Discover Nikkei

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A body, mind and spirit work ethic

You know I guess we…our company is not like the big five where we have personnel managers who train and stuff like that. And most of our people – they learn through experience. What we tell them is basically we love you guys to work here. We love you guys to learn. Any time you have questions, you should ask us, no matter how dumb you think the question’s going to be or whatever because there’s no dumb question if you don’t know. And we don’t expect them to work 80 hours a week. If they work 20 hours a week and get the things accomplished, that’s great. But we want them to learn every day what they’re doing. Even though they do the same thing every day, learn how to be more efficient so they can get more time for themselves.

What I believe is body, mind, and spirit, yeah? So a lot of the secretarial people – they’re on the machine and they get all of these back problems, neck problems, so what we did is we got one shiatsu guy come once a week and massage them for 20 minutes on Wednesdays or Thursdays.

I*: That’s great.

And some of them use their services on the weekends. So I mean it’s something you gotta do for your employees because they work hard. And you don’t see the results, especially if you only get the rainmaker get all the credit. He’s not damp. It’s also the bookkeeper, whoever else is working for you that put all the whole package together. And you need their help. So we always let everybody know that they’re very important to the company. But we never did hold nobody back and there’s a couple of people who left, started their own business. We helped them in the construction company and over here. Because I think entrepreneurship is very important. And if they want to go and do something themselves, great. If you want to partner with us, great too.

*"I" indicates an interviewer (Akemi Kikumura-Yano).


building business construction construction industry economics employees management

Date: June 1, 2006

Location: Hawai`i, US

Interviewer: Akemi Kikumura Yano

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Bert A. Kobayashi, founder of the Kobayashi Group LLC, was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on November 10, 1944. He is a third generation Japanese American whose parents were also born and raised in Hawai‘i. At the age of 19, his father Albert fell ill and Bert was suddenly introduced to the difficult realities of running a business when he took over the construction company founded by his father. Bert eventually guided the business to become the largest local construction company in Hawai‘i, selling the business to a group of employees in 1997. He then founded the Kobayashi Development Group, serving as chairman until his retirement, and continues to be an advisor to the company led by his son, B.J. Kobayashi, who serves as CEO and president. Bert is known throughout the state of Hawai‘i for his generous philanthropic efforts such as starting the University of Hawai‘i Foundation and has been an active member on numerous community and educational boards. (2007年3月1日)

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