LEADERS WHO DRIVE AUTOMOTIVE
Sebastiano Fedrigo, VP for International Markets and Business Development at Leasys, rose through the ranks in sales and brand leadership at Fiat before switching to asset finance and leasing. He tells Lynda Ennis, Co-founder and CEO of Ennis & Co Group, that breadth of experience and working in different cultures are key ingredients of successful leadership.
LYNDA ENNIS: What was your motivation for pursuing a career in the automotive industry?
SEBASTIANO FEDRIGO: I grew up in Monza with cars all around me, so I’ve always had a passion for cars. I studied automotive engineering at university and became fascinated by the way the industry brings together highly complex engineering and marketing. If you think about the aviation sector, that is an industry where the product is also highly complex, but consumer marketing plays no part. At the other extreme, an FMCG organisation like Proctor & Gamble makes shampoos and creams that have far less complexity but where it’s all about the marketing, the positioning and the pricing. Automotive sits in the middle and therefore has the best of both worlds. It has the complexity and the industrial challenge of building a car, but it is also completely dependent on marketing to drive sales. That’s what really attracted me to the industry.
As part of my studies, I spent two years doing a master in a French university, where it was compulsory for all students to do a three-month internship as a blue-collar worker. I remember the words of the Dean of the university when we were about to start our stint on the shop floor. He told us that if we ever became managers in the future, we would know what it was like to manage people doing tough jobs. Secondly, we would appreciate how lucky we were to have the chance to study and to get away from jobs like that. His words have always stayed with me.
The experience certainly fostered in me a lot of respect for the guys in the factory, and I’ve carried that through in later life to the guys at the dealership doing the hard work day in, day out. It also opened my eyes to the complexity of the automotive industry, despite the fact the factory I was working in was just a logistics centre for the distribution of spare parts. It was fast paced and absolutely huge, and yet it was still only a small cog in a giant, highly complex automotive machine. That really excited me and reinforced my ambition to work in the industry.
I was fortunate to gain a place on a graduate trainee programme with Fiat Group, which allowed me to do three different roles, each of which lasted 18 months. Nowadays, I often see graduate programmes where the trainees are rotated every six months, but I think that’s far too quick. If you’re in a role for 18 months, it’s long enough to do something really meaningful, with targets and responsibility. Six months is barely long enough to understand a role, let alone work to targets.
My three roles were in R&D, on the production line and in sales and marketing, and I worked for three different businesses that were part of the Fiat Group in three different countries, so it was extremely useful in terms of helping me understand what areas I was most interested in. For example, I did a stint working in computer programming and realised I definitely wasn’t cut out for that. For a while, I was a buyer on the factory floor of CNH Industrial, which made combine harvesters, before moving into a sales and marketing role with IVECO. This was an area that really appealed to me because, as I mentioned earlier, it was the point in which engineering and marketing efforts met to generate revenue.
Looking back on that early part of my career, I feel privileged that I was able to experience not just different roles but different cultures, moving from my native Italy to Belgium and then to the UK. Having that multicultural experience teaches you a lot of humility and empathy in the way you manage and connect people in different countries. It’s something that’s increasingly important as the automotive industry becomes more and more consolidated and global. If you cannot manage people from different cultures, then that’s a skill you need to develop.
LE: Having started out in a very broad-based graduate programme, you now have a senior leadership position in the highly specialist area of asset finance and leasing. What were the key moments and decisions that led you on this pathway?
SF: To be successful in any commercial role within the automotive industry, -it’s important to work either in or with the dealerships. I recognised this early in my career, and so I took the deliberate step of taking an Area Sales Manager role early on. It’s a job that often carries a fair bit of stigma, but it’s a fundamental role, and you learn a lot from doing it in terms of dealing with people in the network. Taking the role proved a key moment in my career because, from there, I was able to progress to regional and then national sales positions before becoming UK Country Manager for Fiat Professional and then UK Managing Director for Fiat and Abarth.
