The new manager: how training and the role of universities are changing

The importance of four strands of management training, long known but often set aside or seen as ancillary to classroom training, thus increases.

The first is coaching, understood as a relational lever for learning maieutically from oneself and others. The value of individual learning guided by more experienced teachers and colleagues is emerging: customised paths, in which the manager reflects on concrete challenges, rereads his own gaps and acquires tools to orient himself in highly ambiguous environments. It is a modality that fosters not only growth, but also awareness of one's own leadership style.

The second guideline is situated learning in teams and their heterogeneity. The most effective learning moments are not solitary ones, but those experienced in groups: technicians and managers, young and old, different functions. Team work stimulates the comparison of approaches, brings out the systemic dimension of problems, accelerates learning and improves the quality of decisions. Collaborative dynamics thus become an integral part of the learning experience.

Team project work is intertwined with a third lever, long established in business schools: case studies. This methodology, which originated over a century ago at Harvard Business School, was designed to overcome the abstract transmission of notions. These are inductive methods, in which the participant is confronted with a real, ambiguous situation, characterised by high trade-offs, uncertainty and strategic relevance. The point is not to find the 'right solution', but to train judgement, read the context, make choices. However, to be truly incisive, this methodology must be adapted: many Italian companies point to the need for national cases, reflecting the cultural specificities, ownership structures and governance logics of our productive fabric.

Finally, there is a growing demand for study tours: immersive experiences in contexts outside one's own sector or territory. It is not just a matter of 'inspiration', but of cognitive exercises to train one's gaze, detect weak signals, read the implicit organisational culture. In an era dominated by prescriptive models and algorithms, it becomes essential to rediscover the tacit knowledge that manifests itself in gestures, routines, and 'normal' choices.

From these experiences, a transversal skill set emerges that unites the most effective leaders in high-transformation contexts: critical and reflective thinking, to decipher ambiguity and question the consequences of one's actions; digital and quantitative literacy, to dialogue with data, predictive models, algorithms and make evidence-based decisions; situational and participative leadership, to lead fluid and autonomous teams, based on trust rather than control; systemic and cultural sensitivity, to grasp connections, read contexts and adapt intelligently and responsibly, in organisations that are less and less bureaucratic and functional and increasingly based on teamwork and on projects and processes.

In particular, the ability to decode complexity, read context and interpret weak signals is what makes managerial knowledge uncontestable by artificial intelligence. AI can optimise and predict, but it cannot understand the informal, political or cultural dimensions of decisions. Training this capability - today - is the true human competitive advantage.

In this scenario, where it matters more and more to train managers to judge in a complex technological and institutional environment, universities have a structural comparative advantage that needs to be decisively reaffirmed. They are places where research, training and technology transfer coexist, contaminate and reinforce each other.

It is only in a context in which new knowledge is produced, critical visions are elaborated and there is dialogue with industry and civil society that it is possible to design training experiences capable of addressing the demand for new approaches that many companies demand from executive training providers.

In this context, only those who combine critical thinking, scientific method and rootedness in productive contexts will be able to offer truly transformative training - capable of developing the kind of situated intelligence that, at least in the short term, no machine can replicate.

*Director of the Master School and Professor of Strategy and Business Organisation at the Politecnico di Torino