The Making of a Manager

Have you ever found yourself promoted into a leadership role and suddenly felt you were bluffing your way through it? In The Making of a Manager, Julie Zhuo takes readers into that very moment—the dizzying transition from doing great work alone to being responsible for a team’s success. Zhuo argues that management isn’t an innate gift bestowed on the lucky few; it’s a craft that can be learned, honed, and practiced. Great managers, she insists, are made, not born—and anyone curious enough to learn can become one.

Drawing from her decade at Facebook—starting as an intern and rising to Vice President of Product Design—Zhuo distills management into its essence: a manager’s job is to get great outcomes from a team of people working together. That deceptively simple idea underpins everything else in the book. Whether your domain is design, education, sales, or engineering, your role is to elevate your team’s collective output rather than to crank out more of your own. The art is in magnifying others’ impact through clarity of purpose, care for people, and effective processes.

From Individual Contributor to Leader

Zhuo begins by recounting her own unexpected promotion at age twenty-five, when her manager told her, “We need another manager, and you get along with everyone.” Like many first-time leaders, she had no map, only instincts, and began with nervous one-on-ones where former peers gazed skeptically at her new title. Through failures—arriving late to her first meeting, fumbling through giving feedback, and doubting her authority—she learned that management isn’t about control or charisma. It’s about helping others succeed.

(Note: Zhuo’s journey mirrors those chronicled in management classics like Andy Grove’s High Output Management and Daniel Pink’s Drive, where motivation and clarity of purpose outweigh hierarchy.)

The Three Pillars of Management

Zhuo identifies three questions that occupy every manager’s mind: Why are we doing this (purpose)? Who is doing it (people)? And how are we working together (process)? These form the blueprint for effective leadership. The purpose gives meaning; people unlock potential; process ensures coordination. If any pillar collapses—if the team lacks alignment, the right skill mix, or smooth collaboration—performance falters.

Purpose asks: what outcomes define success? For Zhuo, whether designing Facebook’s interface or running an education nonprofit, purpose provides motivation beyond the daily grind. People asks: do we have the talent and relationships for the work at hand? A manager’s time is best spent coaching, hiring, and empowering others—not doing their jobs. Process asks: what systems help us move efficiently? Meetings, planning, and communication are not bureaucratic chores but structures that allow creativity and speed.

Why Management Feels Hard (and Why That’s Okay)

The transition to management can feel overwhelming—a theme Zhuo revisits often. She describes her first years as restless and self-doubting, plagued by “fear, confusion, and am-I-crazy-for-feeling-this?” Yet she argues that discomfort signals growth. Management is inherently messy because it deals with people—diverse, complex, emotionally driven humans—rather than code or design pixels. Unlike a project plan that obeys logic, people demand empathy and adaptation.

Zhuo encourages new managers to embrace imperfection, experiment, and learn through feedback. She herself learned mostly by trial and error—the same way one learns any creative pursuit. The tools she cites, such as Crucial Conversations and How to Win Friends and Influence People, serve as scaffolding, but ultimately experience is the real teacher. What’s important is not avoiding mistakes but reflecting on them to refine your approach.

The Long Arc of Growth

Over time, Zhuo came to see management as a journey, not a destination. Early challenges—learning to give tough feedback, handling conflict, hiring wisely—eventually gave way to larger questions about culture and vision. Her mantra, “The journey is 1% finished,” embodies perpetual learning. Her point is that becoming a better manager is never complete; each success opens new blind spots and opportunities.

The book offers practical tools for every stage: how to diagnose problems (“Is it skill or motivation?”), how to have effective one-on-ones (“Don’t waste them on status updates”), and how to build trust (“If a conversation feels awkward, it’s probably the right one”). But beneath all the tactics lies a moral thread: managing is caring. If you genuinely respect and support your people, you’ll lead not by authority but by trust—a lesson echoed by Simon Sinek’s Leaders Eat Last.

