a good thing , page-34

In response to Ashgra70 I agree totally that Bill Wild is the best thing to happen to Hastie in a long time. I disagree however that getting 'this baby' on track will come about from process improvement with the business.

Hastie is made up of a number of businesses which were leaders in their field when purchased from Hastie. This means that at the time of purchase these businesses were making money. Its irrelevant why they were making money - pre gfc, pre tsunami, pre earthquake. They were making money with processes in place which reflected the needs of the region in which they operated. Surely Hastie would not have bought them if they were unprofitable and they did not feel there was room for growth from those companies. However, from previous posts I note that a number of people have said that the downslide occured when the original owners of the businesses left. My thoughts on this are simple: If the business was successful with the previous owner in place what happened when Hastie took over to make it unprofitable - was it those very same processes you are talking about, being put in place that made the companies an unviable proposition?
Hastie's processes should have been responsible for ensuring a successful transition from private to corporate ownership and those processes should also have spotted when the slide in individual profits started occuring. Clearly this hasnt happened. I would be concerned on relying on process improvement to save the day. Far better for Hastie to take a good hard long look at the people they put in place to run the businesses together with the people monitoring those businesses and assess their performance with a fresh perspective.

My hope for Bill Wild is that he can see through the smoke and mirrors and not rely on the 'process' to review performance which can surely only lead to the same old failures.

As I said before this business did not end up the way it is by fault of two or three people