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.