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Culture Secrets
Culture is what causes things to happen inside an organization - both good and bad. It's the heart and guts of a company and it is what determines is they are successful or not. Join interntional best-selling author, speaker and culture expert Chellie Phillips as she delves into what makes people-centered cultures in the workplace unique. She packs each episode with ideas, strategies and real-world learning to help you build workplaces where both employees and companies thrive.
Culture Secrets
Culture Starts with Leadership—but Lives with the People: A Conversation with Yamaha's Bob Brown
What does a strong workplace culture actually look like in action—not on paper, but in real life?
In this episode of Culture Secrets, Chellie Phillips sits down with Bob Brown of Yamaha Motor Manufacturing to explore how culture is built, sustained, and strengthened inside a large, growing organization. From leadership visibility and trust to employee engagement, community involvement, and continuous improvement, this conversation goes beyond theory and into practical, people-first leadership.
You’ll hear how culture “bubbles up” from employees, why accountability belongs to everyone—not just leadership—and how organizations can create environments where people feel valued, connected, and motivated to stay and grow.
Whether you’re a leader, manager, or culture champion, this episode offers real-world insights you can apply immediately—no buzzwords required.
To learn more about building a people-first culture, visit www.chelliephillips.com
or pick up a copy of Culture Secrets wherever books are sold.
Thanks for listening. Grab the book the original podcast is based on at https://mybook.to/culturesecrets . Check out my website www.chelliephillips.com for more great content. Follow me on LinkedIn.
Culture Secrets: Bob Brown on Yamaha's People-First Culture
[00:00:00] If workplace culture is your jam, you're in the right place. Check out this episode of Culture Secrets, the podcast dedicated to creating workplaces where both employees and the companies thrive.
In this episode of the Culture Secrets Podcast, you're going to hear a conversation that goes beyond buzzwords and straight into what workplace culture really looks like when it's lived out. Day to day Cell sits down with Bob Brown at the time of this interview. Bob Brown served as plant manager of Yamaha's Noonan facility and has since assumed the role of president of Yamaha Motor Manufacturing Corporation.
They share a candid discussion about leadership. Trust, accountability and what it takes to build a culture where people want to stay, grow, and contribute together. They explore how culture shows up on the shop floor in the community, and even in the way leaders listen, [00:01:00] especially during times of change and growth.
You'll hear real world examples of employee engagement, multi-generational teams working side by side, and why continuous improvement isn't just a process, but a mindset. If you're a leader trying to connect vision to action or an organization looking to strengthen trust, retention, and purpose, this conversation offers practical insights.
You can apply immediately. Let's jump into, Chellie's interview with Bob Brown.
Yeah. Gimme a little bit of background about you and about, the
Introduction
plant here, the size, how many people you have, that kind of thing. I know y'all make the wave runner, but , I didn't really realize, it was just so specialized. When I think Yamaha, I think, you know, all these different products and didn't really realize that they were, each one had its own little place that it was made so.
Yeah, so I think that is a little bit unique, at Yamaha. So here we have 2200 people, about 280 acres and, 1.4 million square feet under roof. , I lived, , just [00:02:00] right up the street from here for 12 years or so. Drove by every day and had no idea what was back here. . We assemble four main product lines, golf cars, ATVs, side-by-sides and WaveRunners.
And for those product lines, we distribute to the entire world. So if you ride a WaveRunner in Australia, it was built here in Newnan. , The plant's been here since 1986. , Started production in 88, so coming up on our 35 year anniversary and started off with just golf cars and then they moved A TV production and then WaveRunner production.
So it kind of,, grew long. We've added product lines over time. And y'all gonna have a big expansion too, right? Yeah, we're adding what we call our smart warehouse. It will replace one of our current distribution centers with that. , But what's unique about it's, it has a lot of automation that'll will allow us to pick much quicker, and reduce our lead time.
So we're able to [00:03:00] do basically shorter runs with more variation. The idea is to be more responsive, so. When Shelly goes into a dealership and buys a blue Rmax 1002 seater. With these options, we kind of take that trigger and we know we need to assemble one of those to replace that one that just sold.