Why This Matters to You

Whether you lead two people or two thousand, Zhuo’s message applies: management is how progress happens in any collective human enterprise. Teams, businesses, schools, and nonprofits all depend on people working well together. And since people aren’t perfectly predictable, management will always be art as much as science. Zhuo’s gift lies in making that art accessible and reassuring. You don’t need to be born with it. You simply need to want to help others achieve great outcomes—and commit yourself to learning what works. As she puts it, “If you care enough to be reading this, you care enough to be a great manager.”

Julie Zhuo reframes management from a glamorous command role to a practical mission: a manager is someone who gets better outcomes from people working together. Most of us, she suggests, start with a narrow idea—managers hold meetings, give promotions, and solve problems. But these activities are the means, not the end. The end is results.

The Lemonade Stand Lesson

Her metaphorical lemonade stand illuminates the difference. Alone, you make decent profit by selling your own handmade lemonade. But when demand grows and you add helpers, your job changes. You’re no longer just squeezing lemons; you’re orchestrating others’ effort. You stop being a solo producer and become the force that multiplies output. If your helpers sell more lemonade than you could alone, your new role has meaning. But if your team stagnates, you’re still operating as an individual contributor.

Zhuo uses this to define management’s multiplier effect: great managers expand a team’s capacity beyond what any individual could achieve. Mediocre managers merely add their own effort, creating incremental gains. True managerial excellence means designing the environment—through motivation, clarity, and collaboration—where each person delivers more than before.

Purpose, People, and Process

To get better outcomes, a manager juggles three interdependent levers:

• Purpose: Why does the team exist? What world are you trying to create? When people grasp the “why,” their work gains direction.
• People: Who’s on board? Are they motivated and equipped to succeed? Hiring, coaching, and trust-building belong here.
• Process: How do we work together? Efficient structures reduce confusion and friction, turning talent into real results.

Zhuo draws on organizational research by J. Richard Hackman, who found that teams need five conditions for success: clear boundaries, compelling direction, enabling structure, supportive context, and expert coaching. Her three levers mirror this research, emphasizing that management is systems design, not micromanagement.

When Survival Comes First

Still, she warns that investing in people and process requires breathing room. When the organization faces crisis—like a lemonade stand about to go bankrupt—survival comes first. Managers must act decisively and sometimes personally to keep the lights on. Borrowing from Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Zhuo writes that teams can’t focus on self-actualization (innovation, culture, purpose) if their basic needs—cash flow, stability, safety—aren’t met. Once survival is secured, the manager can refocus on long-term excellence.

The Two Dimensions of Great Management

In evaluating managers, Zhuo adopts a dual lens shared by Facebook's Chief Product Officer Chris Cox: measure both team results and team health. Are people achieving stellar outcomes today? And are they growing and satisfied enough to sustain greatness tomorrow? Strong results without happy, capable people yield burnout; great morale without impact yields comfort zones. Balancing both is mastery.

Zhuo’s Core Definition

“Your role as a manager is not to do the work yourself, even if you’re the best at it. Your role is to improve the purpose, people, and process of your team to get a multiplier effect on your collective outcome.”

This systemic lens transforms management from emotional firefighting into structured problem-solving. Whenever you confront confusion, ask which lever is misaligned: Are goals unclear? Are relationships fraying? Or is the workflow inefficient? Fixing these improves the team’s outcomes far more than heroic late-night efforts. Management, writes Zhuo, is about amplifying impact—not accumulating tasks.

The early stage of managing feels like learning to walk again—exciting and awkward. Julie Zhuo compares new managers to adventurers navigating a strange land with four starting points: the Apprentice, the Pioneer, the New Boss, and the Successor. Each path brings unique joys and pitfalls, but all test one’s adaptability.

