Page 217 - Paulisms: Gold Nuggets for Small Business

developing the team with fair reward. Get the processes and systems in place first and that will help identify whether you have the right team on board to be mainly managed by the systems. Systems and the right people will drive the culture.
Management is a process and starts with having good, value-driven systems, from handling customer complaints to helping manage the troops. Then it’s all about the customer, exceeding people’s expectations and blowing their socks off with awesome service. Make your clients advocates of your business so they have loyalty and come to you before anyone else. Develop a culture in your business of rewarding for effort. Be fair to your team. Don’t try and screw them down with low wages. I was always supporting the team and their children’s activities such as fundraising and so on, and rewarding them when least expected, like a trip away.
Management is common sense. I was told during my career that I was a hard but fair manager. I had numerous people not understand what I was trying to communicate or achieve at the time. What I was trying to pass on were business skills. Often I have ex-employees contact me up to 15 years later, and say that at the time they didn’t realise what they were learning, and they have since applied my Paulisms many a time – thank you! My objective eventually got through.
Putting a bit of pressure on people to see where their competence level lies goes with the territory. Some didn’t stay around, but some did for twenty or more years. The point is that my management style was simple and it developed a culture of working for the customer.
The customer was always right, and we went out of our way to fix issues when they occurred. When our customers had to make decisions like who would be the successful tenderer, we wanted to be in a position