So really tying us to, , what's happening on the dealership floor and really, be much more responsive to what's selling in that way. We're not just pushing a bunch of white ones out and in the end, the blue ones are the ones that sell. So it's, a way to reduce our lead time and our response time to, the market.
So it's an exciting project. , So the book's focused on culture and having kind of people first cultures and how if you keep people at the center of what you're doing, then everything will work out. Both the company and the employees will thrive in that kind of environment. What do you think,
Company Culture & Community Engagement
what role does culture play in your ability to [00:04:00] be able to attract and retain talent for the workforce that you need to get things done?
Hey, you know, for us it's kind of interesting, we're a part of this much larger global company. Yamaha makes not just. Motor products, but also the music products. There's a company culture for sure, but we kind of have enough of a, um, it's almost like we're large enough here on site that we have kind of our own local culture, I would say.
And a lot of people, I think we have over 500 people that have been here for more than 10 years. So there's a lot of people that have been here for a long time. And we also have added, we've increased our headcount by 600 people over the last three years. So there's also a big pool of newer people.
I think one thing that we realized that we didn't anticipate is as we've added all [00:05:00] these new people. The culture becomes a really important thing to get people feeling like they're part of the same team. So it can be a little bit intimidating when you come into a company and you realize there's all these people with this really long tenure who have been here forever, right?
We still have a couple people that were here when we opened. But you need to be, you wanna, leverage that experience, that knowledge, that, history. You also need to be very welcoming to new people and get them to feel like they're part of that culture too. You don't have to be here for 20 years before you feel like you're part of the family.
And one of the ways we've done that is really recognizing that 55% of our workforce lives here in Coweta County. Many of them have students in the school system here. They have, friends and relatives that have worked here or might work here. One of the things that we've done to try to be,
what's the word I'm looking for, kind of recognized, or to [00:06:00] have a personality, if you will, is to be engaged in the community. So that's something Yamaha has always done, but kind of quietly behind the scenes. And over the last few years we've seen that our team here really likes to see us out in the community doing things.
Having an impact and being a good corporate citizen. And it gives people a lot of pride, um, to be a part of working here. And so we've recognized that that's part of our culture actually is having that, that strong corporate citizenship type of policy and being engaged in the community.
And, we get people that'll stop by my office and say, Hey, I was at a. Band competition and you guys sponsored it and that was so cool. It was so cool to see our brand, like right there at the competition. So I think that's a part of it for us that is a little bit unique. It's not something that I've experienced, elsewhere.
I think that ties right in, like a lot of the research now says that people [00:07:00] want their work to matter and to have an impact. They wanna be, be someplace that their mission, their values connect with the company that they're working for, that they're kind of all in alignment, that they care about the same things I care about.
And I think. The study studies are showing that this next generation coming into the workforce now, are really focused on mission and values. Speak to that a little bit about
Brand Values & Carbon Neutrality
what are the values that Yamaha has that you think appeal to people when they come to work there?
Yeah, one of the benefits we have, again thinking about like recruiting and retention is that really strong brand. So we have these fantastic products that. That people really enjoy using. Many of 'em are, they're recreation products. They're for fun. So when you experience the Yamaha product, you're doing something fun with your friends, with your family.
So it gives, the brand itself gives a really kind of a positive feel. It's not something anybody, can't live without, but. It sure does make life a lot more fun. [00:08:00] And then if we can all do that and still be very responsible I think it really checks a lot of boxes.
So the book centers around, there's, I'm calling it Value Culture.
Around five key areas that culture needs to have to be successful. And the V stands for vision. The vision that the team has, the leadership has, the company has to be able to, to recognize that there's things we need to change whenever we wanna do. A is accountability because someone has to take ownership for it, to make it stick, make it happen, that kind of thing.
L's, leadership because you have to have people to drive the ship. You as the uniqueness of the employees that you have and the workforce that you have. And then E is ultimately the engagement that comes from everybody being on the same page. So thinking about that model I wanna take the leadership role just a minute, and like what you as a plant manager, you as a leader in that organization,
Leadership & Vision
how can you impact the, the culture that is there [00:09:00] and how can you can really impart that with the teams that you work with and, and kind of drive it home on a daily basis?
Geez, Shelly. That was pretty deep.
