Careers

How the relationship between company and individual is changing: more continuity and sharing of expertise

Leadership, reskilling and advice for young and senior professionals from the president of the Accenture Alumni Association

1 September 2025

Giovani carta vincente per le imprese, ma l'Italia li perde

5' min read

A very important asset in a constantly evolving macroeconomic scenario characterised by a rapidly changing labour market, in which careers develop in a less linear and more dynamic way: what are we talking about? Of a new relational paradigm between company and individual that is emerging decisively, privileging the concept of 'Life Time Relationship' over that of 'Life Time Employment' and reflecting an approach oriented towards recognising the value of continuity even beyond the formal employment relationship.

In a way, this is the vision that has inspired the activities of the Accenture Alumni Association for the past 20 years, a professional community that now has around 10,000 members in Italy (it is one of the largest in Italy and one of the most representative of the Alumni Global Network) with work experience in the multinational consultancy company behind it, and whose main assets are the sharing of skills (technological and managerial) and a propensity for innovation and strategic networking.

Promoting initiatives to foster the professional development and growth of members is a mission that is realised through training opportunities and opportunities to consolidate relations with former colleagues, in order to share experiences, best practices and success stories. An active laboratory of reflection, in other words, that puts people at the centre, enhancing both the experiences acquired and the future potential and transforming the relationship between former employees and the company into a lasting bond, nourished by a continuous exchange of know-how and mentorship. And the management topics that animate the discussion platforms are indeed the same ones that populate the agendas of HR managers and all C-Suite members: leadership, talent, social impact of managerial skills, career development and lifelong learning.

The transformation of leadership

Silvio Mani, president of Accenture Alumni, explained to Sole24Ore.com how the work of this Association should also be understood as a sort of virtuous model of professional and cultural 'restitution', which aims to generate value not only for individuals but for the entire ecosystem in which professionals operate, effectively translating the assumption that sees the evolution of careers as being perfectly integrated with the evolution of organisational thinking. As a privileged observer of a community of thousands of ex-managers, Mani has also developed his own interpretation of the transformation of the leadership concept. "Two elements remain stable: firstly, the responsibility of the leader and his or her integrity, combined with his or her ability to operate in the business, and secondly, the vision required to lead the organisation. We rightly speak of collaborative leadership and communicative leadership,' the manager added, 'because you cannot know everything, and for this reason it is necessary to draw knowledge from different areas and different people, and because thanks to digital tools, concepts and indications can be transferred to one's collaborators even remotely, also controlling their execution'.

The trend (recently reported by Bloomberg) that sees the rise of professional services companies as a breeding ground for new CEOs, more ready than classic corporations to meet the demand for transversal skills and not just product/service skills (data management and technological mastery, the ability to move in global markets and anticipate changes, empathetic and collaborative leadership) should instead be framed, according to Mani, without setting rigid boundaries. 'There are leaders,' the president of Accenture Alumni noted, 'who are born in product companies and tend to privilege the optimisation of everything related to the product, and others who are contextual, more open to the governance of change and the development of skills to guide the transformation process through the enhancement of talent and the development of advanced methods for team working. Italian leaders, in general, are among the best at navigating and understanding uncertainties and managing them in worlds that change very rapidly'.

The conditions for good leadership

At the basis of good leadership, this is Mani's thinking, two essential conditions are needed: the first is to have a method that defines how things are done, the way of working, the strategy and its implementation phase; the second, a value system is needed that in turn defines what to expect from those working alongside the leader and how to communicate with these figures. In other words, it is the infrastructure of team working that regulates how we work, and its essential components are the spirit of collaboration, trust, and the ability to listen and observe. 'The capable leader,' Mani emphasises in this regard, 'is not the one who always and everywhere tells you what you have to do, but the one who gathers all the knowledge and brings it together. This is the principle of horizontal leadership: decisions are not imposed from above but are the result of strategy. These are the true transformational leaders'.

Another of the hot topics in human resources, central to the economy of the Association's activities, is reskilling. It is therefore natural to ask what are the key skills to remain relevant in the labour market and, according to Mani, there is no precise answer to this question, due to the fact that changes are so rapid and constant that they suggest a focus on continuous training programmes for transversal skills, starting with emotional intelligence and ending with the ability to do storytelling. 'One cannot think,' the manager explains in detail, 'that the acquisition of skills can be definitive in areas such as cybersecurity or especially artificial intelligence, for which the most important basic skill is prompting. Knowing how to ask questions should be a skill that interests everyone'.

A tip for young talents

In the term 'everyone' there is of course also young talent entering the world of work, to whom Mani addresses a very specific suggestion. "The advice is to identify well the company in which you start your career, because you receive an important imprinting from it. One must then carefully assess the context and its degree of openness, accept challenges and draw value from the experience in the form of bricks that become the basis for building one's career'. Not least, the concept of 'everyone' includes senior professionals, who are called to the challenge of remaining relevant and influential in a particularly changing scenario. "Senior managers," concludes the president of Alumni Accenture, "must not make the mistake of remaining anchored to the past. What is needed instead is intergenerational contamination, curiosity and positivity towards the new, embracing novelty and scaling skills towards the future. And this is what we try to do in our Association: no nostalgia for times gone by, but making the most of the heritage of knowledge and skills to shape and transform tomorrow's society for the better, also through consulting projects for the social and at the service of third sector realities'.

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