I opened a service business back in 2007 and I thought I’d be a pro at leading employees. Boy was I wrong. My business was a mess. We had horrible quality, the employees were ultimately in charge, and I hated my work life.

All it took was a “bully” employee who pushed me to the limits. That employee was a God-send because she made me see that I was the source of everything going wrong in my company.

From that point forward, I totally reversed my toxic culture into a positive culture built on quality, accountability, and respect. These days, even though we have many more staff members, the management staff spends very little time on employee issues. In fact, I rarely go to the office, work on the business about 3 hours a week, and just see my employees for the “fun events”…all the while we maintain a 98% client satisfaction rate and a 100% employee satisfaction rate.

Pay for Performance, metrics and accountability became so much a part of my company culture that it lead to me co-founding Quality Driven Software, qualitydrivensoftware.com, so I could have the data and reports at my fingertips. However, any of the principles that are mentioned can be implemented without Quality Driven Software.