I think, from a leadership perspective, a big part of it is the vision and understanding the vision and being able to articulate the vision and also demonstrate. I think that's, at least to me, a big part of it. You can't just say the words, you have to demonstrate it as well. And, I think people respond much more strongly to that.
It's not just words on paper. It's action and it's something that I can see and that makes it more tangible and real. And then just speaking about, how. Being a part of that culture, how it benefits you, how it, how, why you appreciate it. So being able to explain, this is why I love working at [00:10:00] Yamaha, for example.
And doing that in a very sincere and honest way, I think goes a long way as well. And then, when we think about, as far as our engagement in the community being out there and. Being at those events and participating in it and being a part of it, not just cutting a check. There's a lot of companies that do a lot of great community service stuff, but they do it primarily through funding organizations that are doing things and that's great.
There's nothing wrong with that. But also being at the event or being a part of it or being a participant, I think is even more powerful. And what we've seen is the people who engage. Do that, especially if it's something that they're passionate about, that helps to really, kinda reignite that or close the loop.
It's always interesting to hear people's feedback after they've participated in something where we're doing in the community or, they go, be part of a stem camp at a school, and we send some of our [00:11:00] mechanical engineers to that. They just, they love that stuff, I don't know if I very directly answered your question, but you did.
It's basically, you gotta walk the talk too. Yeah. So like they, they wanna see it before they actually believe this is what you're gonna do and that kind of thing. I think that's an incredible court piece of it. Talking about accountability that, one of the things that, that I've really been picking up on when I've been doing these interviews is that it can't just be the leadership team being accountable for the culture.
It actually has to trickle all the way down to the very frontline people that they have to take accountability as well and embrace it , and be responsible for that. So taking that kind of tone.
Employee Accountability & Engagement
What is the role of the employee? Like, how involved are they at Yamaha in helping set culture, direct culture, or even kind of manage it to keep it the way that we want it to be?
Yeah, I think a lot of that just kind of happens naturally. As I said, we've been really blessed to have, great retention over the years. So we have a lot of people [00:12:00] that, are really passionate about what they do here and really. Really enjoy it and recognize that we spend so much time at work, it would be a shame not to enjoy your time here.
So one thing we tried doing with some really positive success was when we have a new person come in, partnering them with someone, giving them a. I don't wanna say assigning a buddy, but connecting with someone to help make those connections and those ties. We know that a lot of our team members get together outside of work on the weekends.
They do things together, by choice. So building those connections and those relationships, I think makes for a much stronger company culture.. It's a shared thing, not just while you're here at work, but also outside. I think, and I really think a lot of the culture does bubble up.
It starts at that level in a lot of ways. So you can set a vision, you can set a direction, you can define what's important to the organization. But a lot of that culture is. Feel, and it's emotional [00:13:00] and it's not something you can define in a three year or five year strategic plan.
It's really part of who you are. And that comes from all of the employees. They all define who you are as an organization. So I think that's really critical for culture. And then, if you set your strategy correctly, it leverages that. It doesn't try to change it or. You can nudge it maybe a little bit in a certain direction, but you have to embrace what it is already and what you have within.
And then that's when you really are able to develop a strategy that becomes powerful. I think. Not taking it, trying to force it into something that's not, but recognizing what you have and really leaning into it. How do you make the most of it? I think that's really key. Gallup just did a study about how an imp how important it is to have a friend at work.
Like that,, because you enjoy coming when you know you're gonna see people that you enjoy being around. And I think a key thing of what you said was [00:14:00] talking about how people have gotten to know each other and they even spend time together outside of work, which means that they have really gotten to know each other and form those relationships and bonds that kind of strengthen.
The whole work process as well, because they're working with people. They enjoy being around. And I know you said you've got a, had a big influx of people coming in, plus you've got a group that's been there for a while. How do you think, or do you think it's the same, we're seeing a lot more like the multi-generational workforce where you have everything from your millennial all the way up to your baby boomers all working together.
Multi-Generational Workforce
how do you see that?. Do they mesh as the things that matter to each age group? Are the things that matter to each age group, or are there different things that you're seeing in different sets of people that are really the triggers that are keeping them actually engaged and motivated? I think there's areas of commonality, but of course there's probably generational differences as well.
