Accelerating the Development of High-Performance Leaders at Avnet

Scaling Avnet Manager Development Programs Worldwide

Avnet is a leading global technology solutions provider with design, product, marketing, and supply chain expertise for every stage of the product lifecycle. As a Fortune 500 company, Avnet has more than 15,000 employees around the world, with 4,000 employees based in Asia.

To meet business goals, Avnet needed to accelerate leadership development in Asia with an initial focus on frontline and mid-level management. As they searched for the right long-term partner, DDI stood out as the clear best match to help prepare Avnet leaders for the company’s bright future.

Avnet was especially excited about the opportunities that came with a DDI leadership development subscription. The subscription provided everything Avnet’s HR team needed to grow key leadership skills across all levels—including a huge library of learning resources in many modalities to meet all their leadership development needs. Ultimately, the leadership program that Avnet launched with DDI’s support in Asia became so successful that Avnet rolled out adoption worldwide. 

Relevant, Easy, and Effective Leadership Development

Avnet curated customized learning journeys for their flagship First Line Leadership Program for managers and individual contributors. This program featured several leadership courses and micrcourses from DDI’s Frontline Leadership development system, including Communication: Connect Through Conversations, Coaching: Move People Forward, and Developing Yourself and Others. Avnet’s HR team and senior leaders felt it was incredibly valuable and crucial to program success that the communication best practices taught in the courses, including DDI’s Key Principles for effective interactions, aligned with Avnet’s core values.

They were also delighted by the relevancy of DDI content broadly as well as the pace at which new content regularly became available for learners to consume. James Tan, Avnet’s Senior Vice President, Human Resources, Asia Pacific & Japan, summarized, “While some company’s programs come and go, DDI’s programs stay relevant consistently.”

In addition to launching training for individual contributors and frontline managers, Avnet customized learning journeys for their mid-level leadership programs for directors. They used DDI’s Business Impact Leadership^® courses in these programs, including Translating Strategy into Results, Cultivating Networks and Partnerships, Mastering Decision Dynamics, Coaching for High Performance, and more. All courses and microcourses from both Interaction Management and Business Impact Leadership were part of the learning library of leadership development resources in DDI’s subscription.

The comprehensive range of leadership courses, which are complemented by microlearning options, covered all the leadership challenges and learning needs faced by Avnet’s leaders. Additionally, Avnet’s HR team appreciated that DDI’s content is based on research and is focused on driving behavior change in leaders to create a positive impact for the organization.

Avnet was also pleased with the ease and accessibility of the learning experience. Learners at Avnet accessed leadership development resources from DDI’s user-friendly learning platform called Pinpoint. The platform is mobile-friendly, which allows Avnet learners and learning and development administrators to connect anytime, anywhere.

With DDI, we are now able to execute our business strategy using a common leadership language. We are able to achieve this largely attributed to our close partnership with DDI.

James Tan, Senior Vice President Human Resources, Asia Pacific & Japan

Accelerating Leadership Development Across Multiple Countries

Avnet’s corporate culture has always encouraged “developing leaders to become teachers.” So, in addition to a development program, they needed a partner who could help them ultimately deliver training to leaders in-house. DDI’s rich selection of facilitator training programs and resources was one of the reasons that Avnet was initially drawn to DDI. Trainer and student materials are available in all the languages important to Avnet’s leader population, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and more. And the facilitator program was a cost-effective investment free from hidden costs or fees.

With this aligned purpose and approach, DDI trained Avnet’s in-house team to become DDI-certified facilitators. The Facilitator Certification Program (FCP) gave Avnet the capability to rapidly accelerate and scale the delivery of development programs across 12 countries in Asia. With the strong presence of DDI in many Asian countries, Avnet has achieved the following:

• 47 in-house DDI-certified facilitators in Asia
• The capability to implement 8 leadership development cohorts of 15-20 leaders per year
• More than 500 individual contributors and leaders trained in 3 years

Daniel Tan, Avnet’s Senior Director of Talent Management and Training, was impressed with the benefits of DDI’s Facilitator Certification Program. “Our unique competitive advantage is the strong partnership with business leaders in facilitating leadership training with HR. DDI’s Certified Facilitator Program allows us to execute this initiative effectively,” Tan says.

Exponentially Increasing Effectiveness with DDI

Daniel Tan commented that the DDI team in Asia provides him with great support. He added that he has been able to exponentially increase his effectiveness by building his in-house capability through DDI’s leadership development subscription and Facilitator Certification Program.

Tan summed up what he likes about DDI’s programs by saying, “I am pleased with DDI’s high-quality updated content, cost-effective pricing, strong account management support, ease of certifying facilitators across different countries, and strong presence in Asia.”

Learn more about DDI’s leadership development subscriptions.