How Dumarey built an entrepreneurial mindset in its management team after an acquisition

The client

Who Dumarey is: a petrol injector maker that moved from a listed group to an entrepreneurial one

Dumarey Flowmotion Technologies (Dumarey) is an automotive company with two plants near Pisa, in Italy. It covers the whole value chain, from research and development to the production of petrol injectors, and has around 1,000 employees.

Dumarey’s history starts with Siemens more than 37 years ago, then runs through Continental until 2020 and Vitesco Technologies. In January 2024 the Dumarey Group, led by entrepreneur Guido Dumarey, acquired the company. Dumarey moved from a listed multinational group to an entrepreneurial one built around innovation and entrepreneurial spirit.

The programme is described by Laura Lembi, Head of HR & Sustainability at Dumarey.

The challenge

Why Dumarey’s management team had to learn to think like owners after the acquisition

After joining the Dumarey Group, Dumarey’s 12 managers had to move from an implementation mindset to one that could generate, assess and select innovative ideas. The management team had a lot of seniority and long experience of leadership programmes in multinational settings. Its role was now different, with managerial autonomy and strategic direction becoming its own responsibilities.

The group was made up of 12 professionals aged between 40 and 60. They had to learn to play their role in a company where decisions are made in-house. Product development times in the automotive market are also shrinking sharply, which pushed Dumarey to speed up decision-making as well.

The programme

How Wibo ran a tailored entrepreneurship programme for Dumarey’s 12 managers

Dumarey chose Wibo for a tailored programme on entrepreneurship for its management team. Wibo’s model combines first-hand experience from top managers and entrepreneurs with practice guided by certified trainers and business coaches, and Dumarey was looking for fresh stimulus and new training approaches for its managers.

Dumarey’s programme was built in modules on topics central to the management team, including resilience, entrepreneurship and managing the strategic future. Wibo’s trainers facilitated the exchange with managers who already had a solid theoretical base.

The work between Dumarey and Wibo then continued with a workshop for Dumarey’s sales team on the retrospective. Dumarey already used it informally, and with Wibo it formalised the practice for the first time, adding the habit of documenting lessons from mistakes as well as from successes.

The impact

What changed at Dumarey after the programme: faster idea selection and a structured retrospective

At Dumarey, after the programme with Wibo, the stage of generating ideas and setting priorities among them became faster. The story describes a management team that now analyses and selects the most promising ideas more quickly. In an increasingly fast automotive market, this shortened learning times and sped up decisions.

Participants read the programme as a concrete recognition from Dumarey and a sign of trust in their abilities. That strengthened motivation and engagement, and moved the managers’ attention towards results and the quality of relationships.

The retrospective, now structured, became a moment of reflection and shared awareness at Dumarey that had not existed before. Dumarey plans to measure specific KPIs linked to the retrospective workshop in September.

At the end of the programme Dumarey collected participants’ feedback: 8.1 out of 10 for expectations met and 8.3 out of 10 for usefulness. The NPS was 40, on a scale from -100 to +100, and average attendance across sessions reached 99%. Asked what they found most useful, one participant answered as follows.

Another participant pointed to the executives’ talks and the coaching.