Thirteen years of growth, and a culture worth keeping through the sale.
EX Engineering is a hazardous area electrical business that grew from six employees to twenty-two full-time staff over thirteen years, and sold to IPD Group, an ASX-listed company in the electrical sector. In the early years, co-founders Jenni Grenville and Warwick filled roles that in a larger organisation would be split across entire departments.
Through a trusted contact, Gillian, a consultant who later became their Adapt Coach, they were introduced to Adapt. The Lumia platform gave the strategy work a home and preserved the progress. The discipline of regular sessions, with someone holding them accountable, gave them the room to think about where the business was going.
As owners, you're always working in the business rather than on the business.
Jenni Grenville, Co-founder, EX Engineering
The whole team co-created the company values, and those values became the backbone of every hiring, onboarding and development conversation. Structured annual career conversations, run through the platform and sitting outside the usual performance cycle, became one of the team's most valued rituals. Jenni worked with Gillian for the first year, then had a sustained engagement with Adapt Coach Tadhg.
As the sale approached, a single snapshot of Warwick's role profile in the Lumia platform showed thirty distinct responsibilities against his name. Built over years of consistent use, the role-clarity mapping became a critical handover tool. It made plain the volume of functions that fell, by default, to the founders, and what a clean handover would take.
We could look in there and say, Warwick's got thirty roles. And then, who's going to do those?
Jenni Grenville, Co-founder, EX Engineering