leadership
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Adopt a change management strategy when going through a major undertaking
- September 6, 2023
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Digital Transformation, Innovation, Leadership
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Years ago, when I worked at Robroy, our company never had a proper warehouse management system — software that tracked our inventory and helped us know what we needed to order and what we had too much of. Our raw materials and our products would just sit on the floor and oftentimes got damaged. Not
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The Importance of Data Analytics in Decision-Making for Manufacturing
- July 26, 2023
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Digital Transformation, Measurement
If you’re going to make smart decisions, you need to make smart measurements. If you’re not measuring everything all the time right now, and if you haven’t given thought to what the most important things are, then you will just move from crisis to crisis with no way of ever figuring out how to fix
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How to Improve Your Workers’ Skills in the Digital Manufacturing Era
- July 12, 2023
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Digital Transformation, Productivity
A friend once told me a story: He worked for a software company as their sales and marketing director. This was a small company serving a small niche audience. The owner of the company insisted that my friend enhance his skills to cover different roles at the company. So he wanted my friend to learn
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How Has Manufacturing Leadership Changed In the Last 40 Years
- July 5, 2023
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Manufacturing
The more leadership changes, the more it stays the same. This is true for manufacturing leadership, if not leadership in general. In a lot of ways, the things it takes to be a leader now are not the same things it took back in the 70s, but in some ways, they’re exactly the same. Back
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You’re Not Always Right: Why Leaders Should Not Be the Smartest People in the Room
- June 7, 2023
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Leadership
Being the smartest person in the room is not all it’s cracked up to be. And if you’re the leader of an organization or department, you absolutely should not be the smartest person in the room. You would think that was self-evident, but oftentimes it’s not. It’s a function of ego, although it’s understandable. We
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How Do You Find Leaders In Your Organization?
- November 3, 2021
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Manufacturing
There’s no one best source for hiring leaders for your organization. Some will insist on only promoting from within, moving people up the corporate structure as the opportunities arise. Others believe you need a fresh pair of eyes in certain leadership roles, so they’ll hire outsiders to come in and lead the organization. I often
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How Do You Get Executives to Clean Toilets?
- October 27, 2021
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
Years ago, when I was at Robroy, I made it a condition that everyone had a turn cleaning the toilets. And that went for the executives, too; I even took a turn. So someone asked me, how do you get executives to clean toilets? Short answer? It’s a condition of employment. If you don’t do
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Do Floor Managers and Supervisors Need Leadership Training?
- October 6, 2021
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business
One of the great cockups that Corporate America makes is assuming people who are great at their jobs will be great leaders of their departments. They promote great salespeople to become sales managers or they promote great machine operators to become floor managers. This compounds two mistakes, one on top of the other. Not only
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Corporate Buyers Should Leave Acquired Companies Alone
- August 25, 2021
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Leadership
Every successful company that has a product or service has a culture of its own that developed around it. Successful companies have found the secret to making their culture function to become one of the leaders in their field, which made them an attractive target for acquisition or merger by corporate buyers. This is how
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Be Humble Enough to Learn from Everyone
- July 7, 2021
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Innovation, Leadership, Management
Managers and executives often suffer from the belief (the conceit?) that they should have all the answers, should know how to do everything, and should be the smartest person in the room. The problem is they become bottlenecks, assume they’re the only ones with all the answers, and will often require associates to carry out