The image of Mr. José Jerí—arriving hooded at an unregistered meeting with a Chinese businessman—has been discussed more for what it suggests than for what it proves. Jerí himself called it a “mistake” and offered a public apology. But, beyond the political episode, there is a useful lesson for business management: leading an institution requires more than intelligence, degrees, and ambition; it requires judgment, a sense of reality, and experience.

In business—as in politics—form is also substance. A leader doesn’t just make decisions; they send signals. And those signals shape trust, reputation, internal climate, and social license. The hood (both metaphorical and literal) communicates opacity, and opacity, in complex environments, accelerates risk: it raises suspicions, weakens moral authority, and makes any subsequent decision more costly, even if it was well-intentioned.

This point connects with an increasingly common trend, especially in  family-owned businesses (and, by extension, in some corporate conglomerates): the pursuit of “express succession.” It’s assumed that simply appointing a young member—or a career executive—who “prepared” themselves by completing an MBA abroad is enough to be ready to lead a company, a business unit, or a team. In its corporate version, the script is familiar: “Get a master’s degree abroad and come back to lead.” The problem isn’t studying (on the contrary), but rather confusing credentials  with  managerial ability.

General management is a highly skilled craft. Henry Mintzberg sums it up with an uncomfortable but illuminating phrase:   “No one can create a manager in a classroom.” Along the same lines, he warns that management combines  craft  (experience),  art  (skills/insight), and  science  (analysis). In other words, analysis matters, yes; but real leadership is exercised in the arena where problems don’t come “pre-arranged,” where incentives are ambiguous, and where people are not just isolated cases, but rather life stories.

Evidence in leadership development aligns with this intuition: a significant portion of managerial learning stems from  challenging work experiences, complemented by relationships (mentors, peers, feedback) and, only later, by formal training (Center for Creative Leadership). Simply put, experience isn’t just a résumé embellishment; it’s the laboratory where one acquires composure, political awareness, crisis management skills, and, above all, practical wisdom.

And here’s a nuance that many accelerated succession plans overlook: experience isn’t just gained by “living”; it’s gained  by living in the context where you’ll later be leading. Leading a team in a specific country, sector, or territory requires understanding unwritten rules, power dynamics, negotiation culture, local legitimacies, and the true cost of mistakes. In institutionally fragile or polarized environments, this contextual knowledge isn’t just “nice to have”: it’s part of the strategy.

Therefore, even sophisticated players can stumble when they underestimate the context. The Brookfield and Rutas de Lima case is illustrative, not as a judgment on individuals, but as a reminder of complexity: the fund has been embroiled in a dispute with the Municipality of Lima and has alleged measures equivalent to an unlawful expropriation; in 2025, a dissolution and liquidation process of its subsidiary was also reported, in a context of a severe decline in revenue and an ongoing legal battle.

Part of the lesson for business management is that  outcomes like this can occur when leadership—as often happens in complex investments—falls to executives who are “young” in terms of managerial experience and exposure to the local context: with solid credentials, but without the necessary experience to understand the political and territorial landscape and the (formal and informal) constraints of business ethics that underpin legitimacy. The business lesson is straightforward: governance, stakeholders, and political and territorial risk can be as significant as financial models, and managing them requires experience, not just technical expertise.

So, what to do about the temptation to appoint very young people—relatives or not—to top management positions? The answer isn’t to “prohibit” it, but  to return to prudence. Succeeding planning, a useful idea is to understand it as a process, not an event: “succession is a process, not an event”  (Bower, HBR).   Translated to corporate governance: preparation must be gradual, observable, and rigorous; and oversight, real.

In practice, this implies three sober decisions. First, designing development paths: roles with defined profit and loss limits, progressive exposure to crises, and responsibilities that require accountability before reaching the top. Second, ensuring structured support: strong mentors, active committees, and a board that truly oversees (not a decorative one). Third, separating merit from family name or diploma: within a family, balancing merit and inheritance is part of the system’s health (Baron, HBR 2022).

Yes, there can be exceptionally mature young people. But they are not the norm. And when the cost of error is institutional—reputation, culture, legitimacy, economic value, and human cohesion—it is reasonable to start from a conservative premise:  to lead, one must first have lived long enough to understand what is at stake.  Education accelerates abilities; experience shapes judgment. And without judgment, the position becomes a hood: something that obscures, rather than illuminates.