“There is a big difference between what is right and what is wise. Managers will do what is right, leaders will do what is wise.”
I met thought igniter and fixer, Dimitris Michopoulos, at the CEO Clubs Greece space in Flisvos Marina, a place with a very distinct aesthetic. Our discussion focused on leadership in 2040. His flow of speech was relentless, his presence intense.
“The era of the ‘infallible’ CEOs is ending,” he says. “The concept of power will not disappear, but the value of power will change. Power will not equal money,” he adds.
Fifteen whole years separate us from the moment when we will see how much of what we said today will come to life. Mr. Michopoulos describes a world that comes toward us with force. A time where people will need to find their own truth inside a technological storm that will strip everything bare. The conversation feels like opening a door to tomorrow.
Let’s step through it. (Interview by Viktoras Montzelli, Editor in Chief)
Mr. Michopoulos, thank you for taking part in the anniversary feature of Newsbeast on the occasion of its 15 years of uninterrupted presence in the media landscape.
Thank you very much for the invitation and for the challenge to talk about a topic that is both important and ahead of its time for us to discuss today.
If we think about the role of a CEO today and then jump to 2040, what is the most important, the biggest difference you see?
First, we need to admit that the era we live in now will have nothing to do with the era in 15 years.
In that time, the CEO will not “govern” in the way they do today. The CEO will need to keep the human being alive inside the technological storm.
We will pass through a period that I would call dystopian. Not because technology will punish us, but because it will strip us. It will be dystopian because this process will force us to reopen, from the beginning and from the roots, the discussion about humanity, equality, accountability, realism, innovation, leadership itself.
The new leadership will not build itself on power, but on truth. Yet truth will never be easy. It will always cost something to the person who defends it. So, we will live through a time of challenges and turbulence in order to reach a new state. That is why I say that in 15 years we will live in a very different era.
How do you believe these 15 years, a period that feels both close and far at the same time, will reshape the meaning of leadership?
The leader of 2040 will not be a leader who holds power in the usual sense. He will not be the one who simply says what needs to happen. He will be the one who must heal the world.
People will need healing, since, as I said, we will go through a dystopian environment. So that leader will not look like the leader we know today. Knowledge will exist in abundance, and through technology and artificial intelligence it will give us every scenario, every possible outcome.
The leader will not be the person who follows the machines. Many will do that. The leader will be the one who sits back, studies, and makes decisions through his instinct. The strength of the leader will not come from his title, but from his inner discipline.
Today many estimate that, in the coming years, artificial intelligence will be responsible for 70% of leaders’ decisions. They will follow what AI suggests. The remaining 30% will be the part that improves humanity. The leader will be the one who owns that 30%, not the 70%.
The future will not belong to the “strong”. It will belong to the wise who know how to inspire. Real leadership in 2040 will not be the management of results. It will be the shaping of conscience.
Can there be leadership without power?
Power without responsibility.
The era of the “perfect” CEOs is ending. Power will not be traditional power, because it will be easy to study it, to read it, and to judge whether it is staged power, acquired power, or real strength that comes from real outcomes and real facts.
So yes, the concept of power will remain, but the value of power will change. Power will not equal money. Today power usually means money. Almost everything around, it connects directly or indirectly to money. Money will remain important, but it will not be the purpose. It will be a result, the result of the trust that the CEO or the leader inspires, of their integrity and above all their humanity, their self-awareness and their conscience.
The world of 2040 will forgive mistakes. It will not forgive staging.
Which element of today’s leadership do you believe will not survive 15 years from now?
Power or fake power. That fake part.
Today many people call themselves leaders, project themselves as leaders, or stage themselves as leaders, without real ability. Everything about them will be studied in fractions of a second. The technological tools that will exist will run a very quick assessment of any person who presents themselves as a “leader”. They will show us their positives and their negatives and will tell us “This does not come from a trustful source, this is not accurate.”
Staging will still exist, but it will condemn you, because it will be visible and not authentic.
So, the fake part of today’s leadership, the type of leader who believes that, because he knows how to play the game, shows the right photos, appear, talk, network, he is a leader, even though he is empty of humanity, empty of conscience, empty of instinct, that will not continue.
