Management
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Managers Should Train With Employees
- May 8, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Management
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A few months ago, I talked about the importance of manufacturers providing training for their employees, especially if they were adopting new technology and processes. You could send your people off to a training school or your vendor partner to learn the new technology. Another option is to pay some of your vendor partners to
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Creating a Caring Company Culture Where You Can Have Retention
- April 17, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
When I think of company culture, I think of a company’s office environment, the attitudes of the people, and the general emotional atmosphere around the building. It’s the feeling of camaraderie and the drive to get things done. It’s the relationships and whether people get along. A company culture can tell you a lot about
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Developing People Within the Organization to Handle Higher-Qualified Work
- April 10, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
When you’re trying to recruit highly-skilled employees for a highly-skilled job, you have to look everywhere you can. However, those candidates are not always available for you to just pick one out of a pile of résumés, ready to start work at a moment’s notice. In a lot of cases, you can focus on developing
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Don’t Poach, Approach: Recruit Talent from Your Vendor Partners
- April 3, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management
As the American manufacturing industry faces a continued shortage of skilled workers, I remember how we used to find recruit talent for Robroy and its different divisions and subsidiaries: We would recruit employees from our vendor partners and suppliers. By recruiting the talent from our partners, the ones who supplied us with the services or
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Making a Case for Technology Skill Schools
- March 13, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Manufacturing
In Indiana, there’s a rather unusual vocational school called Driver Solutions, a truck driving school where students learn how to properly drive a tractor-trailer rig in three weeks. Students who qualify, and can pass the different drug and health tests, will not only get a job immediately after they graduate, their schooling is paid for.
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The Downside of Digital Transformation
- February 27, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Management, Measurement
While I’m generally high on digital transformation in this blog and talking about the upsides and positive benefits that come from it, I’m well aware that there are downsides to digital transformation. For one thing, artificial intelligence is not the panacea to all of your problems. You can’t just get an AI package, dump all
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What are Some of the Challenges of Adopting Modern Methodologies?
- February 13, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management
The biggest hurdle manufacturers face in adopting modern methodologies and digital transformation is not the technology, it’s developing the cultural acceptance for change and its outcomes. It generally fails because of a lack of commitment of top leadership. That’s because people left to their own devices, without a clear vision of what they want and
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How Do You Fight the Status Quo When Leading a New Company?
- January 30, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
It’s an exciting time to walk into a new job at a new company and know that you get to set the tone for that company’s vision and performance. If it’s a brand new company and you’re an energetic leader, you’re starting with a clean slate, so you get to create the culture. But if
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Bob Blair: Understanding the Difference Between Leadership & Management
- December 12, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
I recently had a chance to ask some of my old friends and reps to contribute a guest article to my blog. “What do you want us to write about?” they asked. “How about something you’ve learned in our years working together?” I said. This one was written by Bob Blair, an industrial engineer I
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Managers, not HR, Should Spend Time Doing Talent Recruiting
- November 28, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Management
When it comes to finding new talent, the onus shouldn’t be on Human Resources to do all the work. HR can find potential talent by ticking off all the boxes, but it’s ultimately the manager who should be responsible for testing the individual skill sets and determining whether they would be a cultural and talent