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Transparency at the Club: The Clear Way to Strengthen Leadership

While private clubs represent an industry steeped in tradition, there have been a lot of changes over the past three decades. People often argue passionately about whether or not the direction in which their club is moving is the right one. This is to be expected when traditions are strong (even when they may no longer be popular), but clubs, like any business, must be run in a sustainable manner. What can clubs do to determine the path that will work best for them? Getting ten people to agree on anything is near impossible, but recent conversations with both club industry professionals and committee and board members might have uncovered a proven solution: transparency.

Businesses are generally created and managed for growth and profitability, but the vast majority of member-owned clubs were created with social or recreational mandates—not financial ones. Often these worlds collide— and without transparency, competing interests can lead to negative outcomes.

The need for clubs to hone their business strategy was never as imperative as it is today. Before the recession, many clubs had long waiting lists with a line of people ready to pay tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars to cover the initiation fee alone. In such a climate, it is easy to survive with both good and bad decision making— especially for an organization that isn’t necessarily driven by profit.

It’s also easy to default to the way things have been done for decades, even when the climate has completely shifted. The vast majority of clubs don’t find themselves as comfortable today as during pre-recession times, and quite frankly, they don’t have the luxury that climate afforded.

Often boards and committees have a knee-jerk reaction to challenges. Board members sometimes believe they have all the answers; yet few take the time to solve them as they would at their day jobs—to fully investigate each issue, research possible solutions, and as the saying goes, “measure twice, cut once.” For any decision to work, it almost always needs to be molded by the membership as a whole, and executed by someone else entirely (i.e., great managers). To get to that point, clubs first need a serious push toward a culture of transparency from the board to the membership.

A Case Study

From my first days at the club at the age of twelve, I had heard rumors of a plan to replace our 75-year-old clubhouse with a modern, new facility. Because of the club’s culture, many members of this “golf course first” club didn’t support the time, effort and capital this project would entail.

Twenty years later, after regular pushes by staff and board members for the project, I found myself as an officer on the board of this all-around great club that now had an almost 100-yearold clubhouse … that leaked, wasn’t handicap accessible, and required more and more capital just to keep it running day to day.

Our team was committed to preparing the club for the next 20 years—and doing so the hard way—through consensus.

We agreed it wouldn’t proceed unless the project had tremendous member support: our new target became 75 percent of the equity membership. After 20 years of thinking about what needed to be done to achieve a simple majority, this pivotal change made the board realize the only way to reach a true consensus was through transparency in every facet of the project—designs, financials, and staff and member impacts. Clearly the smoothest way to success is having buy-in by constituents earlier rather than later. It’s also a lot easier to get that acceptance if their fingerprints are all over the plan.

The club had a great construction subcommittee that worked tirelessly to put together options for both rehab and replacement. The board embarked on new surveys that dug deeper into what members wanted out of their memberships, and it posted plans publically and invited members to open board meetings. The board also stood firm against pet projects; the real priorities were always kept in focus.

This level of transparency can make every committee and board member a better leader. It can make member informational sessions not just boxes to check as required by club bylaws, but crucial forums that take incredible amounts of hard work to get legitimate and high-quality participation. Every supporter was challenged to understand the opposing viewpoints—not to simply negate them, but to factor them into the overall decision-making process.

Great boards operate like great companies; they look for balance and are honest and open when it comes to current strengths—and weaknesses. Great leaders know their weaknesses and work earnestly to surround themselves with counterparts who have strengths in those areas rather than people who agree with them. When managers hear the same version of the truth that members and other board members hear they work on problems together. Humility is a big part of that equation as it generally allows people to evaluate themselves as other see them. This presents opportunities to build great self-assessment scorecards for board members and managers as a way to show where the club stands from a governance and management perspective.

Today, a glass sculpture of the “new” clubhouse sits on my desk. Our clubhouse might not be exactly like the one first envisioned three decades ago, but it was one that got a yes vote from the vast majority of our members, and it was made better by some of the critical feedback from those who were not early supporters.

Kevin Kopanon is president and CEO of MembersFirst, Inc., a design and software agency serving the private club industry. He is also a board member and past president of a private club and currently serves on the board of the NCA Foundation. He can be reached at 508-310-2301 or [email protected].

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