But it's not just, it's not just ages. I mean, people. [00:15:00] Across the whole spectrum, value different things, right? When you dig deep enough, you can almost always find something in common that you value. So for us, well, one, one good example is thinking about our products. A lot of people have their first experience with Yamaha as a kid, with a friend, family member, parent who went out and bought one of our products. And they remember when I was a kid, I used to ride on my uncle's wave runner, my dad's Yamaha dirt bike.
My, my brothers, A T V I used to take it when he wasn't home. They make that connection when they're young and it tends to stick with them. And that's often what we hear from customers that are quote unquote new to the brand, is they've already had some personal experience with the brand.
I think that's one thing that we benefit from with this wide range of products that people connect with and enjoy because they're [00:16:00] using them for fun. And, whether you're, uh. 18 years old, or you're 58 years old, you can still go out and have fun on a side by side or a WaveRunner.
And that's something that you can enjoy and appreciate together because again, it's recreation, it's fun, it's positive memories. Our goal is to create a lifetime of exciting and memorable experiences for our customers. That lifetime piece is key. It's something that we want you to experience over and over again in different ways with different products, with different people, with the people that you hang out with, that you love, that are part of your family, take away runner out with your kids.
But it's that lifetime of exciting and memorable experience that I think is really important. So that helps us bridge across generations.
In the strategic plan, it's generally not something that you can kind of wrap your head around. I've yet to see somebody's budget that had a budget line that said, culture, here's the X number of dollar amount we're gonna spend on culture. [00:17:00] So if as a leader in an organization, if you were.
Looking to, you've noticed some things thing, like you said, there's some directions that we need to get ahold of. There's some things that we've been tracking, whether it's retention, whether it's being able to attract talent, whether it's engagement with our employees or whatever it is. How can you take that back and sell it?
To maybe an executive leadership team or something like that, that you can actually say, no culture's gonna impact us in a very positive way, even though I can't put necessarily a tangible budget item, line number on it.
So as a leader, if you see things that are going. May be the wrong direction, whether it's you're seeing a higher turnover rate or you're seeing, , lessening productivity or something like that.
Measuring Culture Impact
How can you take these back and really convince an executive leadership team that hey, we need to invest in some culture initiatives. Be, and then where does it go? And the overall, like, how do I come [00:18:00] back as someone who maybe not being the one that's the ultimate decision maker, but said, Hey, we need to focus on culture and this is why.
One thing that, we have a fairly new president here and one thing that he's brought to the team that I think has been really effective is this idea of a proof of concept. You have a strategy and a tactic, maybe in your strategic plan, but before you commit to that for the next three or five years, how do you check and make sure that the logic is sound?
If you pursue this tactic, it'll really achieve that strategic objective. So we've over the past year been doing proof of concepts in many different areas, really in, in our strategic plan, really what we would call our fourth level down. Doing a proof of concept in each area to test that.
And one of the cool things about that is it really makes you think about what's the benefit you'd expect to see and how would I measure that? To do a proof of concept, [00:19:00] you have to be able to measure the result. Was it, did it have the result that we expected? And sometimes just defining what to measure, especially around culture, can be one of the most difficult things to do.
So one of our strategic pillars is what we call local branding. And that's not a marketing term, it's more our local brand internally. The community with our employees, with our peers, our customers, our suppliers. So the brand means, how do we, how do people see us, right?
So we've been doing group of concepts that are at a much smaller scale that are around this employee engagement, for example. And one way we've decided to test some of these concepts is to do a smaller activity that you can, put your arms around more easily. And, a smaller group of people [00:20:00] and, maybe we survey them before and we survey them after this test to see what kind of impact did it have, did it increase their perceived value of our brand?
Did it increase it in the right, in the ways that we thought it would, in the specific areas that we thought it would. So this has become a really neat tool because A, it forces you to figure out what am I gonna measure to try to make this more objective, right? Less subjective, more objective, something I can measure, I can put my hands on, make it more tangible, and then really thinking through.
Sometimes just thinking through, how do I do a smaller test? Gives you really good ideas on how do you roll it out more broadly. Now I've figured out what kind of the challenges are on a smaller scale. I can address those upfront and make sure that's part of kind of the rollout on in the grander scheme of things.
