Management
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The Time There Was Nearly a Knife Fight on My Factory Floor
- November 7, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management, Safety
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You run into all kinds of problems when you’re managing a factory and running a business. I’ve had to fire people for sleeping on the job. I locked my own son out of a meeting for being late. And I once had to talk a naked guy down out of the rafters. So it shouldn’t
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Leaders Shouldn’t Have to Motivate Others
- October 31, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
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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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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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 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
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How to Maintain the Right Inventory Levels
- August 15, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Management, Measurement, Productivity
A serious problem facing many manufacturers is tying up cash reserves by keeping too much inventory or too many raw materials on hand. Finished products don’t move as quickly as you thought, or you made more than you needed “just in case,” or you bought a lot of raw materials because you got a bigger
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Should Manufacturers Pay for Education to Shore Up Skilled Labor Shortage?
- August 8, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Innovation, Management, Manufacturing
There’s a skilled labor shortage in this country, but not the kind that you might think. While there are still plenty of people to fill regular manufacturing jobs, there are high-paying, skilled labor jobs that are going unfilled because the companies can’t find enough people with the degrees or training to actually do the work.