The Apprentice Path

As an apprentice, you’re promoted within your existing team—managing former peers. It’s both comforting and challenging. You know the work intimately but must redefine relationships. Zhuo learned to shift from “friendly collaborator” to responsible coach. Asking a friend, “What are your career goals?” may feel awkward, but impossibly avoiding it creates confusion. The transition demands honesty: you now own the team’s outcomes, so even tough feedback must be delivered swiftly and directly.

Zhuo’s advice: balance familiarity with authority. Establish regular one-on-ones to understand their motivations, and seek mentorship from your own manager who can guide early decisions. Beware one trap: continuing individual work too long. Once your span grows beyond four or five reports, the juggling act collapses. As she discovered while overseeing six designers while designing herself, “in trying to do both, I was doing neither well.”

The Pioneer Experience

If you’re founding a new team—the Pioneer—you face freedom and solitude. Zhuo compares it to starting a new department where no predecessors exist. You must invent structure and culture from scratch. The gift is autonomy; the cost is loneliness. There’s no playbook, so your peers outside the organization often become lifelines. Zhuo leaned on engineering managers at Facebook and design leaders from Google and Airbnb for shared wisdom. The lesson: build your external “informal CEO training” network early.

Being the New Boss

When you join an established team as a new boss, you start as an outsider. Your credibility depends on your listening. Resist the urge to prove yourself immediately—Zhuo calls this the “new person’s trap.” Spend the first months learning team rhythms, asking naïve questions, and earning trust. Curiosity signals respect. Use conversations like “How did you and your past manager work best?” or “Imagine we had an amazing relationship—what would that look like?” to understand expectations and build rapport.

The “blank slate” phase also allows identity reset. Regardless of past perceptions, new environments offer fresh starts. Zhuo recounts a colleague who ignored prior reputation gossip and built an outstanding partnership with a report previously labeled “difficult.” Her mantra: give everyone the benefit of the doubt.

Stepping In as a Successor

Finally, if your manager leaves and you inherit their position, the Successor route, you face high expectations. People compare you to your predecessor. Zhuo reminds successors that “be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” Imitation breeds burnout. Success depends on transparency—acknowledge you’re still learning and invite help: “Our last manager left big shoes to fill. I’ll do my best but expect bumps along the way.” Such openness builds support rather than scrutiny.

Zhuo’s Personal Timeline

By month three, she says, things start feeling familiar—but confidence truly takes years. “When new managers ask me, ‘When will I feel like I know what I’m doing?’ I reply, ‘It took me about three years.’”

In your first ninety days, focus on three priorities: listen deeply to understand context, build trust through consistent care, and clarify priorities for both short-term execution and long-term success. Once these roots take hold, your management journey begins to bloom—ready for bigger teams, tougher decisions, and richer relationships.

Managing a small team, Zhuo says, is where leadership truly starts. With fewer than ten people around the table—small enough for two pizzas to feed—the work revolves around relationships, trust, and feedback. You aren’t just managing output; you’re shaping an environment where people can do their best work. The process starts and ends with people.

The Heart of Improvement: Skill or Motivation?

Borrowing from Andy Grove, Zhuo argues that poor performance has only two roots: lack of skill or lack of motivation. Managers must diagnose which it is through conversation. Is your report unclear on what “great” looks like? Or does she know but feel uninspired or unsupported? The cure depends on the cause—teach missing skills or rekindle motivation.

Trust: The Invisible Foundation

“You must trust people, or life becomes impossible,” Anton Chekhov wrote—Zhuo adopts this as a managerial creed. Trust allows honest dialogue about challenges and mistakes. You know trust is working when reports bring problems directly to you, when feedback flows both ways, and when people would gladly work for you again. She measures her own relationships by those criteria.

To build trust, Zhuo suggests investing weekly one-on-ones focused on the employee’s success, not status updates. Respect them unconditionally—whether they excel or struggle—and demonstrate care through time and action. As one senior executive once told her, “Managing is caring.”