In terms of my transition to asset finance and leasing, I came to the realisation that while brand management was extremely important, there were two elements of the offer to customers that I had very little experience of. One was financial services, and the second was customer service. Although I had reached the level of Managing Director, I felt I needed to address these two gaps in my knowledge. An opportunity arose to broaden my experience of customer service with the Mopar brand, which provided parts, accessories and servicing for all the FCA brands at the time, and so I took the role of Service, Parts and Customer Care Director for the UK and Ireland. Having managed the P&L of a brand, I was fully aware that parts and service were major components of that, and I wanted to understand the levers in those areas.
I was also aware of the fundamental importance of the asset finance side of the business in terms of determining how to package pricing and servicing to deliver a better proposition to your customers. Therefore when the opportunity came, I took up the role of UK Managing Director for Leasys. I quickly realised that a finance company has an advantage over the car brands because your relationship with the customer is closer and longer term. It’s the finance company that has the most customer touchpoints because every month there is an invoice, not to mention the ongoing interactions linked to multiple request from the customer may that be a change of address, bank details, length of the agreement or other factors linked to credit exposure. The long-term nature of the relationship means skills are needed to keep the customer at the centre of everything you do, as loyalty will often culminate with the renewal of the financial agreement . This is even more important on the leasing side of the business, where you’re managing not just the financial aspects but also all other additional services as repair and maintenance, insurance, tyres offerings and so on.
LE: What are the key leadership skills that are needed in the fleet and leasing industry today? Have they changed?
SF: I don’t see any great differences in the skills needed in leasing and automotive in general. I see leasing as an arm of the automotive world. One of the peculiarities of the automotive industry is the dichotomy between old versus new. It has knowledge that is rooted in the past because the European brands have been producing cars for a century, with all the legacy and brand heritage that goes with that. But it’s also changing rapidly today with electrification and digitalisation.
Classic management skills are needed because we still have factories that produce the vehicles, and we still need to manage a complex supply chain. Whether you’re working on the automotive or financial side, you need the traditional skills of people management and change management. You need to be able to build relationships and cultivate trust with your suppliers, your dealers, the banks – people who work outside your organisation. You need the ability to show empathy and to handle difficult or complex interactions.
On the other hand, we are in an industry that is changing rapidly through digitalisation, so you need to be agile in the way cars are marketed. In my Fiat days, we were still doing TV adverts, but now TV campaigns are extremely rare. Now you must be able also to work online that is agile, fast and effective, so you need to have adaptability and flexibility. On the financial side, you need analytical skills and financial acumen, but you also need to be able to manage change quickly. Finally, as the industry is fast paced and extremely competitive, I think you also need a lot of resilience.
LE: How did you develop your leadership skills through your career? Did you receive any training or coaching?
SF: Most of it has come from experience. I’ve had the chance to do a few interesting training courses, but I think my leadership skills in terms of managing people and building resilience have really come from learning on the job.
LE: You’ve spoken about how you were aware of knowledge gaps in customer finance and customer service when you were running a brand. Were you conscious of any other gaps in your skillset as you progressed through your career? If so, how did you address them?
SF: When I moved into financial services, I quickly realised that there was a lot of operational information that I needed to acquire, but you can cover that by talking to people, through online courses and by reading publications, manuals and doing the SAF training course for financial services. You just need curiosity and to put some work into it. In terms of interpersonal skills, I think you realise as you develop in your career just how important people management is. You’re only as good as your team, and you need to be able to surround yourself with the right people. Management of people is a skill that’s very difficult to acquire, and it’s only experience that can give you that. That said, I’ve always found mentoring very useful. It helps you keep a perspective on the longer term rather than being too preoccupied with the stress of the moment.
LE: What skills will future automotive commercial leaders need to acquire, and how would you advise them to do that?
SF: There are three elements that are fundamental and relatively easy to acquire. One is gaining a broad breadth of understanding of the industry rather than staying in one vertical line. This is the mistake a lot of people make. You might reach the top faster, but when you get there, you’re in a fragile situation because you don’t have the grounding of a broad range of experiences.
