Is your golf facility psychologically ready for change?

Every once in a while the economy whacks everyone on the side of the head to remind them to shape up, pushing many golf businesses into a state of shock. 2008 showed us a perfect example of a good whacking with a major collapse in the financial markets. Fast forward to today, the shock has worn off (mostly), and it’s time to shake off the dust and move forward. For many clubs, this is the time to reevaluate the course of action, reposition the club, or even reconfigure the whole facility.
For most club businesses it’s so much easier to go back to the way things used to be. The thing about change is that it mostly strikes the psychological part of the system, and club leaders that charts the course of the club, must expect and properly handle the emotional ups and downs of the membership and the staff throughout the transition.

Just over the past few months, I’ve either been involved with or have witnessed the firing of key clubs staff, rebirth of entire organizations, layoffs, and repositioning of companies (yeah, those management companies are spending money like the 112th Congress). Although I personally enjoy the prospects of change, years of dealing with various clubs and organizational changes has taught me a lesson or two about dealing with the unsettling factors involved with major change within clubs. I’ll share a few of them here.

Deal with the fear of change. Your other option is stagnation which is much scarier. The way you can help the club and staff overcome the fear of change is to provide as many facts and analyses as is possible. The more knowledge everyone has, the less emotionally reactive they become.

Don’t act out of panic. You’re almost sure to make the absolutely wrong decision. Enough said?

Take things one step at a time. Keep a strategic view, make your plans, and then act accordingly. The longest journey begins with the first step.

Remove yourself from the situation. Pretend like you’re giving advice to someone else. I’m saying this from experience. Something happens when you’re removed from the situation – you become more rational and less impulsive in your decisions.

Get your staff on board during the planning process. You need the affected mangers and organization leaders on board to make successful transitions happen. They need to understand why the change needs to occur, where the organization is headed, and how you will get there in order to transmit the ideas throughout their respective departments. The more time you spend with them laying out the groundwork before the change occurs, the easier the transition.

Communicate, communicate, and communicate. Engage the organization throughout the change process both by talking and listening. This is no time to hide in your office, behind your computer screen. Pay particular attention to the quiet ones. They’re the ones listening to everyone else and can provide a wealth of information about the general morale and other on-goings within the club.

Expect problems. Know that things will go wrong. Your staff will get cold feet, the markets will change, and your finances won’t go as planned. It’s OK. Your plan should have wiggle room, but also, don’t beat yourself (or anyone else) up if things go slightly off course. Regroup and pull things back on course. You never know, you might even decide to change the intended course halfway through the process based on the new information.

Not everyone will be unhappy. Whenever I’m presenting to a group about a particular subject I always notice a few quietly nodding their heads. By tuning into the “Head Nodders” know that some of your staff is already on board to make these changes happen. Use them to help you in the change process. If they’re already nodding they most likely share your vision, and can help you during the transition.

The ending is just as important as the beginning. Once you’ve gone through some type of change process, don’t let the organization fall back into the old patterns otherwise your efforts will go to waste. Everything associated with the change process will feel a little shaky for a while. Make sure all the processes, new systems, and new positions are solidly in place before you relax and grab that cold frosty to celebrate.

Change, whatever it may be, is one thing that’s inevitable, the better we prepare to be agents of change the better and more valuable of a manager and a leader we become.

The Glencoe Golf and Country Club

This is by far the best video I have seen about the team that maintains a great course!




The Glencoe Golf and Country Club - Turf Care from MOLiFE/NZC Films on Vimeo.

Goals Won, History Zero

Does this scenario sound familiar? Roughly four months before the beginning of the club’s next fiscal year, the club manager leaves you a message and reminds you that, “We need to start putting together a budget.” You nod in recognition to this voice mail and go about rescuing and renovating turf before the frost bugs and freeze crickets annual late fall invasion begins on the course. A few weeks go by and you make a few remarks about the budgeting process to the other members of the management team at the staff meeting you’ve blown-off for the past three months, only because you have been teaching your staff “Heat Stroke 101”.

As in years past, you finally ask the club accountant to prepare some background information on your spending habits for the past few years. At the next Board meeting, you mention your progress during the superintendent’s report that the budgeting process has started and ask for any input from the Board and the green committee. Shortly after the board meeting the information you requested is provided to you by the mild-mannered club accountant. It’s now November; time to set goals and determine the timeline for completion of the budgeting process. After several more meetings, careful calculations are made, discussions are conducted and the information is consolidated by the club accountant into a working document titled “2012 Club Operational Budget.” Comparisons are made to the current year’s budget, adjustments are engineered, consensus is achieved and the budget proposal goes before the Board for approval. Once approved, the operating budget becomes the focal point of future management decision-making and analysis of operating results. Congratulations, you now managing the golf course business like our House Spender John Boehner and King of the Flim-Flam Senate, Harry Reid.

A good budgeting process for a club is one that provides information and focuses on both financial and operational outcomes. It provides a supportive environment for making effective management decisions. A good budgeting process is timely and strives to achieve excellence while providing the backdrop for operational control. It details a set of standards to which you are attempting to adhere—the definition of management and control. Furthermore, a good budgeting process should address both the personal and technical aspects of creating this important operating plan. The personal aspects include management and staff involvement, goal-setting behavior and the integration of continuous improvement strategies. Technical aspects focus more on resource allocation, forecasting techniques, probability models and compliance.

Success in 2012 will require a very different approach than was the case a decade ago. In the past few years, the private club industry has faced a variety of marketing, membership and revenue challenges that were unheard of 10 or 15 years ago. Membership in clubs will be increasing focused on value and the ability to become a “One Stop Family” entertainment club.