Authenticity and Vulnerability

Being "human, not boss," transforms relationships. When Zhuo admitted her own mistakes—such as micromanaging—her team’s openness grew. Drawing on Brené Brown’s concept of "vulnerability as courage," she argues that leaders earn credibility by sharing their growth areas. Honesty turns authority into empathy. Likewise, feedback should be frank and frequent; awkward conversations often signal progress.

Playing to Strengths and Avoiding Toxicity

Managers succeed by amplifying strengths. Zhuo recalls Chris Cox telling her, “Remember that you have good values,” a reminder that recognition fuels motivation better than endless critique. Using frameworks like Marcus Buckingham’s StrengthsFinder, she encourages managers to design roles that fit individuals’ natural talents.

One crucial principle: never tolerate toxic behavior, even from brilliant performers. A lone, arrogant superstar spreads negativity that divides teams—a concept echoed in Robert Sutton’s No Asshole Rule. Zhuo witnessed morale rebound when toxic personalities left, proving that kindness is as vital as technical excellence.

Knowing When to Let Go

Finally, she reminds managers that sometimes the kindest choice is helping poor fits move on. Protecting low performers out of misplaced compassion harms both individual and team. When growth stalls despite coaching, assist the transition or part respectfully. “Caring about people means owning that your relationship is a two-way street,” she writes, echoing Jack Welch’s idea that false kindness delays inevitable truth.

Leading a small team isn’t about control—it’s about connection. When trust deepens, feedback flows freely, and each person plays to their strengths, your team becomes a multiplier of impact. Start small, care deeply, and watch relationships bloom into results.

Feedback, for Zhuo, is the cornerstone of growth—yet the act of giving it can feel perilous. Managers fear sounding harsh, while employees fear being judged. Zhuo reframes feedback as a gift: useful information that helps others improve. Great managers don’t deliver verdicts; they spark transformation.

Four Types of Feedback

Zhuo defines feedback broadly, beyond criticism. Effective leaders set expectations before work begins, provide task-specific coaching afterward, offer periodic behavioral insights, and gather 360-degree feedback for a full picture. Each serves a distinct purpose:

• Expectations: Clarify what success looks like from the start.
• Task-specific: Immediate notes on recent actions or deliverables.
• Behavioral: Patterns observed over time—strengths, tendencies, and blind spots.
• 360-degree: Aggregated perspectives from peers and collaborators.

Frequent low-stakes feedback keeps performance transparent and reduces shock later. As Zhuo learned after blindsiding a report at performance review, every major disappointment stems from failed expectations. Tell people early when things drift off track. Transparency fosters fairness and trust.

Making Feedback Stick

Feedback matters only if it leads to change. Zhuo insists it must be specific, heard, and actionable. For specificity, cite concrete examples—don’t just say a presentation was “confusing,” explain which details lost the audience. For being heard, deliver with care, not criticism; fear triggers defensiveness. (Executive coach Ed Batista calls this the “threat response”—when adrenaline blocks learning.) For actionability, propose next steps or ask the recipient to define them, reinforcing ownership.

Handling Difficult Conversations

When feedback is critical, tone defines outcome. Avoid emotional or judgmental phrasing (“You’re careless”) and replace it with factual observations (“Last week, the report had missing data”). Zhuo dismisses the “compliment sandwich” tactic as disingenuous—praise should be genuine, not cushioning for bad news. Deliver difficult messages directly but compassionately: state the issue, what concerns you, and how you aim to resolve it together. Respectfully own decisions rather than diluting them—clarity is kindness.

On Candor and Care

Zhuo embraces Kim Scott’s philosophy of “radical candor”: honest, direct communication grounded in genuine care. “Telling it straight is a sign of respect. Nobody ever said, ‘Please treat me with kid gloves.’”

Even when feedback stings, it’s what helps teams learn and evolve. At Facebook, posters declare “Feedback is a gift.” It costs effort to give but enriches everyone who receives it. Done well, feedback builds not just better performers but stronger relationships—proof that truth, delivered with empathy, is leadership’s most generous act.

