By Philippe Delpech, Sonepar President
At the head of a company with sales of over €32bn, serving customers in 40 countries, and with a clear purpose, I know I need to spend more time to think about, and anticipate, what future leadership will look like.
This is no easy task and, when doing it, there are two equal and opposite traps that leaders can fall into. The first is to focus too much on their traditional role, in areas such as keeping the company on track, selecting good people, and shaping the organization. Leaders like this are often aware that the world is changing but react to it by focusing harder on what worked in the past.
The second is to look at the latest trends or fashions and then, announcing that the past is over, and they are moving “beyond the bottom line,” steer the company in a radically different direction. Here, concentrating carefully on their markets and profitability take a back seat. I have seen a number of companies do this without success. The main change they achieved was an increase in the number of calls from unsatisfied major shareholders.
Moving beyond these binary views involves seeing that the choice is not “this or that.” The roles of traditional leadership and taking the company into unfamiliar territory are intricately connected, making the real choice “both and.” As well as striking the right balance between old and new, successful leaders of tomorrow will be able to recognize the vital threads that run through both.
Providing leadership on education must touch the whole workforce, and I believe we need to pay special attention to the differences in learning styles between our different generations, and especially our younger employees’ needs.
Making sure the workforce understands continuous education is a critical challenge. So much so that when I unveiled Sonepar’s Purpose to all our associates in 2023, we made Continuous Education one of the Six Bold Commitments it contained. For us, it is doubly important, because it is intrinsically linked to our sustainability goals, and therefore impacts both our success and that of our whole supply chain. We all know that climate change is a global challenge, but it is individuals and companies that must act – and that begins with awareness and education.
Simply realizing the importance of educating your workforce is good, but it has to be about more than a box-ticking exercise on how many people were trained on the company’s software. Providing leadership on education must touch the whole workforce, and I believe we need to pay special attention to the differences in learning styles between our different generations, and especially our younger employees’ needs. So, while the most natural thing is to focus on the “what,” successful leaders of tomorrow must also be thinking hard about the “how.”
The way that young people gain knowledge today is completely different to 30 years ago. They are used to scanning massive amounts of information very quickly. This is no better or worse than in the past – it is simply different. “Surfing” is a word that describes this well – and we are all doing more surfing as the digital revolution gathers pace.
When I was with the elevator industry, safe working was a critical issue for technicians on the front line. We had hundreds of pages of safety manuals, which were needed to mitigate some profoundly serious risks. But as the demographic of the workforce changed, we found that people were struggling to absorb the details; an extremely dangerous position to be in. Our solution was to put the content into short videos. It worked far better overall but made things harder for those who still preferred their information in written form. A proof that, in education, you have to consider the needs of all generations – including format, content, and timing.
For us, the point about our commitment to Continuous Education is that it is what it says: continuous.
Senior players in companies tend to be older and are often more comfortable with tried and tested forms of communication. That means they may miss the need to focus on the needs of different generations in their company. At best, this is a missed opportunity and, at worst, a costly mistake for leaders to make as times change. We need to think about, and add in, new ways of communicating. These will need new tools and a genuine commitment to people’s different ways of learning. Leaders must also address the paradox that because there is so much free information, it is perceived as having little or no value. In the pre-Internet era, training materials were carefully taken back to the office for future reference and, as a result, probably digested better.
Intricately linked to all this is a trait that is probably in too short a supply for us all: patience. You may see it just as the driver behind “surfing” for information, but patience touches many areas of corporate life. For example, 20 years ago, the norm for someone wanting to work for Sonepar would have been one previous job, or two at most. Today, a candidate may have already worked for four or five companies – and might have in mind to work for four or five more, seeing it as the best way to climb the corporate ladder.
The result? The lack of patience erodes the concept of promotion and seniority gained through hard-earned experience – something that makes identifying high-potential employees more difficult. Even if you can identify them, and signal their value to them, they may not have the patience to gain the experience they need before moving on to their next company.
I strongly believe that our way of fostering education models patience and differentiates us from our competitors.
An old-fashioned HR problem? Not in my view: this too is fundamentally an issue of education. The question leaders have to ask is “How do we teach people to be more patient, and to value the learning and experience on offer to them?” At Sonepar, this is a theme on which we are heavily focused. For us, the point about our commitment to Continuous Education is that it is what it says: continuous.
And that cannot be about an endless round of “attend today, forget tomorrow” training courses. It needs to be done in a way that evolves people's knowledge and experience throughout their career and keeps them engaged and committed. We are working hard to make all our training informative, but also capable of generating the ideas, actions, and commitment that associates, and the company need. I strongly believe that our way of fostering education models patience and differentiates us from our competitors. We put human connections at the center and take the time to train our people and provide a quality, relational experience.
We still have work to do at Sonepar. But, as the company’s leader, I am in a strong position to influence. I am proud that we were able to frame Continuous Education as one of our six Bold Commitments, and that we have a clear view that education is a leadership issue and one that deserves the patience to get right.