Refactor

Golf Club Management

Lesson 8: Managing change

Goal: plan a change at a golf club using recognised models, anticipate resistance, and evaluate the evidence behind popular change frameworks.

Planned change: Lewin

Lewin’s three-step model (as summarised by later writers) is unfreeze, change, refreeze: create readiness by challenging the current state, move to the new state, then stabilise it with new norms and systems. Burnes (2004) re-examined Lewin’s work and showed it was richer than the textbook version: it was part of a wider approach including field theory, group dynamics and action research, built on participation and learning, not top-down imposition.

Kotter’s eight steps

Kotter (1995) studied about 100 corporate change efforts and listed eight steps, each a common point of failure:

  1. Create a sense of urgency
  2. Build a guiding coalition
  3. Form a strategic vision
  4. Communicate the vision
  5. Remove obstacles and empower action
  6. Generate short-term wins
  7. Consolidate gains and keep going
  8. Anchor the change in the culture

At a golf club, step 2 is decisive. The guiding coalition must include people with informal power in the cultural web (Lesson 7): respected past captains, the women’s committee chair, the long-serving course superintendent. Without them, the board’s change becomes “the board’s change” and gets fought at the AGM.

Evidence: practitioner framework. Kotter’s model comes from consulting experience. Studies that test it find partial support, often noting that real change isn’t as linear as eight steps suggest.

People through change: ADKAR and Bridges

  • ADKAR (Hiatt, Prosci) focuses on the individual: Awareness of the need, Desire to support it, Knowledge of how, Ability to do it, Reinforcement to sustain it. It helps diagnose where a particular group is stuck. Midweek women may have Awareness and Desire for a new booking system but lack Knowledge and Ability.
  • Bridges’ transitions (Bridges, 1991) distinguish the change (the external event) from the transition (the internal process). People pass through an ending (letting go), a neutral zone (confusion), and a new beginning. Members mourning the old Saturday format are in the ending phase. Logical arguments won’t move them. Acknowledging the loss helps.

Change in sport organisations

Sport-specific research shows why clubs find change hard:

  • Amis, Slack and Hinings (2002) followed Canadian national sport organisations through major change and found that values were decisive. Organisations whose members’ values matched the proposed change got there; those with opposed values failed or stalled, whatever the plan said.
  • Amis, Slack and Hinings (2004) added power and interests: change succeeded where those with power supported it and the organisation had the capacity (skills, money, leadership) to make it.
  • Kikulis, Slack and Hinings (1992) showed sport organisations moving between archetypes (Lesson 2), often getting stuck halfway.

For a members’ club, this implies that the board needs to understand members’ values and the club’s power structure before proposing a change, not after it loses the vote.

Does 70% of change really fail?

You’ll often read that “70% of change programmes fail.” Hughes (2011) traced this claim back to its sources and found no valid empirical evidence for it. The figure comes from opinions and anecdotes repeated until they seemed like facts. By (2005) similarly criticised the change management literature for its lack of empirical support. Use this as a lesson in referencing: always check that a statistic leads back to actual data.

Resistance is information

Resistance is often treated as an obstacle to overcome. A more useful view is that resistance tells you something: that the change threatens something people value, that it was poorly explained, or that it has real flaws. Ask resisters what they think will go wrong. Sometimes they’re right.

In the clubhouse: changing the Saturday competition

A club wants to move from an all-day stroke competition (fields of 200, rounds of five hours) to a format with a shorter first-tee window, a nine-hole option and more mixed tee times. Using the models:

  • Urgency (Kotter 1): data on falling Saturday participation among under-50s, and complaints about round times.
  • Coalition (Kotter 2): the captain, the women’s captain, two respected low-handicappers, the Director of Golf.
  • Values (Amis et al.): frame the change as protecting the competition’s tradition, not ending it.
  • Short-term wins (Kotter 6): a three-month trial with a member survey at the end.
  • Transition (Bridges): acknowledge what members lose (the long social afternoon) and design something to replace it (a post-round presentation that more people attend).
  • Reinforcement (ADKAR): publish results, adjust, then write the new format into the competition by-laws.

Critical view

  • Most change models assume a manager in control of a hierarchy. In a member club, the “change targets” vote, and can remove the board.
  • Linear models (Lewin, Kotter) fit planned change. Many club changes are emergent or forced (a drought, a pandemic, a resignation), where complexity approaches such as Snowden’s Cynefin framework may fit better.

Seminar questions

  1. Why might a perfectly reasonable change fail at a members’ club? Use Amis et al.
  2. The 70% failure claim has no evidence. Why do you think it has spread so widely?
  3. Who belongs in the guiding coalition for changing your club’s dress code?

Workplace task 8

Pick a change your club needs. Map who has power and what they value (from your cultural web). Write a one-page change plan using Kotter’s steps, and identify where on ADKAR each key group is today.

Watch

Sources

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.

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