manager of high-performance teams.
ManagerMentor • All Rights Reserved • The Culture Platform, Inc. • 2026
Love your perspective on this Ron and can't wait to see more of your insights. Effective leadership today is all about being continuously curious and engaged with your team members to know how to best "connect the dots" (as you put it) in these uncertain times. An empowering approach with an optimistic mindset versus command-control will make a positive difference in attracting and retaining top talent.
Ron! Nice to see your work here and an excellent piece! I look forward to more of this, you know we have mind meld on many of these topics!