Golf Club Management

Lesson 5: Strategic and operational planning

Goal: turn a strategic analysis into a plan with goals, objectives and action plans, and explain why plans so often fail in implementation.

Formulation, implementation, review

Strategic management is usually taught as three stages:

1. Formulation: analysis (Lesson 4) leads to strategic options, which are evaluated and chosen.
2. Implementation: resources, structures, systems and people are lined up behind the choice.
3. Review: results are measured, and the strategy is adjusted.

Johnson et al. evaluate options against three tests, often called SAFe: Is it suitable (does it fit the analysis)? Is it acceptable (to members, the board, staff and lenders)? Is it feasible (do we have the money, skills and time)? In a member club, acceptability is often the hardest test. A strategy can be right and still lose a vote at the AGM.

Deliberate and emergent strategy

Mintzberg and Waters (1985) showed that the strategy an organisation actually follows (its realised strategy) is a mix of what it planned (deliberate) and patterns that emerged from many decisions nobody planned (emergent). Some intended strategy is never realised at all.

For a golf club, emergent strategy is everywhere. The pro shop starts running twilight nine-hole events because staff noticed demand. Two years later “nine-hole golf” is a strategic pillar, written in after the event. Mintzberg’s lesson for managers is to plan, but also to watch for what’s emerging and decide deliberately whether to back it.

Evidence: some evidence. The deliberate/emergent idea is supported by many case studies. It’s a description of how strategy forms, not a method.

Objectives that change behaviour

Goals sit at the heart of operational planning, and here the research base is unusually strong.

• Goal-setting theory (Locke and Latham, 2002) summarises 35 years of studies. Specific, difficult goals produce better performance than vague “do your best” goals, provided people are committed, get feedback and have the ability. Goals work by directing attention, increasing effort and persistence, and prompting people to find strategies. Evidence: strong research base.
• The same research warns about the downside. For complex, unfamiliar tasks, a hard outcome goal can hurt performance, and learning goals work better. Very specific targets can also encourage gaming and narrow focus.
• SMART (Doran, 1981: specific, measurable, assignable, realistic, time-related) is a practitioner checklist for writing goals, consistent with goal-setting theory. The letters have drifted over time (assignable became achievable), so define your version.

Weak objective: “Improve the member experience.” SMART objective: “Lift the average member satisfaction score from 6.8 to 7.5 out of 10 in the March 2027 survey, owned by the GM, measured by the annual member survey.”

The balanced scorecard

Kaplan and Norton’s (1992) balanced scorecard argues that financial measures alone look backwards, and balances them with three other perspectives: customer, internal processes, and learning and growth. Kaplan (2001) adapted it for non-profits by putting the mission at the top, not profit, because financial success is a means for a non-profit, not the end.

A club scorecard might look like this:

Evidence: mixed evidence. The scorecard is widely adopted and fits clubs well, but studies of whether it improves performance give mixed results, largely depending on how well it’s implemented.

Action plans and tasks

Each objective needs an action plan: the actions, an owner, the resources and budget, start and finish dates, the measure, and how progress will be reported. A one-page format works well:

Why implementation fails

Common reasons include: too many priorities; no owner; no budget attached; the plan isn’t connected to the annual budget cycle; the board changes every year and so does the strategy; and nobody reports progress until the next plan is due. A useful discipline is a quarterly strategy review at the board, where the GM reports against the scorecard and action plans, separate from the monthly operational report.

Critical view

• Strategic plans in member clubs often turn into wish lists negotiated between factions. A plan with 15 priorities effectively has none.
• Planning has its critics. Mintzberg’s The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning (1994) argued that formal planning cannot create strategy, which comes from synthesis and insight. A plan is how you carry out a strategy and communicate it, but the plan doesn’t contain the thinking itself.

Seminar questions

1. Find an example of emergent strategy at your club. Did the board ever decide to back it?
2. Goal-setting theory says hard goals work, but can backfire on complex tasks. Which club objectives are “complex tasks”?
3. Should the strategic plan be voted on by members, or approved by the board alone?

Workplace task 5

Take one goal from your club’s plan and rewrite it as two SMART objectives with an owner. Then write a one-page action plan for one of them, in the format above.

Watch

• Planned and emergent strategy (Mintzberg) (tutor2u)

Sources

• Doran (1981), There’s a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management’s goals and objectives, Management Review 70(11)
• Johnson, Whittington, Regnér, Angwin and Scholes (2020), Exploring Strategy, 12th edition, Pearson
• Kaplan and Norton (1992), The balanced scorecard: measures that drive performance, Harvard Business Review
• Kaplan (2001), Strategic performance measurement and management in nonprofit organizations, Nonprofit Management and Leadership
• Locke and Latham (2002), Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation, American Psychologist
• Mintzberg and Waters (1985), Of strategies, deliberate and emergent, Strategic Management Journal
• Mintzberg (1994), The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, Prentice Hall

Draft module material for the PGA of South Africa Director of Golf certificate, for discussion. South African law applies throughout. It is general education, not legal or financial advice: Acts, regulations and codes change, so check the current version and take advice before acting on them.