Seventeen cents? The Hills story is more, than a little sad. An...

Seventeen cents? The Hills story is more, than a little sad.

An early sign of what was to come (back when) was the initially irrelevant discussions of the SP by representatives of the various Hills businesses. This was when the SP was healthy enough, though not relevent to core activities ……but it gave some visibility into cultural issues within the business.

Those of us in the industry have watched the Hills acquisition trail and escalating jingoistic rhetoric. It all looked so obviously foolish that we assumed a clever master plan must exist which would be revealed at a cunning moment – to humble us all. The forced or voluntary exodus of experienced personnel and reliance on corporate newcomers demonstrated an unusual naivety by upper Hills management.

The acquisition targets seemed questionable (with the exception of APG), and the values paid demonstrated a generosity at odds with the market. The cyclic epiphany’s to introduce efficiency…..all contributed to damage the good in what they had before – let alone what they acquired.

Observers watched bemused – while Hills competitors got fat on the Hills incompetence.

So now they find themselves trying to rebuild, and throw themselves at the mercy of the electronic Security and Health Care markets. With a particularly unfavourable economy, and obscene amounts of competition, a dysfunctional Hills has generally been unable to provide the confidence for their target audiences to invest/purchase with them. Business is hard enough, let alone relying on the Hills machine.

I have no idea what any real SP should be, but anticipating a turnaround from any organization this far down (with no tangible plan) would demonstrate a rare courage indeed.