Let us turn the question around. Which leadership element do you believe will still exist in 2040, even if it does not evolve further?
It is the element of character in a leader who does not take decisions only by looking at numbers and results.
Even today there are leaders, and there were in the past, and there will still be leaders who, even when everything points in one direction, will refuse to follow it. They will be the ones who say “no” to the outcome suggested by artificial intelligence, who have the courage to question it and the courage to say, “we will drive things elsewhere, because this path is more correct, wiser, better for humanity, better for the future.”
This will continue to exist.
If we speak hypothetically, these leaders who will question artificial intelligence may be a minority. How will they survive in an environment where most will rely on it?
Historically, real leaders were always few. They were the minority. We cannot talk about a “majority of leaders,” because in every era most “self-proclaimed leaders” were not real leaders.
So yes, there will be a minority of such leaders. These are the ones worth talking about. The rest will not be leaders. They will be puppets who follow whatever artificial intelligence and its tools tell them.
People will not see them as leaders, and the public will not either. The public will learn, will know, since the same decision you take will already be visible on their own screen.
We will not have self-proclaimed leaders anymore. Today many present what looks like staged wisdom, because they use arguments and decisions that we cannot tell if they are authentic or not. In 10 to 15 years, you will have your own data, your own market figures, your own statistics, and AI will already have produced the decision.
I, as an employee, partner, or supplier, will see it. What will I see? That you follow a model, a technology tool. Thus, I will lose my trust in you.
This cannot happen so easily today. Leadership in 2040 will not mean “ask AI what to do.” It will mean “dare to tell AI no.”
In the picture you draw, are we finally talking about a very talented professional who can connect, run, and maintain people, networks and systems rather than a real leader? Someone who manages channels and interlinked containers?
There will be two levels.
First, there will be individuals who coordinate, not the technology, machines, robots and people separately so they do their jobs, but all of them together so they co-evolve. Technology will show that a skilled coordinator can use this process to evolve everything, the person, the technology, the robots and the systems.
But this person will not be the leader.
The leader of 2040 will be a guardian of meaning, an architect of conscience inside networks and data. The leader will be the person who chooses those people, the ones who do the work. Not the ones who do the work “correctly,” but the ones who do it in a way that moves things forward and opens the future. Not with obedience.
Decisions will not be the result of analysis alone. They will be the result of awareness. Real leadership will not be measured by how much you obey the data, but by how much you sustain the tension to question them.
There is a big difference between what is right and what is wise. Managers will do what is right. Leaders will do what is wise.
“Technology will strip the superficial layer and will give value back to the real human being. I am convinced this will be the central message we will meet again in front of us.”
So, you are telling me that human judgment will be one of the biggest assets of a leader in 2040.
In an ocean of technology, the judgment of the leader will matter, but the real issue will be how the leader reaches that judgment.
Here is where the important part begins. We will return to more primal logics of leadership. This, for me, is the key.
If we look at history, we will find leaders that most of us accept as great. They had almost no data, and certainly nothing like what we have today. They decided, ruled, governed, exercised power, and remained in history as remarkable leaders.
They had no data or technology. So, what did they rely on? On their ability to train their instinct, to make decisions in a way that served the good, in whatever way they themselves defined “the good.”
So, the process by which I train my instinct, the way I turn instinct into wisdom, and this wisdom then guides me to conscience and then to judgment, this will be the currency of the leader. That is how leaders will get “paid,” because that is how they will create trust, and only a human being can create trust.
The machine will not give you trust. It will give you a commodity decision, an acceptable decision.
The world you describe for the next 15 years intrigues me. How likely is it that the conversation we have today, which we based on data and not on fantasy, will sound outdated in 2040? That nothing we say today will apply?
The only thing I find certain is that, if we watched it again in 2040, we would call it naive.
Because in 2040 not only will the tools have changed, the human being will have changed.
Yet the way things evolve, we use human conscience here to make a forecast, not what technology says.
What I believe will matter is that we will have proven that technology is not destiny. Technology is not something “evil.” Technology will strip the superficial layer and will give value back to the real human being. I am convinced this will be the central message that we will find again in front of us.
Let us move into the business world. How do you imagine companies in 2040? Will there be offices, physical presence, working hours, roles?
