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At the Management Summit Lisbon 2025, Richard Straub opened with a Druckerian provocation: management must keep asking what kind of management society needs next. The event itself was built to do that; “Value Creation”, its guiding theme, aimed to transform conventional management, emphasizing how human relationships, trust, and structural agility can drive organizational vitality. Over 40 sessions, participants actively built bonds by sharing experiences through a curated content journey. Talks, workshops, and small-group exercises built on each other, explicitly guiding participants towards integrating new learnings into actionable strategies.
The event was made possible by an outstanding team of organizers, including a group of management students from Católica Lisbon SBE,who not only worked across the Summit, but also observed, learned, and came back with their own takeaways. Working alongside them served as a reminder that the next generation is watching and taking notes as a world evolves and unfolds that is typically not yet led by them.
Think about it. Spencer Stuart reports that in established firms in 2024 the average age of incoming CEOs was 55.7, and for the first time half of active CEOs were over 60. Across large firms, the average age of Fortune 100 C-suite leaders is 57, broadly unchanged over decades. None of this argues against experience; boards rightly prize hard-won experience. In times of change, wisdom and experience offer necessary stability and help avoid the predictable, irreversible costs of taking wrong actions.
There is an implicit “division of labor” among generations in organizations; seasoned ones set the direction while younger ones learn the craft by carrying out the actions. However, at a time of fast-paced, often turbulent change, leading and executing are becoming more and more intertwined. This puts a premium on intergenerational communication. Yet the reality is trailing the need: according to the EU’s 2023 Eurobarometer 45% of Europeans say age discrimination (too old or too young) is widespread and 52% see age as a hiring disadvantage. Another UK Youth study finds 93% of 16–25-year-olds have faced negative treatment at work because of their age. In light of this picture, a practical question arises: how can direction and momentum be kept aligned across generations?
As Professor at Católica Lisbon SBE and jury member of this year’s Global Peter Drucker Challenge, I want to turn the spotlight to how the Management Summit Lisbon 2025 and the Global Peter Drucker Forum are giving voice to the next generation that is to deliver the program of the Next Management.
The volunteers at the Summit noticed that effective leadership is shifting — from top-down control to trust-based enablement. As Marco Deininger puts it, “leadership today should focus less on directing and more on enabling employees to act with trust and autonomy,” a shift strengthened by the fact that “with the rapid development of AI, employee productivity is already increasing.” Bugra Kufeci heard repeated calls for “transforming leaders into coaches to remove obstacles,” concluding that “creative outcomes and success are fostered by trust rather than rigorous control.” They also encountered practical tools that translate philosophy into process: Henrique Moreira Portela found Nova SBE’s Professor Luís Lages’s Value Creation Wheel “very practical for every company” because “it helps companies and their teams make better decisions, work more efficiently, and avoid communication problems.” João Silveira Botelho underscored how exposure to practitioners helped him “connect theory with practice in a meaningful way.”
Looking ahead, they aim to carry forward environments that pair autonomy with clear purpose and coaching. Deininger aspires to leadership that is “less about control and more about creating the right environment for people to thrive,” while Kufeci emphasizes building “a trustworthy environment with a common goal,” convinced that “small, well-structured teams can accomplish incredible things when they are given a clear goal and the autonomy to make their own decisions.” Moreira Portela will apply a contingent approach; he recognizes that models like “completely independent one-person teams” are “not very realistic for medium or larger companies,” and stresses the need to “adapt management strategies to the size and needs of each company.”
A month earlier, the Global Peter Drucker Challenge ended as jury members completed the challenging task of ranking 20 insightful essays from more than 1,000 entries. A student category invited reflections on “The Second Curve in Life and Business”, in memory of social philosopher Charles Handy. A wave of renewal is coming as businesses change hands between generations, and each essay offered a new perspective on how life and businesses change through waves. The winning essay, by Vitória Maia Machado, cited the Brazilian singer Cazuza to question superficial change in the “museum of great novelties […] rejecting the logic of hyperproductivity” of the past century. Antônia “Nia” Mello leaned on a Stoic idea, yet with urgency, that we should focus on what we can control, “where we can and must act: in preparation, planning, and the construction of resilient institutions”. Hope Philip challenged risk and loss aversion based on his pastoralist perspective: For many people, “‘A bird in hand is worth two in the bush’. Whereas the path to renewal, the path to growth, is to, like the pastoralist, venture a little further into the bush and find more beautiful birds.”
The young generation is questioning managerial tools we have successfully implemented in the growth-dominant business world of the 19th century, which took advantage of serial breakthrough innovations and globalization. Today, the logic has shifted from constant scale-up to scaling sideways and adaptation, from directing workflows to managing work ecosystems, while taking note of environmental and social consequences of business activity. The young generation is not only paying attention to this; they are being shaped in this world. So, how can you give such voice to the next generation in a more systematic way in your own organizations? How can you give them space to co-create their own future?
Every organization should devise its own mechanisms. But here are two examples worth spelling out. Shadow boards consist of young employees who meet regularly with senior leaders on brand, product, and digital decisions, to enrich intergenerational communication. Harvard Business Review describes how Gucci’s arrangement in 2015 gave executives earlier visibility into youth-driven shifts and helped test ideas before the market did. Analyses credit the approach as one factor in Gucci’s strong growth in the following years. Reverse mentoring offers a complementary channel. At General Electric, Jack Welch formalized pairings between senior executives and younger employees to accelerate digital literacy and surface customer and technology insights. The durable value was the two-way flow: practical context moved down; emerging trends and usage patterns moved up.
The aim is not to replace one generation with another, but to connect them on the questions that matter most: purpose, structure, leadership, and timing. Keeping that conversation close to decisions brings management closer to what Drucker asked for: management that fits the world it serves, and leadership that is ready for what comes next.
About the author:
Ekin Ilseven, Resilience advisor, Assistant Professor of Strategy and Organizations at Católica Lisbon SBE