Our culture loves the hero who rides into town to save the day. The business equivalent is the turnaround specialist, the outsider brought in to take a badly managed or bloated company and make it shine again. Mike Hilton will be the first to tell you it was quite the opposite when he took over the reins at Nordson Corp. in January 2010.
Nordson, a manufacturer of precision dispensing equipment, has a reputation as a well-managed and progressive company. The company's total shareholder return has been in the top quartile compared to its peers, and it has raised its dividend annually for 47 years. When Hilton, then a senior vice president at Air Products and Chemicals, was first approached about the CEO position at Nordson, he began checking out the company and liked what he saw -- sound performance even in the midst of the recession, a strong business model and a quality workforce.
"I was not unhappy with Air Products at all, but I liked the opportunity to take something to the next level and build on the excellence that is already here in terms of business and people," Hilton told IndustryWeek in an interview at the company's headquarters in Westlake, Ohio.
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| Photo: Roger Mastroianni for IW |
How is Hilton putting his stamp on Nordson? He has placed a greater emphasis on strategy and talent management to make sure leaders know where they are headed and have capable personnel across the enterprise to carry on after them. He has also stressed an understanding of the competitive environment. "Let's make sure we understand not tomorrow or three months from now, but what things are going to look like five years from now and how we are prepared to thrive in that market," he explains.
When Nordson released its latest results this past May, all signs pointed to a company that was headed in the right direction. Nordson's second-quarter 2011 results were all-time records for sales, operating profit, net income and diluted earnings per share. In fact, net income for the quarter more than doubled from the previous year to $65 million.
