Lighting the way
The process began with TECO examining the values it already had in place to decide if any of them were still pertinent to the organization’s five businesses: Tampa Electric, Peoples Gas and TECO Transport in Tampa, TECO Coal in Kentucky and TECO Guatemala.
The leadership looked to see how those values could improved upon, then explored what else the company wanted to say about itself.
“This is not something totally new; this is just really a refinement,” says Hudson. “Two of them — safety and integrity — have long been hallmarks of our culture. With our return to a focus on our five core businesses, it was time to restate those as central to TECO Energy and underscore them.
“The other three — respect for others, achievement with a sense of urgency and customer service — are things we wanted to add to our list as being critical to the type of company we want to be. … We just did some real meaningful thinking, and updated what was in place and really brought it all into a cohesive document that everybody really feels comfortable about and can buy into.”
But before the values were instated, they were passed by many eyes. Hudson knew that to succeed, he needed the involvement of all employees, not just senior management.
“This is an art, not a science,” he says. “It’s one of those things that there’s not a right or wrong answer.”
Corporate officers shared the values with their direct reports, including company presidents, who shared them with their teams through department meetings and focus groups. In all cases, individuals were to find out what people thought of the statements, if resistance was anticipated and how to best deploy them through the organization.
“One of the things we talk about a lot is we’re a company where people want to work, and if you’re going to be that kind of company, people have to really feel that they are owners of the business,” says Hudson. “To be owners, that means they need to be involved in any of the key factors that are involved in the company. There’s really nothing more important than enunciating our purpose, our vision and our core values.”
TECO also looked to other companies for guidance, in both what to do and what not to do.
“There’s an awful lot of companies that have very fancy purpose, vision, whatever you want to call it, and values,” says Hudson. “But unfortunately, that’s what they are — they’re on the shelf, they’re there on the Web site and they’re not in the hearts and souls of all the people. And our goal was … we want our people to really understand this, and we want them to live it every day.”
It took six months to develop and implement the new core values, but once they were defined, the company had to communicate and integrate them throughout TECO’s five core businesses.