Secondly, I always advise people to gain international experience. The interaction with people from different cultures gives you a certain elasticity in the way you communicate to people and understand them that is very useful in a sector that, by its nature, is more and more global.
Thirdly, my advice is always to focus on the longer term. In a highly pressurised environment, it’s easy to focus on a small thing without joining the dots to see the longer-term effect of each action. What might look great in the short term could create issues further down the line. For me, the longer term means always being able to measure your actions against the long-term financial results of what you are doing, keeping an eye on the economics and the P&L impact in the future.
LE: Do you notice a difference in young people’s aspirations compared to when you were at a comparable stage of your career? Do they have the same appetite for hard work or to put themselves in uncomfortable situations?
SF: I definitely see more reluctance among the younger generations to sacrifice their personal life by accepting jobs in other locations or countries, and there’s a greater emphasis placed on work-life balance than there used to be. While I understand and accept that, I do think that if you’re young and don’t have children, there are opportunities to make experiences abroad that are extremely rewarding and that I certainly found very useful in my career.
I also think that the complexity of the automotive industry, combined with the pressure that’s coming from government policies and extremely competitive new entrants from China, means the younger generations need to have greater resilience nowadays. There’s a tendency among the young generation to avoid taking risks. Just because you can see failure today, it doesn’t follow that you will fail tomorrow.
LE: Do you think Covid has had an impact on people’s attitudes in terms of how they want to work?
SF: Covid has certainly changed some things for the worse, some for the better. I think we have lost some capacity to have face-to-face conversations, and there is a greater reliance on email for communication, which is not healthy. On the positive side, remote working has opened up new opportunities in terms of jobs that you can do without having to necessarily move house and family to be present in the office all the time.
I wonder, too, whether the appeal of working in the automotive industry is losing its appeal among younger people compared to sectors such as digital or banking. I was always attracted to working for a global company, with all the international opportunities it offered. Maybe there is a change of mindset now, and people are less interested to move abroad and work in different cultures.
LE: Do you think it’s fair to say that asset finance and leasing is a part of the industry that doesn’t always project itself as a good career opportunity for young people? Despite being such a fundamental part of how people buy cars, is there a feeling that it’s not the sexiest area of the industry?
SF: There’s certainly a perception among young people that it’s not a great career path – that it lies somewhere between banking and automotive. My view is that it gives you a 360 vision of the entire industry that’s otherwise difficult to acquire and has impacts on every part of the industry. What it suffers from is maybe a lack of understanding of what the sector is, and I think the leasing companies share some of the blame for not being able to promoting it effectively.
LE: Looking back on your career, is there one piece of advice you wish you’d received early on?
SF: I think the importance of people management tends to be overlooked in organisations. Automotive is not a vertical industry. Even in a position where you are responsible for a team, there will always be external stakeholders to deal with, such as suppliers or retailers. For me, knowing how to manage relationships was a bit of an oversight early on, and it was a skill that came only with experience. In hindsight, I would have preferred to have more understanding of people management when I was younger – maybe some training. As you get older, you learn the key principles of being open and approachable, of being courteous at all times and of having empathy. There’s so much pressure in our industry that being empathetic is extremely important in terms of knowing how far you can push and when it’s time to step back.
LE: Who has inspired you during your career, and what impact did they have?
SF: A lot of people have inspired me. My boss at Fiat Professional, Eric Laforge, was very inspiring, as was Luca de Meo when he was the head of the Fiat Brand. But if I had to choose one person, it would be Sergio Marchionne, the former CEO of FCA, because of the impact he had on the organisation. We were in a very difficult situation, but, under his leadership, we came out of it in a much stronger position. Then, as we went through the merger with Chrysler, you could almost breathe the energy he was able to transmit to all layers of the organization. He was quite intense as a person and unconventional in the way he communicated, but that was his strength and combined with an incredible intelligence made him an exceptional leader to follow and learn from.
