2010 Leadership Forum meetings starting up again
Maintaining the same passion for the leadership meetings but in a new context emphasizing networking. The cocktail that used to close the evening will instead open the meeting to offer participants an opportunity to get to know each other, exchange ideas and network.
Stefano Beraldo
Managing Director Gruppo Coin
Welcome and introduction by Riccardo Monti
Vice President Bocconi Alumni Association
A sixty minute face-to-face meeting with Stefano Beraldo sharing his story, career journey and leadership experience from a personal and professional perspective.
A brief summary of the meeting
Riccardo Monti
"Welcome to the Bocconi Alumni Association’s first Leadership Forum meeting, and thank you to Gianfranco Minutolo for changing the program and opening the meeting with the networking cocktail.
We are honored to have with us Stefano Beraldo, Managing Director Coin Group. This is the first time that the Leadership Forum meeting welcomes a non ‘Bocconian’ which marks a significant openness on the part of the Association. Stefano Beraldo started his career at Arthur Andersen, then joined the Benetton group and later directed the acquisition of SME from the Italian Ministry of Industry. He then became General Manager of GS (sold to Carrefour) and, in 2000, he was appointed Managing Director of the De’ Longhi Group. In 2005 he became the Managing Director of the Gruppo Coin which recently acquired Upim.
You have a very interesting CV which offers many ideas about leadership: you went from a consulting experience, to a fund, then to managing a complex group like Benetton which exposed you to a wide range of leadership styles. Then in the year 2000, the Internet bubble and later, the recent crisis. "
Stefano Beraldo
"I do not wish to talk about myself as a leader. If anything it is up to others to find it in us. I can only try to tell you which important things allowed me to achieve results, and the factors and levers which were used. I certainly did achieve some positive results: I became a turnaround specialist, which is why I get invited! I believe leadership is to be found in facts more than in statements."
Riccardo Monti
"Your professional experience highlights two points: the importance of sharing and the need for repetition."
Stefano Beraldo
"When it pours rain, and you need to understand what to do in order to turn things around, (because everything has already been tried without success), you must change your perspective and find a new way that would otherwise have been impossible to discern. Finding the right way is only the first of 50 steps that need to be taken in fact the bigger the structure the more the road needs to be paved by 10, 50, 100 key people in the organization. In the end, results require implementation, not only a strategy. Unfortunately implementation has nothing to do with your ability to find a way out."
He added: "I believe leadership means having the right ideas and being able to put your body, mind and heart to make sure others can effectively implement them ()
The great rule of management that I wish to convey is: repetition. Believe in something and then be obsessive about achieving it. Look at it, appreciate it, touch it and give a compliment when it is done. Continue to be demanding."
Riccardo Monti
"You make an important point, which is the team. Let’s look into this aspect for a moment: how to develop or change something within a team?"
Stefano Beraldo
"It is a very delicate and important topic, for which there is no obvious recipe, and I myself have experienced different situations. Team concept, based on my experience, requires complicity they work in parallel: without complicity there is no team, there is an organization but there is no team.
In a team, for example, if one makes a bad pass and the receiver realizes the mistake, he will run faster to pick it up anyway. Complicity means setting objectives and knowing that, together with your teammates, you will be able to achieve them. Distrust among team members, on the other hand, makes implementation difficult.
He then continued by explaining the differences between two cases: completely changing the corporate team and working on the existing team. The latter is a much slower process, made up of persuasion, by creating mechanisms of complicity and immediately declaring inadequacies. It means working on the people: training, visiting competing stores, we were just now in a competing store.
This is necessary until the team starts talking the same language, starts changing the way it perceives business and starts reacting."
Riccardo Monti
"There is another topic that I think is interesting: how the aspects of leadership are different when working for an entrepreneur compared to working for a fund which has certain types of dynamics."
Stefano Beraldo
"The satisfaction and the logic you apply to lead a business depend on the challenge that you set yourself and not necessarily only on corporate governance.
It depends on the meaning you find in your work, on how you gain independence, and on your role and leadership. Even with regards to an entrepreneur if you are working for one.
In the case of a fund, I believe every experience is an experience in itself. First, you do not work FOR a fund but WITH a fund as an associate. In this case, transparency and honesty in the reports become by far the predominant if not unique instruments of communication. What matters are the results, and as a consequence, there is a greater amount of management independence. Almost complete.
There was no obvious approach: I found one and I implemented it together with my team.
Does being a leader mean quickly understanding various industries’ key success factors? This is what your personal story seems to teach us...
"Yes. This is also true. Sometimes it is necessary to understand which way the wind blows. You think you have found the solution, but it is necessary to go more in-depth and not limit yourself to your first approach which may be wrong. You need to take time to study a second approach. He concludes by emphasizing the need to study, study intensively your competitors’ behavior, their budgets, and their performance --a diagnosis."
Did you take any particular steps to improve your customer service?
"With regards to the OVS Industry customer service, the client does not worry me. In a store that sells t-shirts at €9.90, the service that is provided is product replenishment, in other words, keeping the store in order and re-stacking the shelves. In Coin, where the price positioning and target client are higher, we focused on a higher level of service quality with unannounced visits to the store, the establishment of a mystery shopper, a lot of training, and meetings with directors. I suggest you keep aside a question on the importance of a retail store, on the container compared to the contents."
In your career to date, what are the most difficult moments you faced?
"I strongly believe that the skill of a business manager is to be able to surround himself with people who are better than him in each specific area of activity.
You should always seek the right solution, motivating your colleagues to give their best. Questioning, refuting, and provoking: often you need to provoke people to get answers, you must get them stressed.
It is only when men are under stress that they start performing and doubting their convictions. So I would say the answer to your question is I have never truly had difficult moments, in the sense of not knowing what decisions to make At least I do not remember of any such moments, also because I am an optimist, I tend to be calm and I tend to put aside the difficult moments that have already been overcome."
