“Generation Z CEOs - The New Rule-Makers of Business”

Since the mid-2020s, when economic, technological, and social shifts began to accelerate dramatically, a new face of leadership has emerged. As of July 2025, Generation Z (born roughly between 1997 and 2012) is entering the workforce at scale, reshaping everything from company culture to strategic decision-making. In OECD countries (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), Gen Z is projected to make up 27% of the labor force by 2025—an estimate that has now become reality. The “multi-generational workplace” has become the new normal, and the pace of innovation is increasingly tied to this generation’s appetite for experimentation and fresh ideas.

Gen Z leaders are moving away from viewing business as merely a “profit equation,” instead placing purpose and well-being (including social impact) on par with financial performance. Deloitte’s 2025 Global Survey highlighted that Gen Z and Millennials prioritize three elements simultaneously: opportunities to learn and grow, meaningful work, and financial stability. This has set the foundation for their leadership approach. Another major 2025 survey by Deloitte and EY (two of the “Big Four” accounting firms) reinforced this, revealing that their top life and career priorities are relationships, health, and financial security—effectively urging organizations to put “quality of life” at the core of business decisions.

This philosophy directly shapes the policies of Gen Z CEOs: green transition, diversity and inclusion, and employee mental health support—once considered “soft” topics—are now viewed as genuine drivers of growth and long-term competitiveness.

When it comes to work practices, the differences between Gen Z leaders and traditional managers are even more striking. Organizations are shifting toward a remote-first and outcomes-first logic, where success is measured not by hours spent at a desk but by results delivered. This shift is reinforced by the widespread adoption of

the MVP (Minimum Viable Product — a method of testing customer needs with the smallest functional version of a product). Gen Z-led teams use rapid experimentation, small cross-functional groups, and short iterations to validate products and services directly in the market.

ManpowerGroup’s 2025 report recommends supporting Gen Z career ecosystems with multi-dimensional skills, AI-driven recruitment, and clearly defined succession pathways—practical strategies that accelerate the pipeline of future leaders.

Technology, for this generation, is essentially a native language. Daily use of AI tools and data-driven decision-making is the norm among Gen Z professionals. LinkedIn’s Workplace Learning Report 2025 further highlights their preference for experience-based and interactive learning—learning “in the flow of work”—which accelerates their ability to coexist and collaborate effectively with AI.

At the same time, a leadership model that Business Insider has described as “conscious unbossing” is gaining momentum. This approach dismantles rigid hierarchies and redistributes authority, often referred to as distributed leadership. Data from DDI indicates that Gen Z employees are 1.7 times more likely to avoid traditional top-down command-and-control management. Importantly, this does not imply rejecting leadership altogether; rather, it pushes organizations toward transparent, collaborative models that improve the quality of decision-making and strengthen trust across teams.

From a market perspective, Gen Z CEOs increasingly define the consumer not as a mere buyer but as a co-creator. Brand strategies anchored in community building and multi-channel direct engagement (social engagement) are proving to reduce customer lifecycle costs while expanding ELTV (Extended Lifetime Value — the extended measure of how much value a customer brings to a business over their entire relationship).

As a result, alongside ROI (Return on Investment), a new metric is entering the executive boardroom: Return on Community (RoC). This concept emphasizes that investments in authentic, engaged communities generate long-term brand equity and sustainable revenue growth. In practice, this could mean fostering online brand communities, enabling user-generated content, or co-designing products with loyal customers.

This aligns with the World Economic Forum’s 2025 analysis, which concluded that “the primary pathway to innovation is fully technology-enabled yet deeply human-centered, driven by intergenerational collaboration.” Gen Z leaders are translating that insight into practice by embedding community as both a growth driver and a KPI (Key Performance Indicator).

2025 Status and Forward-Looking Outlook

1. As demographic pressures rise across OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) economies, the demand for new growth drivers is intensifying. In this context, the skillset required of younger leaders is shifting toward coexistence with AI, systems thinking, and change leadership. The OECD Employment Outlook 2025 underscores this transition, stressing that productivity growth, workforce training policies, and adaptive capacity must be accelerated. Gen Z CEOs are effectively becoming the “internal test grounds” for these shifts, pioneering approaches such as embedding in-flow learning (upskilling integrated directly into day-to-day work processes) across their organizations.

   
   

2. The very supply dynamics of leadership are also evolving. Deloitte’s 2025 survey highlights that Gen Z professionals value mentorship, financial security, and meaningful work in parallel—redefining what is considered essential for leadership roles. As a result, over the next 3–5 years, corporate governance structures are expected to flatten, with decision-making guided less by command-and-control models and more by guardrails. In practice, this means strategy continues to be set at the center, but execution is distributed across autonomous teams.

   
   

3. While there is no single global dataset tracking the exact number of Gen Z CEOs today, converging evidence points in one direction. Their share of the workforce is rising rapidly, their ambition to lead is pronounced, and their preference for conscious unbossing (deliberately dismantling rigid hierarchies) is reshaping leadership supply. Consequently, companies face mounting pressure to redesign leadership pipelines and succession systems, ensuring they reflect not only traditional managerial competence but also the collaborative, tech-enabled, and values-driven style that Gen Z leaders embody.

Forecast (2025–2030)

• Market concentration: Armed with rapid experimentation and data-driven decision-making, startups led by Gen Z executives are expected to consolidate niche markets—those small but highly targeted customer segments that stand apart from the mainstream. This will gradually push traditional incumbents toward modular business models, where agility and customer-specific adaptation replace rigid scale advantages. (Inference drawn from WEF and Manpower trend outlooks)

  
  

• Forms of leadership: Flat organizational structures and distributed leadership are set to become the norm. The role of “team leader” will evolve into a hybrid of coach and product owner, blending human development with agile product oversight. Within this model, internal generative AI agents will increasingly handle repetitive managerial tasks—reporting, scheduling, basic decision workflows—allowing human leaders to focus on strategy, creativity, and relational dynamics. This, in turn, will moderate headcount growth while sustaining productivity gains (as highlighted in Business Insider’s market mapping of AI’s productivity effects)

  
  

• Leadership profile: By 2030, Gen Z CEOs’ résumés are expected to feature between-the-lines competencies as standard: purpose-driven finance (sustainable finance), data ethics, and cyber risk governance. These are no longer “add-ons” but essential skills that reflect the convergence of business growth with responsibility and trust. (Synthesis of insights from Deloitte and EY’s 2025 studies)

Conclusion

As of 2025, Gen Z CEOs are not merely “pushing into the future” of business leadership they are actively shaping that future. They measure purpose alongside profit, deploy technology in service of people, and systematize innovation through cultures of openness and inclusion.

This trajectory is unlikely to slow down. Over

the next five years, the world of leadership will increasingly center around flatter structures, data-driven strategies, and purpose-led decision-making. Companies that can align with Gen Z’s expectations—career paths that integrate continuous learning, workplaces that blend flexibility with meaning, and strategies that embed social value at their core—will not only attract the next wave of generational talent but also unlock the next leap in productivity and innovation.