Leveraging Differences in the Boardroom

GGA Partners Releases New Whitepaper on Private Club Governance as Part of Thought Leadership Series

‘Leveraging Differences in the Boardroom’ Now Available for Download

TORONTO, Ontario – International consulting firm GGA Partners has released Leveraging Differences in the Boardroom, the third in its new series of thought leadership whitepapers. This authoritative guide explores the benefits of clubs with diverse boards and suggests several steps to take when recruiting with diversity in mind.

Leveraging Differences in the Boardroom evaluates the consequences of unintentionally insular board composition and challenges the idea of “sameness” in the boardroom, which limits the ability of a board to effectively perform its duties and threatens a club’s health and longevity. The paper illustrates how multiple perspectives contribute to greater success in governance and argues for adjusting the profile of a club’s leadership to better serve members and prospects.

“We often see board members with similar professional, cultural, and ideological backgrounds and perspectives,” explained GGA Partner Henry DeLozier, one of several authors of the piece. “Boards that are neither representative of the membership nor reflective of their surrounding community risk losing the opportunity both to serve their current members and to attract new members.”

In addition, the whitepaper encourages that clubs intent on increasing diversity among their board take a holistic, multi-dimensional approach to its creation. “Forward-thinking boards understand that it is the breadth of perspective, not the mere inclusion of various diverse traits, that benefits the organization,” said DeLozier. “In addition to social diversity, professional and experiential diversity are also important in increasing the range of perspectives represented on the board.”

Board diversification is likely to be met with resistance from the status quo, which the paper aims to help club leaders overcome by providing tactics for building a diverse board, developing new board member criteria, and making a commitment to diversity.

In addition to governance, GGA Partners recently published new whitepapers on strategic planning and branding. The firm has announced that another in the series focused on innovation will be published through the third quarter of 2020.

Click here to download the whitepaper

 

About GGA Partners

GGA Partners™ is an international consulting firm and trusted advisor to many of the world’s most successful golf courses, private clubs, resorts, and residential communities. We are dedicated to helping owners, asset managers, club and community leaders, investors and real estate developers tackle challenges, achieve objectives, and maximize asset performance.

Established in 1992 as the KPMG Golf Industry Practice, our global team of experienced professionals leverage in-depth business intelligence and proprietary global data to deliver impactful strategic solutions and lasting success. For more information, please visit ggapartners.com.

Media Contact:

Bennett DeLozier
GGA Partners
602-614-2100
bennett.delozier@ggapartners.com

Four HR Questions Club Boards Should Be Asking

When was the last time your club audited its human resources? Alignment between a club’s strategy and its employee offering is essential in order to enhance the overall club lifestyle, culture, and experience for members and staff.

To determine whether it’s time to reexamine culture, Partner Derek Johnston lays out 4 questions private club boards should be asking. 


Among the most reverberant takeaways from the coronavirus pandemic is the importance of people to businesses. Global business leaders and executives at leading corporations have indicated that the shift toward talent as the most important source of corporate value has continued. The pandemic also seems to be leading an increasing number of talent-forward companies to take an “employees first” approach.

But this is nothing new for large-scale global businesses. Indeed, the third week of August marked the one-year anniversary of the influential Business Roundtable’s statement on corporate purpose – which puts employees, customers, their communities, and the environment on a par with shareholders.

“Human resources” is trending

It’s also nothing new for club businesses. Our continuous research on club industry trends has shown human resource management and labor challenges to be a persisting trend, one which club managers have reported to be rising in importance – before the coronavirus.

In 2019, human resources was ranked the 6th most-impactful private club trend (out of 27) in a global survey of club managers. And, in a separate Canadian club industry survey, it was identified as both a key risk and primary hurdle to modernizing club management while topping the list of areas which managers say are under-supported from an education standpoint.

The early-pandemic question as to whether COVID-19 impacts would accelerate the business community’s move to stakeholder capitalism, or slow it down as companies focus on short-term financial pressures, seems to have answered itself.

For clubs, the people-related challenges previously reported by managers have exacerbated, with topics like employee willingness to work, labor anxiety, staff recruitment and turnover emerging as key strategic questions which club leaders are currently wrestling.

Widespread COVID-19 impacts like club closures, layoffs, and furloughs certainly haven’t helped ease concerns. With significant changes afoot in staffing, retention, human resource availability, and operational adaptations, clubs are presented with a unique opportunity right now – the chance to reevaluate and perhaps reset their culture.

Got culture?

In clubs, culture IS governance. Sound governance is a strategic imperative primarily because it enables, supports, and nurtures effective strategy. And, as the Peter Drucker saying goes, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

This is extremely important for club leaders.

It’s important because it means that no matter how strong a club’s strategic plan is, its efficacy will be held back by team members, staff, and employees if they don’t share the proper culture.

