David Marshall
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How to Develop Good Habits as a Leader
- March 20, 2024
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership
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Good leaders are always open to new ideas about how to become better leaders. They don’t assume they know everything, especially as they ascend to higher and higher positions. They know their strengths and work to make them even stronger. They know their weaknesses and work to make them, well, stronger, too. You don’t have
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How Do You Plan for a Disaster or Crisis?
- March 13, 2024
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management, Manufacturing, Safety
Planning for a disaster for your business is never fun, and it can even be a little depressing. That’s because planning for a disaster or crisis is basically dreaming up all the scenarios that can befall your business and then imagining the worst-case scenario. Then you have to come up with all the things that
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Perform an Annual ABC Analysis to Find New Profits
- March 6, 2024
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Productivity
According to the Pareto Principle (also called the 80/20 rule), you’re wasting a large portion of your time on items and customers that don’t actually have an ROI for you. That is, 20% of your customers bring in 80% of your results, and 20% of your inventory brings in 80% of your sales. Conversely, 80%
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How Can You Address the Skills Gap and Workforce Development?
- February 28, 2024
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Manufacturing
It’s getting harder and harder to find skilled workers for the manufacturing segment. Too many recruiting strategies are based on hiring people away from other companies, keeping them for a couple of years, only to have someone else hire them away from you. If you want to address the skills gap and improve your workforce
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What Role Do Public-Private Partnerships Play in Your Strategy?
- February 21, 2024
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Manufacturing
Many private companies and governmental agencies tout the benefits of public-private partnerships, but I’m a little leery of engaging in them. One thing experience has taught me is that developing a public-private partnership is a very expensive business. The public funding you receive is certainly not without its challenges and a lot of compliance requirement
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How Should Manufacturers Manage Compliance and Regulatory Challenges?
- February 14, 2024
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Management, Manufacturing, Safety
It’s critical that your manufacturing operation stays compliant with all laws and regulations, both domestic and international. It not only affects your bottom line but there are instances where CEOs have gone to prison because they ignored different laws and regulations. No more can you just ignore regulations and pay fines because you think it’s
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Adopting Artificial Intelligence in Your Factory May Be Difficult
- February 7, 2024
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Digital Transformation, Manufacturing
Artificial intelligence is making the news everywhere, but it’s not as prevalent and overwhelming as you might think. And it’s not the do-or-die technology they’re trying to make it seem, which means manufacturing companies don’t have to rush to embrace it or face imminent failure. For one thing, AI has been around for many years.
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The Importance of Having a Mentor, No Matter Your Role
- December 27, 2023
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Leadership, Management
When you were coming up in your career, you no doubt had mentors, people who would help you in your job and prepare you for the next step in your career. These were people who were undoubtedly older, wiser, more experienced, and very knowledgeable. But does that stop once you reach the C-suite? Once you’ve
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The Importance of Being a Mentor
- December 20, 2023
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Measurement
Recently, I talked about the importance of coaching employees to help them become better. The other side of that same coin is the idea of mentoring. Mentoring is when you influence and guide someone who is less experienced and often younger than you are. In a professional setting, a mentor is someone who influences the
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How Do You Coach a Reluctant Employee?
- December 13, 2023
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Leadership, Management
The problem with nearly every leadership and management book and philosophy is that they make one dangerous assumption: that your employees are willing and eager to be a part of your vision. They teach you how to communicate, how to lead, how to describe your vision, and how to get people to follow you in