The ECM Awards are particularly meaningful and prestigious because the selection process is conducted solely on a peer-review basis.
The October issue presents the last of our profiles of 2012 winners (“Perfect Balance”) of the Excellence in Club Management® (ECM) Awards that C&RB sponsors with the McMahon Group, along with a Q&A about how the winners are chosen with Kevin Vitale, General Manager/COO of Baltusrol Golf Club and Chairman of the 2013 Selection Committee for the awards (“The Best of the Best”).
After we started Club & Resort Business in 2005, we were happy to accept the McMahon Group’s invitation to join them in sponsoring the awards, which date back to 1997. It should be stressed here—as we make a point of doing in all of our coverage of the awards—that neither C&RB nor the McMahon Group has any involvement with, or influence on, who is selected for the awards. As our interview with Vitale brings out, the ECM awards are special, and particularly meaningful and prestigious, precisely because the nomination and selection process is rigid, thorough and conducted solely on a peer-review basis.
While we don’t have anything to do with who wins the awards, we certainly want to do all we can to make sure that the winners get all the recognition they deserve, and have earned, once they are selected. And that’s a role that actually starts now, as nominations are being submitted.
I’ve now seen first-hand over the past eight years, both at the annual awards dinner, and then again during the individual presentations at their clubs, just how much the awards mean both to the ECM recipients and to their staff and membership.
But I’ve also seen over those years that many great managers who would present strong candidacies for ECM recognition never get nominated, because no one has properly encouraged their club President to take the steps needed to advance their cause.
If you work for a great General Manager, you owe it to him or her to go to www.clubmanageraward.com, click on Nominate Now! at the top middle of the landing page, and print out the Excellence Form and bring it to your club President’s attention.
If you are a General Manager, and have someone on your staff who deserves “Rising Star” recognition, you should go to the same place, print out the Rising Star form, and fill it out and submit it yourself.
The ECM Awards present the best opportunity to properly recognize and reward those in club management who devote themselves to properly recognizing and rewarding their members on a daily basis. But in this case, the opportunity only comes once a year. You owe it to the deserving managers in your world to make sure it’s one that’s not missed.
Tell Us What You Think!
You must be logged in to post a comment.