David Marshall
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Leaders Shouldn’t Have to Motivate Others
- October 31, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
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I recently read an article on LinkedIn about how leaders shouldn’t have to motivate others, and I had a bit of an “amen!” response. To me, motivating someone means applying some kind of pressure to get someone to do something they might not otherwise do. As author Maurice Evans said: Motivation has to do with
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Top Skills I Looked for In My New Hires: How Important is an Executive Résumé?
- October 24, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
When I was hiring executives, I wasn’t always concerned with the issues that the human resources department thought was most important. For example, I often didn’t care whether someone had a degree in their field unless it was absolutely required. I’ve met some PhDs who were absolute idiots, and I’ve met people with nothing more
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How I Handled Interpersonal Conflict Between Employees
- October 17, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
It’s inevitable that you’re just not going to like someone at work. They’ll rub you the wrong way, get under your skin, and generally irritate you with everything they say and do. Don’t worry, they feel the same way about you too. But even if this is the case, I never wanted — or allowed
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The Secret to Managing Discipline in a Large Business Setting
- October 10, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Manufacturing, Measurement, Productivity
Managing discipline in a large company starts with the hiring process. I’ve always believed in hiring slow and firing fast. But I also had a rule that nobody could be fired without my permission. What that meant was any issue that looked like it could end in termination would elevate to me so a manager
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How Much Influence Should Employers Have In Employees’ Personal Lives?
- September 26, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Management
There are all kinds of stories about social media misbehavior. In the early days of social media, there were plenty of stories about people who would complain about their jobs or their supervisors on Facebook and Twitter only to be fired once the company found out about it. Even today, there are stories of people
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How Did We Prototype New Products and Research New Ideas?
- September 19, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Innovation
Whenever we worked on new products at Robroy, we would often have to prototype them, as well as research new ideas that would lead to new processes and systems. Of course, we couldn’t just create a new product and start producing it en masse; we had to research it, prototype it, and test it before
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Four Strategies for Reducing Workplace Injuries
- September 12, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Manufacturing, Safety
When you run a manufacturing facility, one of your biggest concerns could/should/will always be workplace injury. Manufacturing, with all of its moving parts and massive machines, are a risky place to work. And you can talk about safety all you want, but that doesn’t mean your workers will necessarily be safer. When I was at
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How Can You Retain Good People After Investing So Much In Them?
- September 5, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
With unemployment being as low as it is, it’s difficult to keep employees around because they can afford to be more mobile. People are more transitory. They often change companies to make more money, take a higher position, or even just because they want a change of scenery. They’ll even move from city to city
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How to Avoid Business Debt
- August 29, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Measurement
Business debt is the one killer to a company’s bottom line, and you need to avoid it whenever possible. If you’re not careful, you can get in over your head and spend most of your profits trying to dig out from it. Whenever I had a position of leadership in any organization, I always brought
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How to Earn Loyalty of Your Associates and Partners
- August 22, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
I shake my head sometimes when I hear executives complain about the lack of loyalty from their employees, and yet they never hesitate to lay off a bunch of them just to keep their shareholders happy. They treat their employees like replaceable cogs in a machine but are surprised when their employees leave for another