When Sherrill W. Hudson joined TECO Energy Inc.’s board of directors in 2003, he was selected for his financial expertise and utility experience. But less than two years later, he showed that he had much more to offer.
TECO’s CEO retired early, in mid 2004, and Hudson was the board’s first choice for a replacement. He accepted and wasted no time developing a plan to revive the Tampa-based energy-related holding company, which had lost its focus — a scary thing for a $3 billion company with more than 900,000 customers.
“In 2005, the company was recovering from some significant changes and difficult financial times that challenged our team,” says Hudson, who serves as chairman and CEO. “We were exiting businesses that no longer fit with our strategy, and it became very important for us to communicate who we are today as a company and where we want to be.”
The company had invested in a power generation strategy to take advantage of the opportunities presented by utility deregulation. But that strategy never panned out because deregulation didn’t work out the way anyone expected. TECO Energy posted a net loss of $909 million in fiscal 2003 and $552 million in fiscal 2004, mainly because of that strategy, and as a result, began to exit that market.
Hudson recognized that he needed to redefine the values that would, in turn, redefine the company.
“In this last year-and-a-half, we spent a lot of time coming up with refining our mission and vision statement and our five core values,” he says. “They’re quite basic, but they really speak volumes about who we are, where we see ourselves and then the values we want to be evaluated by.”