200

Senior leaders — International and Vaccines

1st

Ever joint regional leadership summit

½ day

Immersive experience, opening the event

3

Regions now delivering the same
programme

The Challenge

You only get one shot at the first moment.

Sanofi was bringing together 200 senior leaders from its International and Vaccines divisions for the very first time - two distinct business units, different cultures, different priorities, now being asked to operate with a shared leadership identity. The opening half-day would set the tone for everything that followed.

A slow, passive, presentation-heavy start would be felt across the entire event. The brief was clear and unambiguous: create an opening experience that builds shared identity immediately, introduces Sanofi’s new leadership imperatives in a way people would actually remember, and establishes what leadership looks and feels like in this newly unified organisation.

Not another slide deck. Not another keynote. Something that would make people feel the imperatives, not just hear them.

What EP Did

Into The Unknown - as the opening frame.

Explore Performance designed and facilitated the opening half-day of the summit in Madrid, deploying the Into The Unknown simulation as the experiential canvas for introducing Sanofi’s ‘Be The Flame’ leadership theme. Rather than presenting the new leadership imperatives through a slide deck, EP put 200 leaders inside the Tasman crossing simulation - navigating uncertainty, pressure, and high-stakes decisions without perfect information.

The experience surfaced every leadership imperative Sanofi needed to introduce, not through instruction but through lived experience. The debrief was mapped precisely to the four behaviours Sanofi needed to bring to life:

Anti-fragility

Getting stronger under pressure, not just surviving it.

Focus

The discipline to prioritise ruthlessly when conditions are demanding.

Teamwork

The difference between individual performance and collective achievement.

Collaboration in a VUCA environment

Leading well when clarity is a luxury you don’t have.

The Outcome

An opening that aligned two worlds before a single strategy update was delivered.

200 leaders from two distinct business units left the opening half-day with something far more valuable than awareness of the new leadership imperatives: a shared experience of living them. The Tasman crossing gave the International and Vaccines teams a common reference point - a moment they had been through together - before a single strategic update had been delivered.

When the rest of the summit began, the two worlds were already, in the most important sense, one.

The programme landed so well in Madrid that Sanofi immediately invited EP back to deliver the same experience for leaders across APAC and EMEA.

Original delivery

Madrid

200 senior leaders, International and Vaccines, first-ever joint summit.

Roll-out in progress

APAC

Same experience extended to the APAC leadership cohort.

Roll-out in progress

EMEA

Same experience extended to the EMEA leadership cohort.

Why This Matters

Leadership imperatives only work if leaders feel them first.

Most organisations launch new leadership frameworks the same way: a slide deck, a keynote, a cascade. And most leaders have learned to sit through those moments politely, nod at the right moments, and return to work unchanged.

The Sanofi programme proved something EP has always believed: if you want leaders to own a new way of leading, you have to create the conditions for them to experience it before you ask them to practise it.

The simulation doesn’t tell leaders what anti-fragility feels like. It puts them in a situation where they either become anti-fragile or they fail. The lesson arrives through consequence, not instruction. That’s why it sticks. And that’s why Sanofi came back for more.