MANAGEMENT PHILOSOPHY
As any successful golf club manager will tell you, the approach to their success is mainly their personal philosophy to managing their business. Think of it as your own golf swing: It has a lot of personal touches (characteristics) that work for you and not for everyone, but it also must have some “fundamentals” to make it work.
The fundamental side of golf club management can be taught, and as long as you follow the basic teachings, ideas, and proven concepts, you should be okay, and at a minimum,
you need to at least understand the concept of what it takes to manage your enterprise. When managing golf course facilities, some basic management fundamental examples are: Keep facilities clean, provide friendly customer service, stock your golf shop with merchandise, keep the course looking nice, provide food and beverage services, work closely with your staff and superintendent, and so on. I am sure every golf club manager who has ever read their job description has heard of these items and they will sound familiar to them.
While the key element to being successful in managing a golf operation, or any other business, is of course to understand the fundamentals. More important is the characteristic side of the two elements in managing: Your “personal touch” and your “experienced approach.” Experienced managers know through years of trial and error what works for them. Club managers are the conductors of their business and coordinators for every department. In order to do this successfully, you will need to establish and implement policies.
In order to establish successful policies, you must first be familiar with every moving piece that runs your business. From there, you can begin to establish guidelines (policies) that will make one piece at a time run smoother, better, and more efficient. Of course, not every policy you create will be a success, so constant updating and fine-tuning is in order to create the efficiency needed that satisfies you, the manager, the staff, the customer, and of course, the owner.
My personal approach to managing, after many years of successfully running full golf course operations and other business ventures, has been simple: Find the right people for the right jobs, work smart (not always hard), learn
to delegate (you achieve more), knowledge is power (know every piece of your puzzle), and, don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty (operate a mower, cut a green, help in the kitchen, etc.). You will build a better relationship with your department heads and establish an equal respect for one another if you know their business, and it will help you create good golf club policies.
My message to all new managers would be to work very closely with your departments, do not be afraid to create policies and keep the ones that work and toss the ones that don’t, use “trial and error,” and never stop trying to be more efficient or to run a better operation.
