Tex Group

Situation

Over the years, Tex Group had grown to include a large number of businesses delivering a wide range of manufacturing activities. Their output for a truly global market includes hydraulic piling hammers, air traffic control rooms, radio frequency-blocking glazing, road construction equipment, gensets, large-scale marine diesel and traction engine refurbishment, plastic injection moulding and panel products. It’s a phenomenally diverse offer of purposeful, specialist manufacturing.

Family run, the next generation had just stepped in as group chief executive. This coincided with Tex’s return to private ownership from PLC status, and the new CEO’s first focus was a realignment of group structure, leadership and strategy. He commissioned us to help identify the core values which would resonate with and motivate the sizable and wide-spread workforce as the business flexed to its new circumstances and a fast-changing global marketplace.

Process

We delivered our values workshop for Tex’s Senior Leadership Team and Chairman just before Christmas 2020. Given the Group’s diverse activities, participants included an interesting blend of perspectives and priorities, and during the course of the workshop it was heartening to see people recognise how applied values would help them support their own teams to develop.

Following the workshop, its attendees recommended colleagues, clients and external partners we could interview to get a range of perspectives on companies within the group, and the group as a whole. These were coordinated at head office, who drew up a database excluding duplicates for final approval before we started the process of arranging interviews.

Given the pandemic, all interviews were carried out online or over the phone, and the global nature of Tex’s business meant that we worked across time zones. The interviews took place over a couple of weeks, and working from a core set of questions allowed us to open up high quality conversations which gave us useful insights to life in and around the group, the hopes and aspirations of its people, any issues that merited review and superb stories about projects. We uncovered a real sense of pride in the work, and respect from Tex’s clients and partner businesses: in an age where British manufacturing is perceived to be in decline, Tex Group demonstrates world-class quality and technical prowess across its wide range of capabilities.

Analysing these conversations as we went and retrospectively allowed us to build up a clear picture of the group, its unifying and dividing themes, common language, and the motivations that would allow its senior leaders and board to support the whole team to adapt to change, grow their careers and help the group and its businesses flourish. One thing that was very clear was that the ethos would have to provide a sense of unity, aspiration and excellence that could define the Group’s new direction.

This led to a clear, action-based set of values which we first shared with the CEO to ensure they met his overarching objectives, and then brought back to the SLT and Chair at a follow up workshop. This ensured that they could be fully participant in shaping the values to their final form. Their contribution allowed us to finesse our proposals, and following this the values were unanimously approved. Feedback informed an expansion into values narrative and contextual applications. Given the enormous changes happening in the group, this is positioned as a future ambition rather than current situation.

Tex Group’s Values

01

We thrive on challenge

02

We innovate by design

03

We keep it simple

04

We deliver exceptionalresults

05

We go further together

Next steps

The CEO took ownership of instilling the corporate ethos as company behaviours into the whole group through its reshaped management team and tiered out through group companies. Their last year demonstrated the beneficial impact of the changes that have taken place, with strong client relationships, profitable growth and enhanced talent management.

Welcome to Tex. We are becoming a diverse engineering and manufacturing group of businesses united by bold ambition:

01.

To build on our heritage with design innovation and a relentless drive for excellence

02.

To generate an extraordinary future for everyone in and around the group businesses

03.

To be a known global leader in technologically-advanced, precision manufacturing

04.

To be a British power-house: the pride of our communities, our workforce and our sector.
Tex is also united by clear, simple, shared values that focus us all on what really matters. And that is working together to create profitable, sustainable growth now, and for generations to come.”