Leadership Blog: Change

It’s hard to believe it’s been a year ago already since we made our boldest move: Selling our company to Norwest Equity Partners (NEP), a leading investment firm headquartered in the Twin Cities. We knew the move meant we would need to grow – really grow. So what’s happened since…

Everyone has a “normal” and when it gets disrupted, I often hear people say, “I just want to get back to normal.” What we’re really saying is that we want our comfortable and predictable routine.

This month we are celebrating our 40th anniversary at Marco. It was back in 1973 that Dave Marquardt and Gary Marsden, which make up the “Mar” in Marco, turned their dreams of owning a business into a reality. They were IBM sales guys who purchased The Typewriter Shop in St. Clou…

We are currently completing our 12th acquisition and although the companies have all been different, the feeling on “that day” never changes. Employees are typically called to attend an all-company meeting where it is announced that the company is being bought. Moments later, I a…

If readership and comments are indicators of success, this blog is performing well. So, it’s time to make a change, right? That may sound counter intuitive, but making changes when things are going well is a philosophy we’ve come to adopt over the years and was validated during t…

We all know we have things we should probably let go of. These can be company traditions, events, or even functions of your business. They can compromise our time, resources and often performance. But knowing when to let go is not a science and personally, I have a tendency to ha…

Thirty years ago Marco could never have imagined a world without typewriters. This was the company’s economic engine contributing to most of our revenue and profit. In fact, our original name was The Typewriter Shop. But the shift in technology made the typewriter business unsust…