When the breaks are going against the business, as they are for some right now, the people implementing the club’s plan are the ones that make all the difference. While strategy defines direction and focus, culture is the habitat in which strategy lives or dies.

Now is the perfect time to reexamine your club’s culture to ensure staff square rightly with the club’s strategy. In other words, to ensure that your people are the best fit for accomplishing the club’s goals and objectives. Someone who was right for a specific role pre-pandemic may not be right for the same role now. Your business has changed, and some people may need to change too, either themselves or their roles.

How can club leaders reexamine culture?

The first place to start is by understanding what you’re currently doing for employees. Club leaders require a comprehensive understanding of the club’s current approach to human resource management so that they can determine the alignment of people and culture with the club’s goals.

When was the last time the club audited its human resources approach, policies, procedures, and performance? Ensuring alignment between the club’s strategy and its employee offering is essential in order to enhance the overall club lifestyle, culture, and experience for members and staff.

To help you get started, here are four HR questions private club boards should be asking:

1. How does our current organizational structure sit relative to best practice and what recent COVID-related changes should we make permanent or revisit?

Review your club’s current organizational structure, including both employees and contract workers, against best practice structures at comparable clubs locally, nationally, and globally. This review should focus special attention on the roles and responsibilities of human resources within the organizational structure with the goal of highlighting key gaps or divergences from best practice. Often times in clubs, an overly flat organizational structure tends to create ‘siloes’ that breed inefficiencies and bloat staffing levels.

2. Are we both efficient and competitive in the compensation and benefits afforded to employees?

Complete a comprehensive benchmarking exercise which compares compensation and benefit levels of all key staff and for the club as a whole to comparable clubs and other businesses with whom you compete for talent. The focus of this exercise should go beyond salary and hourly wages, factoring in relevant club financial and operating data, benefits packages, member and employee feedback scores, and other market-related information.

The goal is to identify current and accurate reference points for evaluating current compensation and benefits against best practice. There is a high degree of likelihood that there are opportunities in your current compensation and benefits structure to better align incentives and shift compensation to top talent, which tends to support increased productivity and reduced head count.

3. Are our personnel positioned to help us achieve the club’s goals and objectives? Are we helping them achieve theirs?

Assess your club’s performance tracking and review processes. The goal here is to analyze current performance evaluation processes and procedures to ensure alignment with the club’s overarching goals. This requires the board and executive committee to have a focused, clear, and comprehensive understanding of the club’s mission, vision, core values, and objectives.

For maximum benefit, to both member and employee satisfaction, it is incredibly important that performance is measurable and incentivized. The trick is determining the right way to track and measure performance and tie it to the right incentive.

4. Are our staff equipped with the tools they need to succeed? Are they empowered to do so?

Evaluate your club’s current recruiting, onboarding, training, and ongoing relational efforts. This will likely require management meetings and staff interviews to learn about the current approach and unearth any ideas or recommendations your team may have to suggest.


The success of every private club is dependent on the quality of their staff. Recruiting the best talent, integrating them into the envisioned culture, training them for success, ensuring their satisfaction, and ultimately retaining them is an important goal. The outcome from which tends to have a positive financial impact on the club and on the member experience.

After all, an investment in people is an investment in culture and clubs will benefit from this investment.

Conflict in the Boardroom

What happens when board members clash, causing conflict, disruption and moving the club backwards instead of forwards?

We outline the dangers of conflict, and advise on how to turn dispute into a positive, constructive outcome and ensure all board members are a true asset to the club.

Effective non-profit boards deliberate as many and govern as one. At least, that’s how it should work. Unfortunately, many club boardrooms up and down the country are more akin to a newsroom; rife with bickering, contempt, and dysfunction.

It’s understandable. Passions run high, these overtake rational, pragmatic logic and suddenly what is intended to be a progressive, forward-thinking environment becomes one paralyzed by indecision.

What should board leaders do in the face of these circumstances? Aside from preventing it from getting to this point, it’s imperative to restore levels of cooperation, deliberation and thoughtful leadership – quickly.

There are two ways of doing this: the first addresses the issues immediately and sets the standard both now and into the future; the second addresses the onboarding process, ensuring all board members are clear in what they are signing up for and what is expected (and not expected) of them at the outset.

The Boardroom Bible

The launch point for improving club governance and reducing boardroom conflict is a Board Policies Manual (“BPM”). Think of it as a boardroom bible, describing the sound principles and guidance for effective club governance.

Crucially, its guiding principles will mitigate any potential flare ups of conflict, and be the standards and expectations all board members sign up to. How? Just one example is the inclusion of specific, dispassionate requirements to support the decision-making process, based on data and insights, rather than allowing personal opinions and perspectives to creep in.

