David Marshall
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The Leadership Blind Spots That Hold Back Manufacturing Transformation
- April 30, 2025
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Digital Transformation, Innovation, Management
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After a few decades in the manufacturing industry, I’ve seen every kind of manufacturing transformation initiative imaginable. Some succeed spectacularly, and they deliver game-changing efficiency and growth. Others plant themselves on their faces, getting bogged down by delays, wasted investment, or resistance on the shop floor. What separates the winners from the failures? It’s rarely
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The Rise of Resilient Supply Chains: What Every Manufacturer Must Prepare For
- April 23, 2025
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Manufacturing
I’ve been in manufacturing leadership for a long time, and I’ve seen some amazing technological advances. Gains in efficiency, gains in productivity, an increase in safety and sustainability — they all came from tightly-tuned (tightly-wound?) supply chains. For decades, the goal has been to adopt the Japanese method of “lean manufacturing” and reduce redundancy, minimize
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Manufacturing in 2030: Five Manufacturing Trends Leaders Can’t Afford to Ignore
- April 16, 2025
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Digital Transformation, Innovation, Leadership, Manufacturing
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my time in leading manufacturing organizations, it’s that the industry never stands still. From the automation boom of the 20th century to lights-out warehouses and robotics to AI-driven factories, every decade has brought seismic shifts. Yet the changes in the next five years may be the most
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The Future of Manufacturing: Where AI, Automation, and Human Ingenuity Meet
- April 9, 2025
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Innovation, Leadership
For nearly fifty years, I’ve had the privilege of working at the intersection of materials science, high-volume product, and global supply chains. Whether it’s helping to improve efficiency or helping turn around a manufacturing operation, one lesson has remained consistent: Manufacturing is never static. It’s always evolving, always changing, and it reshapes not only what
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Developing Executive Presence: What Sets Great Leaders Apart
- March 26, 2025
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
Great leaders are great communicators. They don’t just spew all the leadership bon mots that they memorized from the leadership course they went on last week, and they had better not get their inspiration from those damn posters! Instead, you need something of a personality, and you need to be really, truly interested in the
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Manage Upward: How to Influence Those Above You in the Org Chart
- March 19, 2025
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
A lot of leadership blogs all talk about the same thing: How do you motivate your staff? How do you get them to buy into your vision? How do you make them do what you want them to do? But how do you influence those people who are above you in the organizational chart? How
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How to Identify and Nurture Future Leaders Within Your Organization?
- March 12, 2025
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
Some of the best leaders for your company are the ones who started as fresh-faced newbies a few years ago and had trouble navigating their way around the office. Now, they’re one of the people that everyone turns to when they need help with a project or advice on something bothering them. They’re the team
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How to Avoid Micromanaging Your Employees
- March 5, 2025
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management
Micromanagers are some of the worst managers there are. They get bogged down in the details that, if we’re being honest, should no longer concern them. Managers should be executing visions and motivating employees, not on the front line, producing and counting widgets, or performing the functions of the people who work under them. A
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That Time a Customer Tried to Screw Me and How I Resolved the Problem
- February 26, 2025
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business
Years ago, when I still worked in the lighting industry, I helped to consolidate one company into another, giving me total access to all of our books and sales reports. One of the things I saw was that one company was terribly delinquent in its payments to us to the tune of $56,000. This was
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The Happiest I’ve Ever Made a Customer
- February 19, 2025
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Innovation
I’ve been answering questions this month about the angriest a customer has ever been at us or the biggest career mistake I’ve ever made. So now let’s talk about how happy I’ve made a customer. Years ago, Texas utility companies were offering big credits and rebates to their customers for switching out their old industrial