Blog 4: Employee Involvement and Culture Determine Business Success
- Kerry Paul
- Jun 2
- 5 min read
Updated: Jun 30
JOURNEY 3 - SERIES 1 - BLOG 4 - A PART OF 9 BLOGS IN SERIES 1 - Reading time: 5 Mins
When building global businesses strategy alone is never enough. A company can have a strong product, a compelling vision, and a well-designed business model, but without engaged people who genuinely believe in the mission, the business will never reach its full potential. This case study highlights the international growth of Manuka Honey. The journey also reflects the realities faced by many New Zealand start-up businesses. These lessons provide valuable insights for New Zealand entrepreneurs. The experience demonstrates the challenges and opportunities involved in Building a Global business from New Zealand.
Leadership is fundamentally about people. It is about creating an environment where employees feel connected to the direction of the company and understand that their contribution matters to something much larger than their individual role.
Leadership Begins with Selling the Vision
I have always believed leadership is not simply about giving instructions or managing operations. Leadership is about getting people to want to achieve the objectives of the business because they genuinely believe in the purpose behind it.
As a chief executive, I found myself constantly selling — not products, but ideas. I had to continuously communicate the company’s core concept, strategic direction, values, and future ambitions. People need to understand not only what the company is doing, but why it matters and where the journey is heading.
This became particularly important when building businesses internationally from New Zealand. Distance, rapid growth, and expansion into multiple overseas markets can easily create fragmentation inside a company. The stronger and clearer the vision, the more aligned people remain during periods of growth and change.
Recruiting the Right People Matters More Than Anything
One of the hardest responsibilities of leadership is recruitment. Looking back, I would say that building the right team is probably the single most important determinant of long-term business success.
No CEO gets recruitment right all the time. I certainly did not. However, I learnt that every strong appointment strengthens the culture and capability of the organisation, while poor recruitment decisions create distractions, inefficiencies, and cultural damage.
Early in my entrepreneurial journey, I stopped focusing solely on technical skills and experience. Those qualities are important, but they are not enough on their own. I became increasingly focused on finding people with what I describe as a “growth mindset.”
I wanted people who were adaptable, commercially aware, resilient, accountable, and willing to continually learn. In rapidly growing businesses, especially start-ups, roles evolve constantly. Employees who resist change or become trapped in fixed ways of thinking struggle to grow alongside the company.
The best employees were always those who embraced challenges, sought solutions independently, and remained motivated by the opportunity to build something significant.
Engagement Must Be Reinforced Every Day
I also learnt that employee engagement does not happen automatically once people are hired. Culture must be reinforced continuously through daily behaviours, communication, and leadership visibility.
At Manuka Health, it was important that employees understood they were not simply performing tasks. Every interaction, every shipment, every customer response, and every product presentation contributed to building global trust in the brand.
I encouraged employees, both in New Zealand and internationally, to engage directly with customers whenever possible. There is no better way to reinforce accountability than seeing firsthand how customers respond to your products, service, and brand presentation. It creates ownership and pride in the business.
Consistency also became critically important as the company expanded internationally. We invested heavily in systems, processes, and internal standards to ensure that our products, packaging, marketing, and customer experience remained aligned globally. Every touchpoint mattered because every touchpoint shaped how customers perceived the brand.
Leadership Must Exist Throughout the Organisation
Another important lesson I learnt is that successful businesses cannot depend entirely on one charismatic founder or CEO. Sustainable growth requires leadership capability throughout the organisation.
As businesses grow, leaders must empower managers and team leaders to reinforce the same values, standards, and strategic direction across all parts of the company. This alignment becomes especially important when operating internationally across multiple markets and cultures.
For New Zealand businesses competing globally, building trust is essential because we operate far from our customers and often compete against much larger international organisations. That means every employee contributes to the company’s reputation, whether directly or indirectly.
The Reality of Managing People
Of course, building a positive culture is not always easy. One of the realities I discovered very quickly is that people bring their personal challenges, emotions, ambitions, and frustrations into the workplace. Managing people therefore becomes one of the most complex aspects of leadership.
There were occasions involving conflict, underperformance, lack of accountability, and sometimes breaches of trust. Each situation required careful judgement, honesty, and decisiveness.
One of the more difficult lessons I learnt was that avoiding tough conversations only makes problems worse. Performance reviews sometimes needed to be direct and confronting. In some situations, employees needed help developing and improving. In others, it became clear that the individual was no longer the right fit for the organisation.
The hardest situations involved dishonesty or breaches of trust. In those cases, leadership requires protecting the business, the culture, and the wider team, even when the decisions are personally difficult. Maintaining standards and principles is essential if employees are to trust leadership and respect the culture being built.
Systems and Culture Go Together
I also came to understand that positive culture is not built through motivation alone. Employees perform best when supported by strong systems, clear expectations, fair procedures, and reliable operating structures.
Without systems, even highly capable employees become frustrated and inconsistent. With strong systems, people feel supported, empowered, and confident in their ability to succeed. This becomes particularly important when scaling businesses internationally, where operational complexity increases rapidly.
In many ways, systems become the invisible structure that allows culture to function effectively.
What I Ultimately Learnt About Culture and Leadership
Looking back, I now believe that employee engagement and company culture are among the most powerful competitive advantages a business can build. Competitors can often copy products, pricing, and marketing strategies. They cannot easily replicate a deeply aligned culture built around shared purpose, trust, accountability, and continuous improvement.
When employees genuinely believe in the mission of the company, businesses move faster, innovate more effectively, and build stronger relationships with customers. The organisation becomes more resilient because people are emotionally invested in the outcome.
The biggest lesson I learnt is this: culture never develops by accident. Culture is built deliberately, every day, through leadership behaviour, recruitment decisions, communication, accountability, and the willingness to invest continuously in people.
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