Its introduction will unite board members, clarify points of disagreement, and have everyone focused on what is truly in the best interests of the club, in any matter.

Setting the tone

Introducing new board members can inject a welcome sense of energy and perspective, providing you have the right people to do the job from the outset. There are three practical steps you can take to ensure this is the case:

1. Board Selection Criteria – Use an uncontested board election process. This requires a reliable Nominating Committee to recommend a slate of candidates in the same number as the number of board positions open.

Providing you have a highly respected and trusted Nominating Committee, known for their good judgement and integrity, you will recruit level-headed, pragmatic, forward-thinking individuals.

The key to a trustworthy election process is the trust and respect earned by those who serve in club leadership roles. Members’ respect of the individual members of the Nominating Committee will reflect in the overall trust of the committee’s work.

2. Board Code of Ethics – All board members should be provided with (and accept, in writing) the ethical requirements of board service. Such requirements typically include:

  • Confidentiality and Non-Disclosure – Ensure board members are accountable for protecting the privacy of the board and its deliberations. Board members must be trusted by their fellow board members for their capability to be discreet and impartial.
  • Conflict of Interest – Board members must avoid conflicts of interest and refrain from benefiting financially from the club’s contracting and procurement activities. Board members are expected to refrain from being a champion for self-interests in which the individual board member is a beneficiary, such as favorable tee times for certain categories of membership.

3. Business-like Governing Practices – Club members expect their board members to take a business-like approach to corporate governance. In fact, most reference points for governing practices tie directly to members’ experiences with boards of publicly traded companies, where board conduct and process is held to a high standard.

The same should apply here. Board disciplines such as the board’s function to speak as one unit and its authority to speak for the club are expected, as are financial reporting and disclosure standards.

And yet…

In contentious times, some board members cannot be dissuaded from causing conflict within the boardroom.

You can put in place the tools to mitigate conflict, but these are only tools. Tools which require genuine leadership and execution from the board president and fellow board members to be effective.

“Going rogue”, or in other words disrespecting the duty of sound governance, should result in fellow board members confronting the rogue board member firmly and fairly. While there is tremendous value in a board member who sees a different point of view, if these views carry no weight or evidence under scrutiny, they can and should be challenged.

You can never legislate or plan for human behavior, but you can (and should) put control measures in place to keep board members focused on what matters. That’s what will make them a true asset to the club.

Board Self-Assessment

Following board room performance standards now in use at most corporations, enables private club boards to improve their performance and the job satisfaction from their board service.  One business-like staple from the big companies is a board self-assessment.

Usually a board self-assessment is divided into four segments: structure, information, dynamics and individual board member self-evaluation.  Following are some examples of such a board assessment tool, which quantifies the qualitative elements into five parts ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree” (with disagree, neutral and agree in the mid-range).  Questions about the board structure include:

Structure

  1. The board members have the appropriate talent, experience, diversity, independence, character and judgment.
  2. Board meetings are well organized and planned to ensure an effective use of time.
  3. The annual board retreat is effective in focusing the board on key strategic issues.
  4. The board has the right number of committees, and
  5. Committee meetings are timely, when-needed and purposeful.

Information

  1. The responsibilities and expectations of board members are clearly communicated and understood.
  2. The board receives adequate pre-reading materials – including budget, financial and committee reports – in advance of meetings.
  3. Board minutes are appropriate for the club, accurate, and timely available for member review.
  4. The board has adequate access to internal and external advisors, such as independent auditor and legal counsel, and
  5. Presentations by officers and staff at board meetings are accurate and unbiased.

Dynamics

  1. Board devotes sufficient time to understand and appropriately influence the club’s mission and strategic direction.
  2. Board clearly communicates goals, expectations, and concerns about tactical solutions the club’s strategic plan.
  3. Board maintains current, accurate and complete understanding of the club’s financial performance and capabilities.
  4. Board monitors legal and ethical compliance consistently, and
  5. Board balances the assignment of authority with accountability for results.

Board Member Self-Assessment (rate your own performance)

  1. Full understanding of the club’s strategic plan.
  2. Able to make critical and informed decisions in a constructive manner.
  3. Focus on key strategic, financial and governance matters.
  4. Actively engaged in the work of the board, and
  5. Advocates in support of the club.

The consolidated – not individual – results of the board self-assessment should be published for member review with an invitation for comment and feedback.  This step engages members and enables individual board members to separate random member comments from quantified data.  Members favor the notion that the board is holding itself accountable to the club’s members and openly sharing the results with fellow members.  Although your club may not be a Fortune 500 company, it can certainly adopt useful standards of board accountability.

GGA’s Henry DeLozier penned this article for BoardRoom Magazine’s BoardRoom Briefs.

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