No. The notion of a company will be completely different.
We will not have the office structure we know today, in any sense. We will not need offices in the way we do now.
What we call “offices” in my mind will be temples of trust. Spaces are designed architecturally and aesthetically in a way that inspires trust, creativity, awareness, and humanity. These places will be extremely beautiful. We want to photograph them, I am sure of that.
When people gather there, it will be for something important. That is why I call them temples of trust.
If I meet a client there, I will build trust with that client. If I meet my team, I will build trust with my team. If I meet partners, we will talk as humans and try to shape a real win win scenario.
So, offices will not be what we know now. They will be beautiful spaces that even today artificial intelligence cannot fully design. They will be state of the art. Much smaller, but they will exist. The future will be hybrid, but leadership will remain human.
Is this not too ideal?
There will be no other reason for an office to exist.
In the past people said that by 2025 we would have flying cars. We have not seen them yet.
In 2026, in the United Arab Emirates, we will move from Abu Dhabi to Dubai airport with flying taxis. So, allow me to say that we will fly in cars.
In Greece, because of infrastructure, these things may arrive later, but today in cities in China there are already flying vehicles.
If we think that a short while ago this was called science fiction, is it reasonable to believe that in 15 years we will not have flying cars? In the future people will find it naive that we even ask this question.
They will say “Was it possible that in 2025 you thought flying cars would not exist?” They will laugh at us.
Will companies in 2040 be only about numbers? Only about positive balance sheets? What will be the role of social impact in 15 years? Stronger or weaker?
Let us connect this with what we said before.
If we pass through the dystopia I foresee, the logic of people will change, because we will live through many shifts.
If we reset the foundations of truth, realism, equality, social cohesion, freedom, creativity, and economy, it is clear that we will go through a time of deep change. Then we will move into a new era.
In that new era money will still matter, results will still matter, but on the first page of the financial statements, in my view, we will see “return on impact.”
Not only turnover and profits, but how many lives this company has changed in a positive way through the way it operates. The numbers will exist but return on impact will be the new return on investment.
Not everyone will be ready for this.
Some companies will continue to count only money. But the public will change. It will honor those who create value, not only those who create wealth.
What will be the role of co creation in everything you describe? In the past companies stayed quite closed, not as extroverted as they are now. In the coming years will partnerships grow?
They will, because the human being will no longer need to perform a simple task. That need will disappear. Technology will replace these jobs.
All roles that look like “I go into an office to do a specific, narrow job” will go to technology.
Where will we need humans? We will need the inner world of people, their soul, heart, mind, instinct, awareness.
This person will want to feel that they co-create something that also belongs to them.
It is not random that we see a rise in startups. People who cannot find a co-creation environment inside an organization build their own.
So, companies of the future will have co-creation, but also co-responsibility, which is missing today.
Today employees ask for co-creation, but they do not assume co-responsibility. In the future they will ask for co-creation and at the same time there will be co-responsible, co-designers, with shared responsibility, and shared reward.
You will not get paid for your physical presence in an office, because in that sense the office will disappear. You will get paid for your contribution, for what Viktoras contributes to the outcome of the company. You will be entitled to that, because you will co-create, co-design, co-shape strategy, and you will receive a share of the reward.
The new form of power will be the ability to inspire autonomy.
So, the meaning and the dynamics of trust between employees and employers will change.
The change will be huge.
First, we go back to the leader. The currency with which the leader will be judged will be the trust. That is the metric.
If I do not trust you, I will not work for you. I will not trust you enough to work with you, to co-create with you, to co-design with you.
The question will return to the self-proclaimed leader, and he will have to sit with himself and ask, “Do I trust myself?”
“The leader of 2040 will not be the one who follows the machines. He will be the one who resonates through his instinct.”
So, will the employee also take part in decisions? About projects, growth, how we develop, how we respond to a client request? Will he sit at the table as an equal member?
He will not be an equal member in a formal sense but let us decode what you say.
A large volume of decisions that companies take today will disappear, because artificial intelligence and other tools will provide them easily.
When possible, solutions and decisions arrive, when AI gives you a SWOT analysis and suggests scenario A, B, or C, what will someone does, regardless of role or rank?
