As a manufacturing leader and business owner regardless of your daily responsibilities, there will come a time when you have the job of onboarding new talent. While it may be true leadership skills and trainer skills overlap, the skills of an effective trainer can sometimes differ.

Are you doing work you know you should hand off? Do you want to make progress in your manufacturing business but everyday tasks are crowding your schedule? Connecting with virtual teams might be the answer. When you set out to find and engage with virtual talent, there are some things to take into consideration.

As leaders in manufacturing, it is important to connect with your local educational institutions, connect with local industry groups, or connect with your Chamber of Commerce.  In this episode, I share some of my own experiences connecting to local apprenticeship programs and how that can be a benefit to small and medium-sized manufacturers.

If you are a Silver Entrepreneur, or a bit older than today’s youth, you may have thought about how you are going to connect and work with millennials. And perhaps now you are giving more thought to how you can support them in today’s workforce. The first step is understanding their work motivations. 

I experienced a very full and rewarding career in manufacturing for 41 years. As I became eligible for retirement, I decided to reinvent myself and start a new career. Once I embarked on consulting, I realized that the actual practice required “practice” and the book learning was only the beginning.

2019 has been a wonderful year for my Leading the Factory Forward podcast. I have covered several topics to help leaders develop their skills and their teams as they work to move their businesses and their organizations forward. And I am very excited about the topics and the plans I have for the show in 2020!

Are you ready for a powerful start to 2020? Have you been working on your goals for the new year? You probably have a long list of accomplishments and goals you’re seeking as we turn the calendar at the end of December. But do you have a clear plan on how you are going to attack that list so that you can truly make the most of 2020? There are four great ways you can examine your goals and define them so you are poised…

Are you ready for a powerful start to 2020? Have you been working on your goals for the new year? You probably have a long list of accomplishments and goals you’re seeking as we turn the calendar at the end of December. But do you have a clear plan on how you are going to attack that list so that you can truly make the most of 2020? There are four great ways you can examine your goals and define them so you are poised for success in the new year!

How are you approaching your goals for 2020? With some careful planning and consideration of some key factors, you can get off to a great start in the new year! There are some ways to approach setting your goals for 2020 that can have a big impact so you can achieve your most important goals. 

Traveling for business can be very challenging on multiple levels. It can drain you both physically and mentally. Oftentimes, business travelers find that their habits or routines while on the road are opposite to those they have at home. 

To have success on the road, it is very important to have a plan. There are daily habits that can  help you feel more empowered and improve your performance while on the road. 

One of the benefits of doing deep or focused work is that you can create amazing results. In order to make space for deep work, there are some necessary rules to follow. 

Key leadership skills often involve tackling big projects. However, they can also depend upon small habits. Are there several things you do each day without even thinking about it? We all have these things. For example, this includes steps as simple as getting out of bed and going to bed. These are actions we naturally take. What are some new routines you would like to add to your life to help you be more productive at home or work? What do you want to do to improve yourself? There are some ways to incorporate new actions into your life to make some positive changes.  

Do you feel like you are trapped on a hamster wheel? Are you feeling stressed by all that is going on around you? Is there too much information or are there too many things pulling at your brain, causing confusion, making you feel overwhelmed, and making you worry that you’re missing something? Are you busy multi-tasking so much that you are only partially aware of what is going on around you? This can drain your energy and keep you stuck in a rut, unable to move forward as a productive leader. You may find that you don’t have the time necessary to focus on the things you should change so you can move effectively into the future. However, you can incorporate some minor actions into your day to help you feel more present, improving your leadership so you can create not only great work, but deep work. 

Are you ready to jumpstart your product, brand, or other change initiatives, possibly with your own employees? There is an effective way to do just that! When we think about ways to effectively distribute our message to our customers, we often think of creating presentations with bullet points and going over details. However, the most effective way to reach others is through stories. This is how people have connected for thousands of years. It is how we reach each other. The process is called the StoryBrand Method, and this is going to be the story of your customer, not your story. 

Are you a manufacturing leader whose company is introducing new products or possibly trying to redefine your business into a new area? Or are you working in an organization and looking for new ways to reframe how you work with customers, or people you work with every day? The customer discovery process can help you zero in on vital details so you can focus on success instead of wasting time and money by moving forward in ways that don’t meet your customers’ needs or solve their problems.

As a leader in the manufacturing industry, there are many factors you have to consider as you discover what your customers want and need and how you can provide that critical element to them. A big piece of this process is developing your business value proposition. This is the idea of looking at what you offer and what your customer needs so that you can create something that makes sense for you and also creates a profit for you, while it fits in both your business model and your customer’s business model. There are many elements that go into creating this product or service. It involves looking at what your customer has to do every day that you can help them do a little bit better. This could include overall processes such as helping them with their critical success factors, streamlining their processes or helping them with their routine jobs. But it mainly comes down to considering helping your customers with regards to two main components: addressing their pains or their gains.

Do you have an idea for a new product or service? Sometimes those new ideas sound great, but we need reassurance that we are going down a good path before we travel too far down the road. The lean startup methodology is based on the premise that you don’t know what your customer wants until you ask them. And since you are working for them and their needs, that is the best place to start when creating a new product or business. Following some key steps can help save you time and money in the long run.