It also allows you to move faster [00:21:00] because now instead of pursuing this five year target. We're saying, no, don't even worry about what happens three years from now. What can we do now to test it? And then you to move a little bit faster. And you realize once you've tested the proof of concept, really you figured out most of what you needed to roll it out more broadly.
So in fact, you've done a lot of the work already on the front end, and it actually allows you a lot more ease in deploying it, on a broader basis. I know one of the foundation pieces of cultures that are very successful is that they've been able to instill trust in their work, in the workforce that they have, the trust that they can speak.
To leadership in a way that they need to let them know that's what's going on, or vice versa, that leadership will give them the information. And I think especially during COVID, the last few years, that's been even more solidified, the fact that employees wanna feel like they can trust their employers and know that they're looking out for 'em and that kind of thing.
Building Trust
how have you seen, [00:22:00] trust be implemented inside the Yamaha facility? Like how did, how is that, how does that look on the inside there? One thing that we do is every quarter we have an all associate communication meeting, and that's not one meeting. It's really, I think, 11 meetings throughout the course of the day.
Every one of our six buildings on all three shifts, and the whole executive team goes and speaks in front of every single employee across the whole campus, on the same day. And we share information about what's happened the past quarter. Where do we perform well? Where do we need to look to improve?
What's coming up in the next quarter? What new challenges might be coming or what's different, new? What's changing? And then critically at the end of that, it's open to question and answer. They're not scripted, they're not pre-screened. You're welcome to ask whatever you like. We try to be very open and honest in our answers.[00:23:00]
It was really challenging with COVID because we had to stop, doing those in-person large group meetings, and we tried to replace it with video, but it really wasn't the same because you don't have that interactive component of it. And I think that's a big part of the trust If you're just speaking to people in a pre-recorded message.
It's not a, it's not a two-way communication. And even just knowing that you're sitting there in front of the person and you could ask the question even if maybe you don't. I think there, there's an element of trust in that as well, wow. They're really willing to stand up here and I can't believe that guy asked that question, but, I wanted to know the answer too,
I think that's part of trust is having that open line of communication and being accessible. We have very much an open door policy in our last quarterly all associate meeting. Our president was talking about, compliance and how it's important in whatever your role is in the organization to be compliant, whether that's with you're in a [00:24:00] role that might include, chemicals that could be hazardous, and how do we make sure that those are handled appropriately.
Or even we're a free trade zone. So trade compliance, right? There's a lot of elements of compliance. And he said, if you're not sure if you're compliant, you don't have to wait till something bad happens. If you're just not sure that you're doing everything possible, feel free to come talk to me about it.
We'll figure it out. So when even your president has a very open door policy for every single person who works here, all 2200 people I think that demonstrates a lot of trust. I think so, one of the things I'm seeing a lot in the research too is that
Employee Contribution & Kaizen
employees want to be able to see that they contribute to the success of the organization.
So what ways is that built into the culture at Yamaha? Of course manufacturing in particular a Japanese manufacturing company, the idea, the culture of continuous improvement is very strong. So it's something we call Kaizen. And one of the [00:25:00] ways that we've implemented that here is by having a Kaizen program that every single person can participate in.
And it doesn't have to be something that, you know. $10 million. It's any small improvement that you made, you document it, your supervisor signs off. And then, we record it and we compile all of these, and I forget how many we did last year as a total organization, but I think the person who submitted the most.
I think, I wanna say they had 200 kaizens maybe it was even more than that. So it was a lot of little things, but those all add up and we really celebrate this. We recognize some, some of the best ones each month we have, annual recognition, for people who submitted the best or the most.
And we also reward you get credit for in the company store. You get Kaizen bucks that you can redeem for stuff. Which by the way is mostly branded stuff, which is, you get [00:26:00] a double way there. But also a part of our kaizen is what we call our small group competitions.
And we do this twice a year. , Typically is between six or 12 people. Sometimes multi, departmental, and sometimes it's just within a department. But they followed the. Eight step process for improvement. And , they identify something that they wanna improve, go through the eight step process to realize that improvement.
And then twice a year the small group presents to, the executive team, the leadership team. And , that can be stressful for some of 'em. They're not, maybe not used to presenting at that level, but there's no free passes. You have to be there to be a part of it. And we try to be. The projects are always amazing.
