Managing in the Age of Uncertainty
How do I share my management process with my team?
How to Share Your Management Process With Your Team: What Millennials and Gen Z Care About
Summary: My research into the future of managing showed that people want to work for a manager who shares the way they get things done. Boomer managers were encouraged to keep secrets — "information is power" was a common refrain. The best people in the next generation of talent don't have time for secrets, especially when it comes to planning their careers and opportunities on your team. Process is one of the Six Drivers of Consistency — and sharing yours is one of the most powerful things you can do as a first-time manager.
This is the second in my Six Drivers of Consistency series. Start with the overview here.
The Six Drivers of Consistency — Managing in the Age of Uncertainty
A research-backed series for first-time millennial and gen-z managers by Ron Ricci
[Overview: How to Be a More Consistent Manager] · [Accountability: How to Hold People Accountable Without Micromanaging] · [Process: How to Share Your Management Process With Your Team] · [Alignment: How to Align Your Team to Your Priorities] · [Listening: How to Listen to Your Employees Effectively] · [Mindset: How to Develop Your Management Style] · [Facts: How to Use Facts to Manage Your Team’s Performance]
Stop. Don’t assume I mean “process” in the traditional sense.
Instead, I’m talking about your process for getting things done as a manager. Every manager is unique as a person — and, as a result, every manager has their own approach, even when using common processes like Agile or Six Sigma.
My research into the future of managing showed that people want to work for a manager who shares the way they get things done. Boomer managers were encouraged to keep secrets; “information is power” was a common refrain. The best people in the next generation of talent don’t have time for secrets, especially when it comes to planning their careers and opportunities on your team.
In the age of uncertainty, there’s no predictable set of steps to get ahead for millennials and gen-z — not in the way boomers could see a clear path forward on the corporate ladder. That’s why millennials and gen-z are looking for managers who can clearly connect the dots between a role on a team and how it advances a career.
The best people want to work for a manager who is consistent in the way they prioritize budgets and rewards — a manager’s “operating model,” if you will. Budgets and rewards are where the rubber meets the road for job roles and individual performance.
This post is focused on your process as a manager — one of the Six Drivers of Consistency.
As a first-time manager, one of the first things you’ll discover is the fact that everything follows the corporate calendar. It’s a natural part of working in an organization; you’ll be forced to think about the way you manage your team each fiscal or calendar year. How do you set goals? How are budgets allocated? How is performance evaluated? How do you gather information? Are you a good listener?
Why first-time managers who share their process attract better people
The best people know every manager has their own behaviors. All managers do things in an idiosyncratic way when running a team, which is what I mean by a manager’s “operating model.”
Every manager takes a series of steps to set priorities and goals, and manage team performance. Because team performance sets the stage for rewards and recognition, your people care deeply about your unique approach to planning and operating the team.
Let me be specific: What you value in the way you organize a team for execution is what people want to know.
Only you can share what you value. I’m a manager who always favors making bets on the future and how to change the game. My planning processes are always built around big ideas versus incrementalism. As a result, my priorities, goals and metrics tended to favor game-changing approaches. At the same time, I’ve been managed by people who were obsessed with operational efficiencies and lowering the cost of doing business. Neither is better.
What matters is this: as a manager, you are accountable for a body of work and you have your own discipline to finish top 10 percent. Every manager does. Do your people know yours?
What millennials and gen-z expect from a manager's operating model
The team can only follow your lead if you share your process, or approach to managing the team’s work.
The simplest way to do this is to start with the calendar. Every organization or person uses some kind of calendar-based milestone (calendar/fiscal year) to plan revenue and expense goals. Inside revenue and expense goals are individual job roles.
I’m encouraging today’s managers to be the anti-”information is power.”
To attract and keep the best talent, your people want to know how their job roles and performance are affected by the way you answer these three questions:
1. How are goals set?
Identify which meetings drive goal-setting decisions on your team
Name who sits at the table when goals are set
Anchor goals to a specific fiscal or calendar milestone
Define what data informs your planning process
Share the cadence so your people can plan around it
2. How are budgets allocated?
Identify who determines what budgets are required to achieve goals
Make clear whether budgets are allocated by function, profit drivers, or sales results
Share how individual job roles connect to budget decisions
Tell your people how budget changes affect their priorities and recognition
3. How is performance evaluated?
Name the forums where leaders and managers judge results against goals
Identify who is in the room when results are evaluated
Set a clear cadence of review so your people are never surprised
Define what “exceeding expectations” looks like on your dashboard
Share how performance evaluation connects directly to rewards and recognition
Sharing your process eliminates the "inner circle" and builds trust
When people know the process you use to run the team, it reduces concerns about capricious outcomes and encourages people to double down on your goals. The best people don’t want to be surprised. I was recently told how much millennials and gen-z despise the “inner circle” concept that characterized the way boomers managed.
In the end, telling the team your method to managing the team and its performance will encourage people to focus on being successful within the process — and maybe even help you make the process better.
At the same time, the way you determine your priorities, goals and metrics is a once-in-a-planning cycle opportunity to understand how optimized your team is for execution:
Confirm you have the right roles and the right people in those roles
Verify your people are playing to their strengths
Identify whether too many people are duplicating the same work
Flag anyone who has been in the same role for too long without growth
How consistent a manager are you?
Manager Thought of the Week
“Process is not a four-letter word.”
What Cisco Co-President Gary Moore told me when I asked him to describe the biggest challenge facing Cisco. I’ve told Gary this personally but I’d like the world to know how much I appreciate him for giving me the chance to run one of the largest sales enablement teams at Cisco. He took a risk on me, and I’m only able to write this newsletter because of the 8 years I spent managing more than $500 million of Cisco’s money and all the amazing people on my team.
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’ve walked in your shoes as a manager.
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
A lot of good ideas Ron. Thank you.