Budget by Goals, Satisfaction and Importance

What are the identified challenges that will continue without new investment? Is a change needed to your current approach to routine maintenance, revenue generating activities and member retention? Yes, things you do each day will effect revenue and member retention, as a superintendent you must be concerned with revenue generation and member retention, this is your future!

When budget discussions begin, “Why?” should always be the most important question. Why raise or lower cost in golf course conditioning? Why increase staffing, resources or systems? Why invest in a new irrigation system. Simply increasing or lowering percentages across the board will not give you the answers. Your success going forward depends on how well you, as the superintendent, understand your clubs needs, your members' desires, and the solutions required to achieve your club’s goals.

By comparison, think how obvious these decisions would be if the golf course was unexpectedly hit by a devastating tornado or flood, or if the clubhouse burned to the ground. Make no mistake about it, by default, the goals of the management team are shared goals and the successes are also shared.

Many superintendents lament that they have worked years to “get the budget to where it is today”. I contend that in these business climates funds should be allocated where they can attract and retain members. In McMahon Group survey results over the past 6 years from over 120 golf and country clubs the golf course as a club activity and a club feature scored highest among all other activities and features in member satisfaction and importance. I see two significant facts emerging from this data, members are highly satisfied with the golf course, more than any other feature at clubs, and, these assets should be preserved with proper and proportional operational funds.

How would management arrive at a proper proportion of revenue that should be allocated to golf course maintenance? The fact still remains that golf course budgets do not include a revenue side. One simple formula for average golf and country clubs is a dollar amount of approximately 20% - 25% of dues income. Currently most clubs charge higher dues for a golf membership, is the difference in dues from a social member to a golf member the true cost of maintaining and capitalizing the golf course? You see, it’s not easy to segregate an amount from dues to allocate to golf course revenue but it can paint a picture of where a club might want to be. Other revenue sources that can be recognized are guest fees, cart fees, a portion of outing income, a portion of range fees, bag storage, locker rental fees and this list can go on. As superintendent and a member of the management team you should know the clubs revenue numbers.

The above are valid ways to approximate what income could be allocated to the golf course based on a number of clubs and the average of dollars spent on golf course maintenance. However, your managing a business, and if you where the sole proprietor you will want to have profit or in a club’s case money left for capital improvements or more precisely, what we call asset allocation fund.

Initiation Fees – Going, Going, Gone

Slowly, initiation fees are becoming less relevant in the country club world. Only the very elite clubs will be enjoying six-figure initiation fees, and waiting lists. In the not too distant past initiation fees fueled capital improvements, now in addition to dues (a category named “capital dues”) amounts are used to fund asset replacements. In addition, more often than not, clubs are using a dining minimum to balance losses in the F&B department. The question begs an answer; will increases in monthly dues become the knock-out blow to clubs? Will the gap widen between the amount of dues charged for golf memberships and social memberships?

What about the golf course? If budgets are built to support routine maintenance at subscribed levels perhaps the history type formulas could be done away with. If this year you needed X next year you shouldn’t necessarily need X + 3%. List your annual goals and budget what you need, as you become better at your business, you may become better at budgeting and better and more efficient at the maintenance of the golf course you manage.



For an in-depth look at a goal orientated budget template go to:

Goal Directed Budget Template

Can You Tell Me His Name?

At the age of 7, his family was forced out of their home. The boy had to work to support them.

At age 9, his mother died.

Age 22, he started a business.... that failed.

Age 23, ran for state legislature... he lost.

That same year, he lost his job, and failed to get into law school.

Age 24, he borrowed money from a friend to start a new business. Within months he was bankrupt, and spent the next SEVENTEEN years paying off this debt.

Age 25, ran for state legislature... and won.

Age 26, his fiancée died, sending him into a deep depression...ending in a nervous breakdown that kept him in bed for six months.

Age 29, ran for speaker of the state legislature... and lost.

Age 31, ran for elector... lost again.

Age 34, ran for Congress... laughed out of the election.

Age 35, ran for Congress again. Got elected finally

Age 37, ran for re-election... blown out of the election (although incumbents win 90+% of the time).

At 40, sought the job of land officer in his home state... soundly rejected.

Five long years later, he had the nerve to run for the US Senate...and got trounced.

After losing, he said, “The path was worn & slippery. My foot slipped from under me,
knocking the other out of the way, but I recovered and said to myself,
'It's a slip and not a fall.'"

Age 47, sought his party's vice-presidential nomination: trounced again.

Age 49, ran for US Senate again... and was again soundly defeated.

Age 51, ran for, get this, President of the United States!! Talk about temerity!!
Consider this quote from our 11-time loser:

The sense of obligation to continue is present in all of us. A duty to strive is the duty of us all. I felt a call to that duty.

“CONTINUE”

What a strong word; it says so much. Within it resides one of the three single greatest powers you have at your instant disposal. That's the power used by the man you just read about... President Abraham Lincoln.

So, if some grass died this summer and you spend much of your time counting "warts on the course" remember Abe.

H-2B Program, Changes Will Effect Users NOW

The Department of Labor (DOL) has targeted the H-2B program for termination. In one of its first efforts to dismantle the program, DOL issued a new prevailing wage rule. According to DOL, that wage regulation will increase the costs for H-2B employees by nearly $4.50/hour.

When the rule was first published, it had an effective date of January 1, 2012. However, pursuant to an amendment to the rule, DOL has now sped up the effective date to September 30, 2011.

Those clubs that use the H-2B program must prepare for this wage hike now. Not only will this new prevailing wage be in effect for those H-2B workers who begin work after 9/30/11, but that wage must also be used for those H-2B workers who are here now and are due paychecks after 9/30/11.