So these teams work together to come up with some really incredible improvements, and we try to really celebrate that. , It's a really cool thing to see. And we really try to encourage people [00:27:00] to, to engage in that way. So sometimes somebody might have an idea and it's too big for them to even think about.
How would I. Implement that, but that's usually where the best small team ideas come from. If somebody's seen something that's a problem or it could be better, and then creating this whole group around that, that opportunity to improve and really giving them all the tools and resources, the budget, whatever you need to achieve that improvement opportunity.
We try to make sure we resource 'em with everything they, they would require to, to do it no matter how big it is. So those are really cool. So it the individual Kaizen program really does a lot of the small day-to-day incremental type improvements, but the small group program really empowers people who see something on the shop floor and gives them all the tools and resources they need to achieve it.
It's really a cool thing to see and that is neat., And it's not something that, our VP of operations goes out there and says, Hey, go fix this. It's really [00:28:00] bubbled up from the bottom. Which makes it really cool to see. Yeah, like you're actually the people that have the hands-on that are making it happen are being able to make the improvements to what's going on.
Yeah, I can see where that adds to all the buy-in too. If this works, then this, we're gonna do it because we created it and it's just this big full circle. I think that's really neat. I was sitting there thinking as you were talking about that we do something similar here with our continuous improvement teams and it started as a safety initiative and then it's moved into all other kind of processes and different things that happen and that kind of stuff.
. But it's funny, I was sitting here thinking, the stories that I've been hearing are like the biggest killer of culture is the, that's not the way we've done it. Or we can't change it 'cause that's not how we've all, like it's, if that's the way it's always been, that's the way it'll always be.
And I think stuff like this is a real big fix to that. It allows you to get past that, oh, I can't see past this. 'cause it's the way it's always been to, here's some. Suggestions coming from people that are actually doing it and can make [00:29:00] it happen. So I can see where that's a big buy-in for people and stuff like that.
Yeah. Honestly, when I was interviewing for this position almost four years ago and everybody I interviewed with had been here for 20 plus years, and, it was actually one of the things that made me a little bit nervous. Geez, all, everybody has all this. Knowledge and tribal, does that mean the organization's gonna be very hard to affect any change?
Are they open to new ideas? But I've been very, I was very pleasantly surprised that is, has not been an issue at all. People are always willing to listen to the crazy new idea. And I think it comes from that continuous improvement culture. It really is part of the culture here, and it allows you to keep an open mind and listen to, to new ideas, and really look for the value in it instead of look, looking for reasons that couldn't work.
Yes. Find the reason how instead of the reason how not to. Yeah, absolutely. [00:30:00] And I've seen that. Across every functional area here. Not only, are people willing to listen, but it doesn't have to be an expert in their field. It could be somebody from a totally different department and they sit in on something and they say, why do you do it that way?
Well, geez, I don't know. They've just been doing it. They didn't really think about it. You have another idea, and it's amazing how often that type of conversation happens actually. So you mentioned when you interviewed, now when you're doing interviews or interviews are taking place for the plant,
Hiring for Cultural Fit
how much is focused on being a cultural fit versus just the skills needed?
It's a big part of it, I think. And that's a really hard thing to put your finger on. So typically what we do is we tend to have. A pretty wide range of people participate in the interview process, whether that's in a panel interview all at the same time, or, just a number of shorter interviews with [00:31:00] multiple different people.
And I think that's how we get, consensus that the person would be a good fit for the culture, for the personality of the organization. We haven't figured out any magical way to do that with a questionnaire. But we just lean on everybody's gut feel and we figure if we have enough people's gut, we can feel good that we're probably going down the right path.
And really the organization isn't afraid to say they just don't seem like a good fit. On paper they have all the skills, but whether it's personality or whatever, if it doesn't feel right, it probably isn't. And I think saying that it's okay to do that is a big part of it.
If you don't feel good about it, you're gonna be working with this person for, the next 10 years. If you're not feeling good about it after your 15, 30 minute interview, how are you gonna feel about it 10 years from now when you're still dealing with them every. Yeah. I always tell everybody, I said, but you wanna be sitting next to them five years from now doing this job?
