After years serving as a beacon of light in Detroit’s distressed downtown, the Detroit Athletic Club (DAC) is now a pillar of success in this resurgent community. Frankly, if you haven’t been to Detroit in the last few years, you’ve never really been there. Home to growing businesses, excellent entertainment and sporting venues and a rapidly expanding residential base, the city known for giving wheels to the rest of the country is on the move.
The turnaround at the DAC that began under the leadership of J. G. Ted Gillary, CCM, ECM, in the 1990s and gained a foothold in the early 2000s, has now reached unprecedented heights. Some 25 years ago the club was short members and capital and housed in a tired clubhouse. Today, more than 400 people are waiting to join the wonderful community of members who have access to a wide array of experiences in the meticulously restored Albert Kahn masterpiece. Demand for membership is at an all-time high, evidenced by the fact it increased even as the club accepted 150 members into a newly formed interim category to keep the backlog from reaching a point that it might discourage interest.
Early in the club’s turnaround, Gillary and his management team set out to develop a lasting quality program. This eventually became what was known as the Consistent Performance Process (CPP) and led to the development of a system of quality objectives with standardized service guarantees, all dutifully recorded in some 50 manuals. If you wanted to know how to do something, there were written procedures and protocols showing how to deliver quality in all areas of the operation. The process was rigorous and time-consuming, but it yielded results and gave managers an agile way to help their teams excel.
Within a few years the team went after the Michigan Quality Council’s Leadership Award, something that had never been accomplished by a service business. Based on the commitment to a CPP structure, the DAC was recognized by the Council for their efforts. In addition to capturing the Quality Council’s award, the DAC is one of only three Metro Detroit organizations to be recognized every year for the last eighteen years as one of Metro Detroit’s Best and Brightest Companies to Work For.
A decade or more into the process, Gillary had a bit of an epiphany. While it was hard to argue with the club’s results, it was also evident that management was using a top-down model that required constant monitoring. Ultimately, he and others concluded that if the DAC was going to continue to grow and meet the new challenges and opportunities on its doorstep, the pursuit of excellence had to be owned by the staff.
What might be called DAC’s pursuit of excellence 2.0 is a much more organic process that began in early 2017. It empowers the staff, which is led by the DAC Excellence Team (DET), a group comprised of senior and emerging staff leaders that is willing to do the work of defining and nurturing the club’s culture. This produces a more accessible and friendly approach that fits well with today’s work force.
What is truly special about the approach is that it is owned by the teachers and coaches among the staff, not imposed from the C-suite. The team initially began with 12 members last year but has expanded to 16 to ensure more departments are represented in the group.
This is a great example of the old maxim, “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Empowered, enthusiastic and encouraged, the staff defines and polices excellence on its own, not because they’ll be managed into it.
Over last year’s busy holiday season the team held a series of eight workshops on club culture and their Consistent Performance Process, ultimately certifying 400 employees on the club’s key principles. The workshops were titled “Everything Is! Being the Detroit Athletic Club.” All of this is enshrined in a brand book describing how everything is important, taken care of, correct, perfect, complete, finished and recognized.
In addition to renewed spirit and evidence that the approach is enduring, the “Everything Is!” program is helping the club to recruit talent in a very tight labor market, especially when it comes to culinary staff where there are so many new opportunities in the city’s booming restaurant, hotel and casino districts. People always want to play on a winning team and these winners are telling their friends how great it is to work at the DAC.
One thing that hasn’t changed in the new approach is Gillary’s penchant for keeping score. He continues to collect data from members and staff to assure the bottoms-up approach delivers where it counts, in member satisfaction. With a recent member survey producing best-ever satisfaction metrics, the model proved to be delivering on its promise.
Club Trends Spring 2018