Club Development
Club development is a process that benefits enormously from having a step by step roadmap that you can follow each and every day. With such a roadmap you will know exactly where you are heading and what you need to do next.
We don't see club development as something you do on rare occasions. Rather, it is a continuous process.
Here is an outline of the roadmap. For more details on this roadmap, contact us and we will send you our 6 page paper on the 7 steps.
1. Club Development – Strive for Level 5 Leadership
 An important step in any manager's development is handing responsibility to staff. But doing this requires the courage to let go of command and control. And you only have that courage by pursuing your own development.
American management academic and author Jim Collins did a 5-year study of what made organisations great and shared the results in his seminal work, Good to Great.
The first and most significant criteria for a great organisation was that they had “Level 5 leaders” (the highest level in Collins leadership model). Collins explained that level 5 leaders are fairly rare but they are those that simultaneously display a strong sense of humility as well as will to succeed.
It is not coincidence that we put this as number 1 in 'club development' because it is the most important aspect to any club development. Your own leadership level affects absolutely everything you do as a leader and manager. A CEO of a very large corporation decided to change his style of management and the result was a big increase in the bottom line and a much higher share price. He was surprised at the change in himself, the reduction of his own stress levels and the affects that flowed through the entire organisation.
2. Club Development – Get the Right People in Your Club and in the Right Positions
The "right" people have a lot more to do with character than skills or experience. To develop your club, put your best people in your most difficult areas.
3. Club Development – Utilise the Latest in Management
The emerging most effective management approach is “Everybody Improves Whole Systems”. This means 2 things for club development – (1) engage all relevant stakeholders in effecting change through large group structured workshops, and (2) focus on the glass half full (the positive) instead of half empty (the negative).
4. Club Development – Develop a Collective Strategy
A structured workshop of all relevant stakeholder groups including the Club Board, management, staff, members, suppliers, local business, and other community members will produce excellent strategic decisions backed up by a strong sense of ownership and commitment. The progress on the strategy should be reviewed every 6 months minimum with another workshop where people get the opportunity to say what they have achieved and what they will do next.
5. Club Development – Create a Culture of Integrity
Culture is one of the keys to developing your club. Michael Gerber reminds us that a dead fish rots from the head down. The culture of an organisation reflects the beliefs, attitudes, integrity, fairness and a host of characteristics displayed by the leader. This goes back to step 1 above. Start with your own leadership development.
6. Club Development – The Importance of Marketing
This is often the difference between success and failure for many clubs – and most other businesses for that matter.
The two most important aspects of successful marketing towards club development are:
- Having the right mindset. Instead of seeing marketing as an exercise in persuasion (which is why marketing has such a bad image), see it as an exercise in building relationships and educating your prospects. It’s ironic but if you focus on informing rather than selling, then you will actually sell more.
- Find and use a systematic marketing approach that provides successful results each time you use it. The common mistake here is to see marketing as something different from any other aspect of business. Somehow marketing is seen as that creative area which is beyond a systematic approach. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Find and implement a systematic approach to your marketing and you will succeed every time.
7. Club Development – Staff Development
Commit resources to staff development, ideally based on what the staff say they need rather than on what management thinks they need.
These 7 steps are, in our view, the most significant in club development. If you know of any others,
please share them.
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