management
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Do Floor Managers and Supervisors Need Leadership Training?
- October 6, 2021
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business
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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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Is Slow to Hire, Fast to Fire Still Important in a Slow Job Market?
- August 4, 2021
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Management
Slow to hire, fast to fire as a management philosophy still matters, even now, in today’s labor market. The job talent pool is pretty shallow these days, with worker shortages in manufacturing, and there’s a concern that if you hold out for the best possible talent, those candidates may be gone by the time you’re
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How Can You Solve a Worker Shortage Right Now?
- July 28, 2021
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Management, Manufacturing
There are worker shortages right now in all kinds of industries, from the restaurant industry to office workers to manufacturing. There are a variety of causes, like the fact that we’re paying people more not to work than what they were being paid to work. Or that some people don’t want to return to the
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The Annual Performance Review Is a Terrible Waste of Time
- July 21, 2021
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
The Annual performance review is a terrible waste of time and a terribly inefficient method of creating improvements in your associates. For one thing, if you are measuring everything in your operation, from the associates working on the floor to the back-office staff, they know when there’s a problem almost immediately. They don’t need to
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The Person Closest to the Problem Often Knows How to Solve the Problem
- July 14, 2021
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Manufacturing, Measurement
A recent article in IndustryWeek, Once Led Through Fear, a Small Manufacturer Reimagines Itself, got me to thinking about who I often relied on to solve problems in our manufacturing plant. Last week, I talked about how as a manager, I had learned early on to ask people to “show me” whenever they were dealing
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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
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Can you Require Employees to Get the COVID Vaccine?
- May 26, 2021
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Safety
The COVID vaccine is in full swing and is fully available in every state in the U.S., but there are still plenty of people who are “vaccine hesitant” or are unsure whether they should get it or not. For manufacturers and businesses where remote work isn’t possible, the question is whether a company can require
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A Person Who Feels Appreciated Will Do More Than What Is Expected
- May 12, 2021
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Productivity
If you ever want to get extra work and effort out of someone, plus earn their loyalty and dedication, you should never do it through fear, intimidation, or even monetary reward. (Although that last one can be effective for a short while. And that’s as a bonus for their work, not their regular salary.) The
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Three Lessons Manufacturers Should Have Learned from the Pandemic
- April 28, 2021
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Manufacturing
The COVID-19 pandemic certainly brought the world to a crashing halt, especially manufacturers. Companies that continued working were either considered essential manufacturers or they had pivoted and were making things like ventilators. We weren’t able to start working from home or working remotely. We had to be onsite, working in wide-open spaces, and trying to