AI will say “I believe the best decision is A.” At that moment someone will need to decide whether to go with A, B, C, or with none of them.
The people we describe as co-creators will read A, B, and C and say, “the best decision for this company, for its future, for how much we contribute, for our return on impact, is C or some other option.”
These people will start to become equal players.
The others, who only bring A, B, and C to the table and then simply nod when AI says, “It is A,” will be puppets. This will be the lie. And this will obsolete itself over time.
This model you describe, how much can it apply to politics? Business is one thing, politics another. One thing is a leader in a company, another is a leader in a political party.
It will be harder inside politics, because politics operates with different logics. The “clients” of politics differ from those of business.
If we talk about democratic systems, where we vote, the client is the voter.
The political leader will need to change in a much more radical and stronger way, because it will be easy to reveal the staging behind him.
People will know if a speech is a constructed speech written in a certain way, if a decision was already predefined inside AI models.
And since ego plays a strong role in politics and power matters a lot there, this part will become a target for the opponent.
Before we reach the voter, we will already know that what the political opponent plans to do tomorrow is pre scripted. We will know in advance what he will say. AI models will have studied him. This already happens today to a degree.
So, when we see a global level political leader and we say, “What did he do, what did he say, was he unpredictable, was he impulsive, did he not think it through,” people imagine that this person simply woke up and changed his mind from A to C.
It is not like that. There are specialized models that work on the profile of a leader with a specific strategy. The opponent in the same country or in other countries studies this behavior. This is why we see what we call abnormal behavior today. We do not understand it. Machines understand it, and if we want to stop the opponent from predicting it, we must overturn the pattern.
So, the game changes.
Completely.
Will ideologies still exist, or will citizens vote for the person and their personality, regardless of whether they carry a right wing, centrist, or left-wing label?
This question is broad, and the answer will depend on each culture.
Decisions in a developing country will not look like decisions in Africa as a continent, nor like decisions in the United States or Europe.
However, the evaluation of a leader will become more personal. It will not focus on ideology. The ideological label will start to dissolve, because people will see that ideology does not translate into action. It will reveal itself as a pretext.
So, we will judge the person. And we will assess them every day.
Today we say, and older generations also say, that you need years to build trust and one move to break the glass. Imagine what will happen then.
Not only one move. Technology will read your glance, your body language, and it will instantly produce an assessment. The leader will be judged in real time.
So, who will win in that world, even in politics? The leader who stays authentic. With his strengths and his weaknesses. A leader who knows that his decisions stand on integrity, awareness, instinct, wisdom, and not on other motives.
We can talk about interests and lobbies and all that, but it is different when you see them clearly in front of you and say, “Here are the interests and here is why the leader said this.” The difference will be huge.
Before we close, I want to ask you this. If you could place one message in a time capsule and open it after 15 years in 2040, what would you say to Dimitris?
I would say “Let us place this interview in the time capsule.”
When we open it in 2040, my purpose will not be to see how right or wrong we were. For me, what we do today is a statement of conscience. It is my view, based on my own experience, of where things are going.
I believe the era that comes is a good era. Why? Because it will be a time where the real human being, real ability, real wisdom and real intelligence will come to the surface, something we did not see honored enough in previous decades. Of course there were exceptions.
We saw other traits become symbols of success instead of the authentic substance.
I would like the people of 2040 to understand that in 2025 there were still leaders who believed that technology is not destiny, but a tool of conscience. The leaders of 2040 will not govern the world. They will heal it.
So, my message is that we must look reality in the eye and see if these elements helped us go through dystopia and reach the next day.
In my view, the next day is positive. I do not share the fear narrative.
Some may say that our conversation today is romantic, human centered, too optimistic, and not based on numbers or the coldness of results.
I want to say that the world did not evolve because of cynics. It evolved because of people with depth in their wisdom, courage in their “crazy,” and a certain kind of foresight. The people I call “genius and crazy.” They always existed.
They are the ones who never followed the norm. The ones who said, “Everyone says we must go there, but we will go elsewhere.”
They never saw distance between the possible and the impossible, between dream and limit, between art and science. They never saw distance between success and decency, between prosperity and wealth.
We will be together in 2040 to open the time capsule.
Published on NEWSBEAST