Julie Zhuo argues that effective management begins with self-management. You can’t lead others if you don’t understand yourself—your strengths, triggers, and mindset. In “Managing Yourself,” she addresses the invisible barriers that derail leaders: imposter syndrome, insecurity, and lack of self-awareness.

Embracing Imposter Syndrome

Imposter syndrome hits managers hard, Zhuo explains, because they’re constantly expected to have answers. Doubt creeps in when facing decisions you’ve never made. Her reassurance: everyone feels it. Harvard professor Linda Hill found universal “disorientation” in new bosses. The cure isn’t faking confidence—it’s acknowledging discomfort as normal. Zhuo reframes doubt as proof you care; it shows humility and readiness to learn.

Brutal Honesty and Calibration

Self-awareness begins with brutal honesty. List your strengths (“vision, determination”) and growth areas (“risk-taking, directness”) to understand what defines your style. But introspection alone isn’t enough—calibrate with reality. Ask peers for honest feedback. Zhuo suggests specific questions like “What opportunities do you see for me to do more of what I do well?” Such dialogue mirrors Carol Dweck’s growth mindset philosophy: improvement, not perfection, should guide you. Feedback fuels learning.

Triggers and Renewal

Know what environments bring out your best and worst. Zhuo lists hers—adequate sleep, clear goals, trusted colleagues—as fuel for peak performance. Triggers like perceived injustice or arrogance derail focus. Identify and share yours to create mutual awareness. This emotional intelligence prevents overreactions and builds empathy.

She also advocates for self-care as productivity’s secret weapon. Boundaries—time for exercise, hobbies, or reflection—restore clarity. Stress kills creativity (Harvard’s Teresa Amabile confirms this); happiness revives it. Her practice: write down daily “little wins” to rewire the brain for gratitude and confidence.

Climbing Out of the Pit

When doubt consumes you, Zhuo calls it “the Pit.” Escape it through visualization—imagining success or recalling past triumphs activates the same neural pathways as achievement (confirmed by psychologist Alan Richardson’s studies on mental practice). Reach out to trusted allies for perspective; vulnerability is courage, not weakness. Finally, replace fear-based narratives with curiosity about improvement.

In the long run, self-improvement compounds. Zhuo ends with a simple challenge: aim to be twice as good. Seek feedback relentlessly, treat your manager as a coach, find mentors, and reflect weekly on progress. Growth, she concludes, fuels both competence and compassion—the twin engines of leadership.

Self-management isn’t selfish; it’s foundational. When you understand your own motivations and limits, you guide others with clarity rather than projection. As Zhuo learned from her coach Stacy McCarthy, managing yourself turns chaos into calm—and transforms uncertainty into authentic confidence.

Few words evoke collective dread like “meeting.” Julie Zhuo turns this stereotype on its head, claiming meetings can be engines of clarity, trust, and progress—if run wisely. Managers spend most of their workday in meetings, so mastering them is mastering momentum.

Define the Right Outcome

Every meeting should have a clear, great outcome, not just a vague purpose. Zhuo identifies five types: decision-making, informational, feedback, idea generation, and relationship-building. Each demands unique preparation and facilitation. Decision meetings, for example, must include all stakeholders and culminate in closure. Success equals trust in the process, not universal agreement. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos calls this “disagree and commit”—progress through partial consensus.

Preparation Is Respect

Unprepared meetings waste thousands of collective hours. Send agendas and materials early so participants can digest complex data—avoiding what Zhuo calls “the curse of knowledge,” where presenters assume everyone instantly understands context. Define who will attend and why. The right mix—neither too many nor too few—preserves energy and inclusion. Afterward, follow up immediately with next steps and owners. Preparation and recap demonstrate care and professionalism.

Participation and Psychological Safety

A meeting’s success, Zhuo insists, is measured by contribution. She encourages structured participation—going around the room, using Post-it brainstorming, or asking quieter members directly (“John, what’s your view?”). Interruptions are managed firmly but kindly, ensuring equal airtime. Safety breeds creativity. When Julie framed open Q&As with “Hard questions are good! Get them off your chest,” engagement soared. Explicit permission to dissent is liberating.

