Whether it’s leaning out into the aisle to try to get hot stock tips when riding on planes or trains, enjoying hearing what miked-up players and coaches say during network sports telecasts, or just engaging in some good, nosy eavesdropping, we all like listening in on others’ conversations. This even carries over into the print medium—the “Q&A” format has always had high readibility, as we’ve seen here at C&RB, with “Chef to Chef” and “Super to Super” quickly becoming two of our most popular features.
Like many General Managers, Jack Hrad, the GM at The Clubs at St. James Plantation (pg. 14), was getting frustrated by all the time he was putting into writing columns and articles in club newsletters and other communications pieces, to try to convey important messages and explanations to his membership. It seemed like none of his words were having any impact—and like every writer, he was getting tempted to say something really outrageous, just to see if anyone was paying attention.
That’s when a respected and popular member of The Clubs at St. James Plantation, Bill McCormack, suggested to Hrad that a more effective way to get his messages across might be through an interview format—with McCormack asking the same pointed questions he was hearing members bring up on the golf course and in the dining rooms (“Why do we have ‘outside play’—non-member golf—at our courses?”), and Hrad being put on the hot seat to provide real answers (“We need that outside play to cover operating expenses—and keep club member dues under control.”).
So it was that the “Member to Member” column was started for The Clubs at St. James e-newsletter—and it quickly grew to become easily the most widely read and discussed piece of member communications within the community (it now always leads off new editions, generating much greater readership for the other announcements that follow). Feedback to the interviews with Hrad in early installments of “Member to Member” was so strong that McCormack soon began using the column primarily to address reaction e-mails from other members—and of course, since that just amounted to another form of listening to other people’s’ conversations, the pump got primed even faster.
Now, whenever Hrad needs to get the word out about anything, he’s more than willing to sit down and be grilled again by McCormack (sometimes, in fact, they just recycle old material, and let it generate new reaction). More often, though, he can just sit back and let the members talk among themselves—with many others listening from the sidelines—about the issues he wants to raise awareness about. “When I created the ‘Member to Member’ [column], one of my objectives was to never make it boring,” McCormack wrote in a recent installment. “And it looks like I have succeeded.”
Tell Us What You Think!
You must be logged in to post a comment.