More clubs are finding ways to break away on a daily basis from the “same-old, same-old” in every aspect of their operation—and in a business long bound by tradition, that’s a great idea and welcomed innovation all its own.
The difference between an idea and innovation, the business gurus will tell you, lies in the execution. But I’m not so sure there’s that much difference between the two in the club business. We’ve now published 13 Annual Ideas Issues in June of each year, and each of our writeups about what a club has done is summarized in a box that includes what the payoff of the idea was, in addition to its goal and its implementation plan. That’s favorable execution by any definition.
I’ve always been impressed by how club staffs continually get together to brainstorm new ideas and then waste little time in putting them into action and generating tangible results. Equally impressive is how the culture of the best-managed clubs always seems to embrace not being afraid to fail, while also making sure that even the most successful and proven concepts are always reassessed, to look for ways they can be freshened and done better.
So why did we move to a focus on innovation for the December issue of C+RB, and for the Top Innovator Awards features we’re posting on our website and including in our daily e-newsletter this month? As we explained when launching the Top Innovators program earlier this year, in part it’s because we’ve come to recognize that the development and implementation of best practices has become an ongoing requirement for success in the club and resort business. Even when shining a spotlight on ideas—or innovations, or whatever you want to call them—in one special issue a year, and then on one dedicated “Idea Exchange” page in all other issues of C+RB, we still weren’t able to come close to presenting enough of the valuable concepts that we come across while covering the industry.
It turns out that even dedicating an additional issue and a month of online postings to the Top Innovators Awards, in fact, wasn’t enough to accommodate more than a small percentage of the new entries we got after asking for submissions. When you ring the dinner bell to invite input from the energetic staffs of clubs like Champions Run—who we thank for allowing us to use the image of their “virtual reality” kid to promote the Top Innovator Awards—you can expect them to come running eagerly every time. We were also pleased to see how many industry suppliers wanted to submit nominations on behalf of clubs they have worked with.
Beyond just trying to find more space for all the good concepts that are out there, though, there is a distinction between ideas and innovation that we felt was important to highiight. As pointed out by Farmington CC’s Joe Krenn in his “Innovation and Rejuvenation” presentation at the 2019 Club Management Association of America conference, many clubs have reached a stage in their lifecycles where they need to take a more strategic and long-range approach to doing business differently. And that calls for striving to create lasting change that can reposition what they offer and keep them in step with the changing lifestyles of both existing and prospective members.
No doubt, some of the examples you’ll find in our Top Innovators coverage (and in some of the many others we have left over that we’ll also try to find ways and places to share, both in print and online) won’t jump out as strategic and long-range steps towards alignment with changing lifestyles; instead, they’ll just come off as more good ideas.
But while the lines between ideas and innovation may get a bit blurry, all of what we’re highlighting, under any heading, reflects a common focus and direction that can only be seen as positive. More and more clubs are finding ways to break away on a daily basis from the “same-old, same-old” in every aspect of their operation—and in a business that’s long been bound by transition, that’s a great idea and welcomed innovation all its own.
Joe Barks
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