Last week I read an article in De Tijd about a Deloitte study that found only one in four younger employees feel they can turn to their manager for real guidance. Most of them don’t even want to become managers anymore... they’d rather protect their work-life balance.

At first, I dismissed it as clickbait. Every generation says the next one doesn’t want to work as hard. The classic “kids these days” lament... the old man shouting _get off my lawn_.

I even used it in a short LinkedIn post, part of how I think things through.
And I framed it around the lack of mentorship, which I’ve felt throughout my own career... especially later on, inside large corporate systems.

I’ve always relied on people to help me grow: coaches, advisors, even personal trainers (I hate sports) to keep me accountable. External guidance has been one of the biggest multipliers in my life. But that requires resources... and those were sorely missing in my corporate years. I chose to take care of that myself because I knew the cost of not doing it.

So maybe this new generation is right. They should be asking for more structure.
Because too often, people aren’t promoted into leadership... they’re pushed into management. Thrown into a game that gives them little chance to win.
Not wanting to play isn’t laziness; it’s rational.

But it made me wonder: why did we play when they refuse?

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The Natural Resources of Mentorship Have Dried Up

I’ve been thinking about it all week.
Partly because my post resonated with so many people... and partly because it exposed something deeper. The “natural resources” we had in our day; informal ways to learn leadership have dried up.

When I started out, I already had some “management” experience through volunteer work. I led teams, ran youth organizations, and had room to fail safely.
Today, those same organizations have become more structured and procedural. Less freedom, less experimentation, fewer moments to wing it and learn. We expect professionalism everywhere...

The first time I was thrown into management, it wasn’t planned.
I was working on a big international project when my manager — going through a rough divorce — got banned from the client site. The senior partner told me, “Well, you’ve been carrying the weight anyway. You’re in charge now.” Then he got into a taxi to the airport.
That was my “promotion.” I survived... barely. It made me stronger, but it could have easily gone the other way.

Back then, at least, we had support between peers.
We learned from each other during long lunches, late dinners, and expense-account fueled nights. Clients and colleagues would tell war stories, share mistakes, and whisper the politics behind the PowerPoints. That’s where you learned the real lessons.

Who has time for that now?

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The Lost Art of Slow Mentorship

Laurent Winnock — whom I actually know from my networking days — just wrote a book on the decline of the business lunch. He’s right. Those slow lunches weren’t about food; they were about trust.
You could talk, listen, connect as humans. Today it’s a quick salad in the cafeteria... no time, no space, no texture.

Much of my early development as a leader came through networking.
I was active in the Vlaamse Management Associatie (vMA), where we built a youth section and hosted events with senior managers. It was mentorship by proximity. You learned just by being in the room. Many of those connections still matter to me today.

But those associations have disappeared... replaced by free corporate events. Why pay for membership when you can attend a “networking evening” for free?
Because those free events aren’t community. They’re content. Speakers fly in, talk, and vanish into VIP rooms. The human mentorship layer is gone.

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The System Hasn’t Caught Up

So the point isn’t that the old days were better. It’s that we’re running old systems in a new landscape... one that no longer supports how leadership used to be learned.

And people are opting out.
Good for them. Because they’re right: the system doesn’t give new leaders a fair shot anymore.

Nowhere is that clearer than in Data & Analytics, where the playing field is already uneven.
It’s high stakes, little tolerance for failure, and enormous ambiguity.
No wonder the average tenure for Heads of Data & AI hovers around 2.5 years.

That’s not a talent problem.
It’s a support problem.

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That’s What I’m Working On

That’s what led me to build Navigator and the Compass Diagnostic that feeds into it.
A structured mentorship system for data and AI leaders who’ve been promoted faster than they’ve been prepared.

A way to give both the leader and the team a fighting chance.
Ten days to find direction.
A hundred to build rhythm and deliver.

Because leadership shouldn’t feel like drowning.
It should feel like learning how to swim.

Monty calls it “a legacy architecture problem.”
The org chart still assumes wisdom flows downward, but the wisdom left the building years ago.

That’s what I’m rebuilding, one leader at a time.

Analog Rob 🧭 | Digital Monty 🤖
handcrafted meets algorithmic