Core Value: Informed Leadership

Associated Best Practices

• Embrace data-driven leadership rooted in strong governance principles and transparent communication to all stakeholders.

Embrace the Data

High performing clubs embrace data-driven leadership rooted in strong and proven governance principles;and they communicate transparently to all stakeholders. The unfortunate reality is that too many underperforming or dysfunction club board, who are ELECTED and therefor have a MUCH higher level of actual fiduciary responsibility to the club, allow the Finance Committee, who are mostly APPOINTED, to ‘hijack’ the agenda andbecome de facto boards in many cases.Board members need to understand their legal role and also have to recognize that data, NOT emotion, has to lead their decision-making in the boardroom.

Most dysfunctional and underperforming boards haven’t talked about KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators), don’t understand industry trends and tend to have a narrow vision of decisions—seeing only the expense, not the member value enhancement or ROI of the cost.Or, don’t recognize their role and responsibility to grow the club’s net worth or value, real orin satisfaction/engagement data.

Ultimately club executives have to find a way to get emotion out of the board room as best as they can. It will never fully be gone but with better data and the understanding of what the data means, what it’s telling us and what the trend line is saying, decisions can be made on a more solid basis. Board members can’t be making decisions about something they don’t fully understand. Opinions are disputable, data is not. 

All too often, the performance of board members becomes hindered because they don’t understand the data or are intimidated by the financial experts in the room. This is why it is so important for stakeholders to be educated continuously. Then they can understand what the data is, what it’s saying, and what the outcome should be as a result.

Core Value: Informed Leadership

Associated Best Practices

• Conduct mandatory and comprehensive orientations for all stakeholders.

Orientation is not Optional

We believe the highest performing clubs do a great job of educating their consumers not just once, but continuously. It’s the reason we urge every club to conduct mandatory and comprehensive orientation for all stakeholders (Board, Committee, New and Existing Members and Staff). We think education is so important that you should even be educating prospective board members, prospective members and prospective employees! Explain what they can expect in the role and what you will expect from them. 

Stakeholders must go through a mandatory—not discretionary—orientation process to ensure they are fully informed and educated. If you want to maximize their performance and ensure that they “hit the ground running” in their role, you’ve got to give them the information they need to be successful right out of the gate. You would never expect a new employee to know all of their roles and responsibilities without first going through an orientation. Why are board or committee members any different? 

Provide stakeholders with the necessary information and teach, train and educate them to be the best board and committee members they can be. When you do, you dramatically reduce the learning curve that typically exists. If new board/committee members understand where you’ve been, where you’re going and why, it takes their focus off of worrying about when to talk in meetings and how to conduct themselves. Orientation helps eliminate that awkward transition period and helps your stakeholders be knowledgeable, well-informed and highly functional decision makers for your club

Core Value: Informed Leadership

Adopt the fact-based, private club business model and related financial best practices and Key Performance Indicators

A club board is more likely to achieve alignment and work together productively if everyone in the room is speaking the same language, but a disconnect often occurs when it comes to discussions about club finances. The communication gap can be bridged through understanding of the financial model of private clubs and adoption of fact-based financial best practices and key performance indicators specific to the club industry.

Financial models are a central element of understanding both industry dynamics and the performance of an individual business within a given market in terms of its financial sustainability and long-term success. Such models exist to unearth and convey the key drivers of financial success common to the competitors in a given industry. Investment bankers, financial analysts and consultants spend significant money developing financial models so they can understand how revenue, costs, margins, overhead, leverage and other financial metrics relate to profitability and growth. The quest for fact-based insight is a direct and necessary response to unyielding competition and business challenges and the club industry is not immune. High-performing clubs embrace the power of data-driven leadership and the central tenets of the demonstrated financial best practices. 

The club industry is a fragmented, cottage industry that until recently did not have access to the data and insight necessary to truly understand itself. That has changed. Financial best practices and the associated Key Performance Indicators now exist to clearly illuminate the drivers of financial sustainability. The Club Leadership Alliance is committed to propagating financial best practices and associated KPIs that will benefit the industry. Visit Yahoo Finance, Google Finance or any financial website and type in any stock ticker symbol (regardless of company or industry) and you will get a very simple, common view of an income statement. This common view can be used to assess the financial outcome of a particular company. Understanding the financial model of clubs requires a similar common view of the finances. Through significant effort, a common financial framework has been identified that can, and does, apply to every single private club regardless of its size, type, location or quality. That common financial framework, developed and propagated across the industry by Club Benchmarking, provided the context necessary to discover the common financial best practices and the KPIs.

Core Concepts of the Common Financial Framework for Clubs

• Separation of operating and capital monies and accounting for separate bottom line operating and capital results is a necessity.
• The sources and uses of money on both the operating and capital ledger are the same for all clubs regardless of their geographic location, size or level of service. This “law of commonality” has been confirmed through extensive analysis of club industry data.

Tips for Adopting this Best Practice 

• Review, understand and adopt the fact-based, financial best practices.
• Embrace benchmarking leveraging the common financial framework and the associated KPIs.
• Use the KPIs to assess your own club’s financial health and identify challenges and opportunities.
• Utilize fact-based insight emerging from the benchmarking exercise to make decisions that will positively impact future outcomes.