Committees should seek out problems, craft solutions, and then recommend their ideas to the Board for
action—nothing more.
We know all of you read Club & Resort Business cover to cover, but just in case you missed any issues, I thought I’d restate some of the best ideas I’ve seen in the last year.
Club & Resort Business was conceived more than seven years ago with the simple conviction that we would provide useful ideas for the club market that any club could implement and use almost immediately upon hearing, or reading, about them.
In our January 2013 issue, we launched a series titled “21st Century Club,” which is an exploration of where the club market is and where we have to go to be viable for the years to come. In our first installment, we launched the series with an in-depth look at club governance. On the surface, it’s a subject that could be boring, but nothing is more important than how your club is structured and organized. From this feature, I came up with (and stole) what I call “21st Century Best Practices for Club Governance.”
1. Board equals strategy, management equals operations, and committees equal recommendations for the Board. (Hats off to the McGladrey Report on Club Governance for yielding this summation.) A lot of club governance problems and politics could be avoided by adherence to this simple rule. I have seen clubs that are run collectively by their boards and almost all of them are disasters, with declining membership as a result. It is the nature of clubs to have a membership that consists of “type A” personalities, and they almost always make up the majority of boards. They have strong opinions on how things should be run, and if they are given operational leeway, it is almost impossible for them to not have personal preferences determine club policy. Have a good manager, give clear overall direction, and let him or her run the club. Deviating from that is asking for trouble.
2. Smaller boards are better than larger ones. We’ve all heard the cliché that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. Well, a Board is a committee (albeit a valuable and caring one), but the larger the committee, the larger the differences in priorities and the more the power of personality determines outcomes. This can only lead to one process… politics. I have nothing against politics as long as they are played fairly (that’s how things get done), but larger boards mean factions, and factions inevitably lead to ugly politics. Smaller is better.
3. Committees should be for recommendations only—not operations. I think this gets violated or ignored more than any other tenet of good club management—especially among the greens committees, whose members are by definition avid golfers who care about the course more than most. In many cases, if these committees are allowed to be semi-operational, they can create confusion among the course superintendent, golf professionals and club manager as to who really is the boss. Committees should seek out problems, craft solutions, and then recommend their ideas to the Board for action—nothing more.
On the food and beverage side, our most recent issue of the Chef to Chef supplement offered some very good ideas on the burgeoning trend of chef’s tables, which means you get to eat in the kitchen. While this isn’t my personal cup of tea, it is growing in popularity as club dining improves dramatically.
The concept lets the chef provide something unique for guests in his or her “office,” so to speak, and makes the members feel special. It gives the chef and his or her staff the opportunity to shine, and all in all is a net positive for the club dining experience. One of the best ideas—and perhaps most obvious when you think about it—was one chef’s observation that “pasta night” was the least busy night at his club during the week, and hence the best night to offer a chef’s table.
For more F&B ideas, send your chef to C&RB’s 5th Annual Chef to Chef Conference, to be held in Denver, March 10-12, 2013. It is a forum for club chefs and by club chefs, and it will send your chef home with some of the latest and best ideas in the culinary discipline.
William C. Donohue, Founding Publisher
[email protected]
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