Or do you wanna have lunch with 'em in the break room? [00:32:00] It's if you can say yes to both of those, then that's probably an okay thing. It's so funny, a lot of people that I've been talking to, it's yeah, we can work with teaching skills, you said, but you can't work with people that just don't fit.
It's like you can't change their. Their foundational views and values and that kind of thing. And you get a good feel of that just by talking to people a lot of times. Yeah, I think that's part of the reason why we really, Yamaha does a lot of promotion from within. And I think that's part of the reason for that because we already know that person's a good fit for the, they, kind of show, show the spirit, the culture that, that we appreciate.
And I think. There's a lot of benefits from that because you get to, instead of always going outside, developing from within, it helps you keep that con continuity of culture. But it also shows people that you're willing to invest in them, and help them get to the next level. And I think that's part of the reason why we have, such great tenure with a lot of people because.
If you [00:33:00] start to get bored with something and you see something else that sounds like it would be more interesting, more exciting, how can we help you get there? Do you need to go to school for it? We'll pay your tuition. Do you need, some specific classes or some technical skills? We'll encourage you and pay for that too, and then give you the opportunity to put 'em to use.
We have a lot of very structured kind of development programs, to help people get from. An assembly operator to a utility, to a team lead, to a supervisor, to a manager. In fact, one of our division managers, so one level below vice president, it would be similar to a director in another organization.
He started out as a third shift supervisor 25 years ago. There's a lot of examples of that. In fact, it's always interesting. To hear people's story, all the different roles that they've been in. And sometimes I don't even realize it until, I'll run across somebody on LinkedIn and yeah, they've worked at Yamaha for 15 years, but there's eight different [00:34:00] positions that they've rotated through in those 15 years.
And it's always interesting to, to see that where have they been in the organization, what have they done? And sometimes it's really very widely varied. You would never guess. But that's the path they took to get to where they're today. I think that's neat. I do that. I have an internal program that I run here at EMC and we call it Vision EMC.
And one of the, one of the sessions that I do, I bring in all of our VPs and then also Chris, our CEO. And their job is not to talk about what they do today, but it's the story of how they got to where they are. And people are always amazed at. Like all the different positions and all the different things, and what is the background that got you to where you are, because everybody just knows you from where they came in at.
And it's, I think it's really helped with the groups to be able to connect with them as people, we're not just. Just 'cause you have a set of initials or something after your main, like you're still people and we, it's still about the relationship and it's still about, [00:35:00] I like football and I like cooking out and I like riding a motorcycle and I like going to the beach just like you do.
It's those kind of things. And so if you get to know me then I think it allows you to be more comfortable to walk in and talk to me about . The things that are going on and what you might need to be successful in your position. Always fun to me is like when you can, you really sit on those days that I'm leading.
I can sit and I can watch the reactions of people in the room as they're hearing these stories and stuff. And you can just see the moment that they're like, oh really? That I would've never thought that they had this kind of experience? And so I think that's really neat and I think it's also good like you're talking about being able to promote so much from within.
That, that's gotta be a huge boost as employee engagement and everything as well too, to see that there is this pathway to success and be able to hear it from people that are already there and have made those progressions. Yeah, it's something we've been trying, really over the last couple years to share the, some of those stories, to encourage people to [00:36:00] take advantage of some of the programs.
Exactly as you said, you may not realize that your unit manager started off as a assembly operator. And hearing that story can be both. It can be empowering. You realize all of a sudden that, geez, I can, the sky's the limit, . And I don't have to go somewhere else to do it.
You know what we see in the professional world a lot is you almost, you have to make a move in order to. To get to the next level, it seems and it seems like that's actually become more common, I would say, in the last 10 years than it was in the previous 10 years. So I think, we're trying to, to make sure that we're not acting like that we give those opportunities internally or else people are gonna seek them elsewhere.
Closing Thoughts
I appreciate your time today, Bob.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Culture Secrets. If today's conversation resonated with you, we'd love for you to share it with a colleague or friend, [00:37:00] and don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. To learn more about building strong people first workplace cultures, visit w w w chellie phillips (dot) com where you'll find resources, speaking information, and more insights from Chellie.
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