Eliminating the Unnecessary

Sometimes the most productive meeting is the one canceled. Zhuo recommends auditing one’s calendar by asking: Did I contribute meaningfully? Did decisions depend on me? If not, reclaim your time. Studies show that 65 percent of executives find meetings prevent actual work. Guard your schedule like treasure—delegate attendance when trust allows. Life’s too short for mediocre meetings.

Zhuo’s Golden Questions

“What is this meeting’s ideal outcome?” “Who must be here to achieve it?” “How will success feel when we’re done?”

A great meeting isn’t bureaucracy—it’s focus embodied. When participants leave energized, aligned, and clear on next steps, you’ve succeeded. Meetings should multiply understanding, not drain it. Run fewer of them, but make every minute count.

If management is magnifying others’ results, hiring decides who gets magnified. Julie Zhuo calls recruiting the most consequential managerial act—an opportunity to build the future. At Facebook, she learned that hiring well isn’t filling holes; it’s shaping destiny.

Designing Your Future Team

Zhuo urges managers to plan teams as deliberately as architects design houses. Set a one-year vision: how many people will join? Which skills and personalities will complement each other? This foresight prevents panic hires—the workplace equivalent of eating pickles and ketchup for dinner because you shopped hungry.

Partnership with Recruiters

Even with recruitment departments, hiring is a manager’s responsibility. No recruiter knows your nuanced needs like you do. The collaboration thrives when managers articulate ideal candidates clearly, help source them, and personally engage during interviews and offers. Zhuo and her recruiting partner treated candidates like VIPs, checking in every other day to show genuine enthusiasm—because energy sells.

Smart Hiring Decisions

Interviews are imperfect predictors of success—Google found zero correlation between interview ratings and performance. To improve odds, rely on past work samples, trusted recommendations, and multiple interviewers assessing distinct traits. Reject “weak hires” who seem fine but inspire no passion. Instead, champion candidates with strong advocates. Zhuo’s formula: “Bet on potential backed by conviction.”

She also emphasizes cultural health: brilliance without kindness poisons teams. Diversity—of thought, background, and experience—fuels innovation. Studies confirm diverse management teams outperform homogeneous ones by over 30 percent. Zhuo discovered firsthand that hiring leaders from different companies challenged her biases and strengthened Facebook’s design processes.

Scaling and Succession

As organizations grow, hiring scales from artistry to system. Zhuo describes hitting hypergrowth and realizing her daily time allocation must change: if hiring was the only thing that mattered, she’d do it differently—so she did. Treat recruiting as design work: prototype outreach strategies, measure responses, refine. At scale, create a culture where everyone sees hiring as their job, not HR’s. Her proudest moment came when new hires introduced by others outnumbered those she sourced herself—a sign the culture perpetuated quality.

Hiring, done right, builds not just a team but a legacy. Every person added changes the group’s shape, tone, and future impact. “Meeting frogs is part of the deal,” Zhuo jokes, “but believe in the process.” With patience and precision, those frogs become brilliant contributors—and someday, managers themselves.

Plans are easy; execution is art. In later chapters, Zhuo pivots from building teams to making things happen. Her message: good process is how creativity materializes. Strategy without reliable follow-through is wishful thinking; execution turns vision into victory.

The Power of a Concrete Vision

Inspired by mentors like Chris Cox, Zhuo learned to reject vague goals like “help people connect.” What does success look like in reality? A strong vision is tangible—“enable one billion people to find a meaningful community.” Like Herbert Hoover’s “chicken in every pot” or Zuckerberg’s mission to “connect the world,” clarity unites teams. She recommends vision tests: ask five teammates to repeat your goal. If answers differ, it’s not concrete enough.

