The Customer Doesn’t Come First: 4 Initiatives Behind the Diamondbacks' 70% Tenure Rate

What’s the secret behind 70% of the Arizona Diamondbacks front office staying with the team 10-15 years?

The customer doesn’t come first.

And these are just four initiatives that President and CEO Derrick Hall runs with his SVP of People & Culture to make this type of retention their reality. Because retention doesn’t happen just because of a new HR program or a CEO mandate.

Find a Way to Say Yes

Translate employee-first into a customer-facing principle: FAWTSY (~120 words)

Employees receive training from Day 1 that their goal is to “Find a way to say yes.” (The Diamondbacks org believes in this ethos so much that their in-house attorney trademarked it.)

Every phone call, every email, every interaction, every request: Find a way to say yes. The exception, Derrick joked on Culture Creators, is security.

But this only happens because they’re an employee-first organization.

You can't order a parking lot attendant in 115-degree heat, or an usher tearing tickets, or a salesperson on the tenth call of the day, to "find a way to say yes" if they feel disrespected, underpaid, or expendable.

Through training, hiring, development, and recognition, frontline staff know they’re being taken care of, making it really easy to say “yes” to the customers. Derrick and his team ensure that every employee is respected, rewarded, acknowledged, recognized, developed, and invested in.

An employee who feels invested in has slack. They have bandwidth and the emotional energy to figure out how to make a stranger's day at the ballpark go right. An employee who feels expendable simply won’t care.

The excellent customer experience only happens because Derrick and People leadership see the employees as their priority.

Co-author the values acronym

When the Diamondbacks’ values didn’t match up with the type of organization they were trying to be, Derrick teamed up with his SVP of People & Culture.

By taking a hands-on approach rather than handing off the project to HR, Derrick proved his commitment to creating a values system that represents their efforts to build a championship team.

They ended up with BUILD, standing for Belonging, Unified, Integrity, Longevity, Development.

Because he got involved in the process from the start, later on it felt natural to use the new values language publicly. His partnership with the SVP of People & Culture meant implementing the values system happened at every level.

Stand up a President's Council

Once a month, Derrick hosts the President’s Council to choose the next Employees of the Month. But that’s more or less where his role ends.

He facilitates the meeting so that the current Employees of the Month, plus a rotating group of VPs, focus on choosing the next month’s employees and generating culture ideas for the whole org.

"We don't say this is our culture. Culture's gotta be created and understood and agreed upon by the employees. They're the ones that bring that culture to life… That group makes culture ideas. They come up with the ideas for the organization. Not us."

The rule by the end of the meeting: Greenlight one culture idea. Leadership in the room knows they have one job: Vet ideas, never dictate them. Some ideas get a "we already do that." Some get "we can't, here's why." (The “here’s why” must always accompany any no.) But they always end with at least one idea moving forward.

This President’s Council exemplifies the Diamondbacks’ commitment to listening to their employees.

Run a Leadership Academy that leads to promotions

Now in its eighth year, the Diamondbacks’ Leadership Academy provides 25-30 hand-selected employees a structured program for development. Participants go through the DISC assessment, receive specific training, and enjoy a speaker series.

This program works because Derrick, as President and CEO, helps with nominations, works in each cohort, and follows through on promotions. People know that their leadership team will continue investing in them as employees.

Because 70% tenure at 10+ years becomes a reality only when people see a path for growth.

The curriculum might technically be owned by HR, but Derrick supports the entire process from start to finish.

A joint operating system

Don’t look at “Find A Way to Say Yes,” BUILD, the President's Council, and the Leadership Academy as four separate programs. They're one operating system, co-owned by a CEO and SVP of People & Culture who believe that employees must come first.

When you look at initiatives like these that you might want to implement, first ask yourself who in your company actually owns and executes the employee experience. The CEO? The CHRO? Both?

Take Derrick’s lead and make sure it’s both.

"We have to make sure we treat our fans or our customers better than any team in sports. But that's not gonna happen unless our team players, our employees, feel respected, rewarded, acknowledged, recognized, developed, invested in. And when they are, they in turn will then treat our customers the way that we expect them to."

Watch or listen to Derrick’s episode of Culture Creators:

• YouTube
• Spotify

What Is Culture Creators?

Culture Creators is the podcast for people leaders who want more than inspiration. Each episode delivers proven strategies, real frameworks, and hard lessons behind building great workplace culture — straight from the world’s best CHROs, founders, and executives.

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