The client
Who Sonepar Italy is, the pilot country for Sonepar’s new leadership model
Sonepar Italy is part of the Sonepar group, a French multinational that distributes electrical supplies, industrial automation solutions and renewable energy products. The Sonepar group chose Sonepar Italy, together with Canada, as a pilot country for its new global leadership model.
In Italy, Sonepar operates in 17 regions with around 170 branches and around 2,300 employees, serving customers in electrical installation, industry and the services sector. Sonepar Italy’s organisation includes sales teams, logistics, central services and top management. Worldwide, the Sonepar group has more than 45,000 employees in over 40 countries.
The challenge
Why Sonepar Italy had to train 400 managers fast without lowering the bar
Sonepar Italy had to bring around 400 managers onto the new leadership model within deadlines set by the group, while the materials were still being translated, and without spreading the programme out over time. The managers came from different professional families (logistics, the sales network, central services and top management) and worked all over Italy, many of them often on the road.
For Sonepar Italy the pressure came from two sides. The group wanted a fast rollout, while the model’s materials were still being translated and culturally adapted. The risk was trading quality for reach, or reach for quality.
There was also a practical constraint. Each virtual session could involve up to 90 people, and Sonepar Italy wanted to keep interaction and active learning high even in groups that size. The question was whether everyone could be trained to the same standard, in the same window, without losing depth.
Consiglierei Wibo per la partnership che si crea a livello proprio di co-progettazione e co-realizzazione. Si crea veramente un’ottima collaborazione, un buon modo di portare a casa i progetti. In una parola: ‘Sorprendente’
[I’d recommend Wibo for the partnership you build, right down to co-designing and co-delivering the work. It creates a really great collaboration and a good way of getting projects over the line. In one word: ‘Surprising’]
Nicoletta Chiggio, Learning and Development Manager, Sonepar ItaliaThe programme
How Wibo turned the nine areas of Sonepar’s leadership model into a programme for 400 managers
Wibo built Sonepar Italy’s programme around the group’s “leadership model wheel”, made up of three pillars with three dimensions each. The nine resulting topic areas, the “slices” of the wheel, were covered one at a time in sessions Wibo calls Pitstops, in the same order the group used when it officially launched the model.
Each session lasted 2.5 hours and brought two people together. An executive, chosen specifically for that session’s dimension, gave the main talk. A Wibo Trainer introduced the topic, moderated the talk and, in the second part, led practical pen-and-paper exercises, with no slides.
The programme ran five groups. Four were mixed, putting managers from different functions in the same session to encourage exchange across departments, while the fifth was reserved for Sonepar Italy’s top management.
A platform held the session recordings, so every participant could also watch the executives from the other groups. The programme was also tied into Sonepar Italy’s performance review and talent review processes, which brought the model’s pillars into managers’ actual evaluations.
The impact
How Sonepar Italy’s 400 managers responded to the programme
Live attendance among Sonepar Italy’s managers stayed above 70% for the whole programme, even though everyone could watch the sessions on demand. For a very hands-on audience that spends a lot of time on the road, that was unexpected.
Participants also started catching up on the other groups’ executive sessions on their own initiative, out of curiosity. Many managers said they had taken handwritten notes during the exercises, with concrete actions to try with their teams from the very next day.
Nicoletta Chiggio, Learning and Development Manager at Sonepar Italy, saw the pen-and-paper method and the absence of slides as a positive change in how people experience training. She describes working with Wibo as co-design, with plenty of flexibility and problems solved quickly.
Consiglierei Wibo per la partnership che si crea a livello proprio di co-progettazione e co- realizzazione. Si crea veramente un’ottima collaborazione, un buon modo di portare a casa i progetti. In una parola: ‘Sorprendente’
[I’d recommend Wibo for the partnership you build, right down to co-designing and co-delivering the work. It creates a really great collaboration and a good way of getting projects over the line. In one word: ‘Surprising’]
Sonepar Italy planned to assess the programme’s effectiveness the following year.