Planning Backward from Strengths

Strategy starts with realism. Don’t copy rivals—leverage your unique competencies. Her design team specialized in product UI, not flashy marketing videos, so they partnered instead of reinventing. She cites Richard Koch’s 80/20 principle: most results come from a minority of efforts. Focus on the few actions that matter. As Steve Jobs once said, “Innovation is saying no to a thousand things.” Managers must prioritize ruthlessly.

Execution as Learning

Execution isn’t just delivery—it’s continuous learning. Zhuo retells how Instagram founders succeeded by simplifying failed complexity into photo sharing. Similarly, she praises Facebook’s iterative design culture: build, learn, iterate. Each sprint reveals truths about customers and teams. Andy Grove’s dictum applies: “Measure output, not activity.” Execution means learning faster than competitors.

Balancing Short and Long Term

Zhuo warns managers against obsessing with either urgency or vision alone. Short-term fixes keep you alive; long-term planning makes you thrive. She compares this balance to investment portfolios—some projects deliver quick returns, others fund future breakthroughs. Reference Jeff Bezos: decisions should proceed with 70% of needed information; waiting for 90% means being slow. Timely progress beats perfect certainty.

Continuous Improvement

At the heart of execution lies evolution. Zhuo introduces “debriefs”—postmortems where teams dissect successes and failures without blame. Collective reflection multiplies learning across the organization. Her philosophy echoes Heraclitus: “No one ever steps in the same river twice.” Each project transforms both the manager and the team. Document lessons, refine playbooks, and codify best practices into templates others can reuse.

Process isn’t paperwork; it’s wisdom in motion. When leaders align clear vision, focused priorities, and adaptive learning loops, teams gain momentum. Whether designing a product or leading a nonprofit, the question remains the same: are we improving our purpose, people, and process to achieve better outcomes together?

Culture, Zhuo concludes, isn’t slogans—it’s the daily choices reflecting what a team values. True culture shows when you sacrifice convenience for principle. She recounts a Facebook intern who accidentally broke the site; instead of blame, the team shared ownership of the failure. That empathy defined Facebook far more than any poster could.

Defining and Aspiring

To build meaningful culture, managers must ask: What kind of team would I aspire to join? Zhuo suggests identifying current strengths (“supportive, driven”) and naming aspirational traits (“transparent, creative”). Culture is intentional design, not accident. Subcultures can thrive inside bigger organizations—data-driven, long-term, or community-focused groups—if their values are clear.

Talking About Values

Never stop repeating what matters. Zhuo watched Sheryl Sandberg talk incessantly about “hard conversations”—until it became Facebook’s shared vocabulary. Repetition isn’t nagging; it’s reinforcement. Managers should discuss values through stories, examples, and personal reflection. When you voice your beliefs sincerely, people rally around them.

Walking the Walk

Actions outweigh words. Culture dies when leaders preach transparency but hide decisions, or advocate respect yet lose temper. Zhuo’s own learning came when she advised reports to seek feedback but rarely did so herself—a hypocrisy swiftly revealed. The fix was simple: ask regularly. Living your values models them better than mandates.

Incentives and Traditions

Every culture aligns with its incentives. If promotions reward individual victories, collaboration fades; if bonuses favor quick wins, long-term vision suffers. Examine what your environment rewards and redesign accordingly. Celebrate those who embody your values—ethical choices, teamwork, learning from mistakes. Zhuo recommends creating rituals: team art nights, “fail of the week” sessions, or recognition ceremonies that spotlight vulnerability and growth.

Culture in Action

Mark Zuckerberg’s ongoing Friday Q&A, where anyone can ask him tough questions, symbolizes openness in real time. Culture isn’t posters—it’s practiced courage.

In the end, culture is cumulative—every conversation, decision, and reaction defines it. The manager’s role is to nurture alignment between words and deeds, incentives and ideals. When values are authentic and lived, people trust the team’s humanity as much as its strategy. Culture, like management itself, is never finished—just made stronger through care.