As far as organisational development goes there’s always something that little bit special about hybrid organisations that rely heavily on volunteers while at the same time having to ensure bottom line results. Swedish golf clubs lie firmly within this category, a mix of business and charity, where the history of golf, tightly connected to the Riksidrottsförbund (Swedish Sport Federation) and Swedish Golf Federation (SGF) directives, holds sway over many clubs still owned by their members and not private risk capitalists. This means that the majority of the 460 or so clubs in Sweden are still run as “ideella föreningar” (public member clubs) by administrative club management personnel, happy golf amateurs and engaged pensioners with a lot of free time on their hands (see one of my previous posts on the demographic and democratic dilemma in golf)
What does a golf club manager do during the winter?
This question has turned into a bit of a joke. Many golfers think that being a golf club manager is a job for someone looking to “wind down” their career, take it easy. After all, it’s only an administrative job, right? Wrong (well at it maybe have been that way 10-15yrs ago but not any more)
The commercialisation of sport has been stirring the pot and disrupting golf clubs for a good many years here and across the globe. Partly due to the ingrained Swedish sports culture and directive that everyone should be able to access sport, public member clubs get heavily taxed if they make too high a profit so they’re not profit driven and thus by nature are at times not so effective in the way they work. So over the years the only thing golf clubs have required from their golf club managers is that they keep the books balanced and manage the membership fees while relying on the volunteer core of the club to ensure the smooth running of internal membership activities. All this is managed on very tight budgets, which is fine if you have membership volume and steady membership intake but not when membership figures start dwindling due to competition within and outside the golfing sphere. Furthermore many golf clubs turnover more than 6 million Swedish crowns per year, which places a golf club firmly within the business category even if it is offering a hobby pastime. There are far more requirements on a club manager nowadays than just keeping the accountant happy. Many clubs have their own shop, restaurant and even hotel facilities. They are a business, but their club managers sometimes don’t have a business background or skills needed when more and more expectations are piled on to them given the commercialisation aspect of golf.
It’s one thing to keep the books balanced and administrate wages, quite another to execute (an often non-existent) strategy, generate business, generate members, create partnerships, set the correct prices, understand costs, understand basic work laws, manage communications, manage personnel, and all this with a steering committee made up of volunteers who may not always have the business acumen to build a strategy and take the right decisions at the right time. (Doesn’t this all sound so familiar even within project management?!) It all falls on the shoulders of a club manager ill-equipped for the job. Not any more.
Six years ago PGA of Sweden together with the SGF, the Golf Administrative Union (GAF) and IHM Business School created a golf club managers training program over 18 months, grounded in the fundamentals of business management, to help club managers manage the full spectrum of a hybrid organisation. I completed this course myself yesterday and graduated together with a fantastic group of club managers, administrators, sports managers and greenkeepers all wanting to be better club managers or enter the realm of golf club management. I belong to the latter. Who in their right mind would want to work in a golf club environment that’s still quite immature compared with the private business sector given current global trends?
Not only am I now certified but quite possibly also certifiable!
All of us who work or want to work within the golf branch do so because of a passion for the sport but I applied for the course also to combine my experience of organisational development from many years in the private sector with the golf sector that’s on a very interesting and exciting journey. The course gave me many valuable insights into how golf clubs function and the exchange of ideas within the group, learning from the other club managers and hearing their challenges has inspired me even more to one day change career and apply what I know to growing the game of golf. The question is whether a branch so closely connected with each other is brave enough to let in an “outsider” from the private sector, even if project management is a core skill for getting people and things organised and done. However, I think that all club managers worth their salt should ensure that they get the proper business training and development they need to keep Swedish golf clubs open and available for the many and to face the challenges of running hybrid organisations.
Addendum 2018-04-01: This blog article (Swedish) was released the other day by IHM Business School following our graduation. Here you can see the group of us “certifiables” relieved at getting through the course but also a bit melancholy that it’s now come to an end.
