David Marshall
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Emotional Intelligence: The Leadership Skill Nobody Teaches
- June 3, 2026
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Leadership
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I’ve worked in manufacturing long enough to see the same story play out over and over. A company has a great employee. Maybe it’s the best machinist in the plant. Maybe it’s the engineer everyone calls when a machine goes down. Or it’s the maintenance tech who can hear a strange noise in a gearbox
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Why Great Leaders Prioritize Work-Life Balance for Themselves and Others
- May 27, 2026
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Leadership
“Work-life balance” is one of those phrases that sounds good until you think about what it really means. Companies talk about it, employees ask for it, and consultants build entire presentations around it. The reality is that no one can give you a work-life balance. It’s something you have to create for yourself. You have
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Don’t Build Factories for Promises
- May 20, 2026
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Management
Over the years, I’ve watched companies spend themselves into trouble because they confused optimism with strategy. The conversation starts the same way: A customer says, “If you build a facility closer to us…” or “If you invest in this equipment…” or “If you manufacture locally…” They’ll assure you the business will be there. It sounds
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I Cut Workers’ Compensation Costs by Fixing the System
- May 13, 2026
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Innovation, Management, Manufacturing
When I first looked at what we were spending on workers’ compensation, I knew something wasn’t right. For one thing, the costs were ridiculous. Not because we had an unsafe workplace or people were getting seriously injured every day. It was because the workers’ comp system itself encouraged abuse. People would file claims for injuries
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Sustaining Momentum: It Isn’t Something Someone Gives You
- May 6, 2026
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
People ask me how I’ve managed to sustain momentum as a leader over the years. How do I keep going, and how do I keep fresh on all the new developments and changes in leadership? They assume there’s some leadership trick or motivational technique that keeps me going when things aren’t working. There isn’t. It’s
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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
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