369: Getting RACI for Club Governance Success w/ Ryan Doerr, Strategic Club Solutions
Jul 24, 2024
Denny Corby
Ever wondered how to effectively manage a board that frequently changes members? This episode takes you through tried-and-true methods for building robust relationships with board members, featuringRyan Doerr, President of Strategic Club Solutions.
Ryan brings his expertise to our discussion, sharing practical strategies for thorough preparation, managing up, and engaging key stakeholders like the president and executive committee.
Learn why boards often fall into the trap of micromanagement and how tools like the RASCI matrix can demystify roles and responsibilities, ensuring smoother operations and stronger governance. We also delve into the delicate balance of confidence and humility in leadership, drawing from Ryan’s extensive experience to provide actionable advice for any leader looking to strengthen their approach.
We wrap up with insights into strategic planning, proper onboarding of board members, and the importance of internal PR campaigns to secure member support for significant projects. For more of Ryan's expertise and to learn about the RACI Matrix, head over to strategicclubsolutions.com or connect with him on LinkedIn.
Ever wondered how to effectively manage a board that frequently changes members? This episode takes you through tried-and-true methods for building robust relationships with board members, featuringRyan Doerr, President of Strategic Club Solutions.
Ryan brings his expertise to our discussion, sharing practical strategies for thorough preparation, managing up, and engaging key stakeholders like the president and executive committee.
Learn why boards often fall into the trap of micromanagement and how tools like the RASCI matrix can demystify roles and responsibilities, ensuring smoother operations and stronger governance. We also delve into the delicate balance of confidence and humility in leadership, drawing from Ryan’s extensive experience to provide actionable advice for any leader looking to strengthen their approach.
We wrap up with insights into strategic planning, proper onboarding of board members, and the importance of internal PR campaigns to secure member support for significant projects. For more of Ryan's expertise and to learn about the RACI Matrix, head over to strategicclubsolutions.com or connect with him on LinkedIn.
My motto is always never enter a board meeting where there's going to be a surprise right. Never enter a board meeting unless you know the outcome of the conversations that are going to happen. And so part of managing up is sort of working the room before you get to the boardroom right, working through the president, working through the vice president, the executive committee, you know having that strong governance in place and that if there's an issue, that's up for discussion.
Speaker 2:
Have those conversations before the board meeting so that when you get into the board meeting everybody's sort of read in hey everyone, welcome back to the Private Club Radio Show podcast, the industry source for news, trends, updates and conversations all in the world of private golf and country clubs. Greetings to both the industry professionals and the fresh faces joining us, listening and tuning in with us. Welcome, I'm your host, denny Corby. Thank you all for being here. This is the show where we go over all the topics related to private golf and country clubs and today we're going to talk about a little bit of governance and talking about why boards tend to micromanage a little bit and how to try and close that gap, bringing on a friend of ours and the channel and the show bringing on Ryan Doerr, the president of Strategic Club Solutions. I've known Ryan for many, many years now and today we're going to talk about that. You know why boards tend to micromanage, how to kind of close that gap a bit. He's going to show us the RACI matrix, the R-A-C-I matrix, and it's a tool that helps clarify roles and responsibilities within organizations. So if you're watching on YouTube, you can see it and if you're listening, you can imagine it or watch it when you're not driving. Before we get started with this episode, just want to give a quick thanks, quick, little shout out some of our show partners. As you know, I'm very, very proud supporter and cheerleader for our show partners. We have our friends Kenis Member Vetting the traditional application process tells you very, very little about someone's behavior and character and that is until now. With the Kenis way, they really created an innovative, confidential and comprehensive applicant information gathering process that provides such a depth of information in it. At the end of the day, it tells you more. It's more character, fact-based character vetting. Like you get such a view of who somebody is that you are letting into the club and this information allows you to make a fully educated membership decision to really make sure that people that you're bringing in are who they say they are. Head over to membervettingcom to learn more.
Speaker 2:
We have our friends Golf Life Navigators, the only resource out there for golf enthusiasts who are looking to find their dream club and their dream home um, mainly in the Sunbelt, but anywhere all over the country. Uh, it's Zillow meets eHarmony. They put, they make themselves a profile, put in all the information, their budget, what's important to them in the club and it spits out to them their dream clubs and you could be a part of this and it's a really cool platform, really great algorithm and it's advertising without advertising and marketing without marketing. It's really cool, uh, because you're only getting matched up with and learning about the people who are meeting your club's criteria. So, really cool stuff. Head over to golflifenavigatorscom, set up a call with one of the team members and see if you guys are a good fit.
Speaker 2:
We have our friends Concert Golf Partners, boutique owner-operators of private golf and country clubs nationwide. If you're looking for some recapitalization, head on over to concertgolfpartnerscom to learn more. We also have, last but not least myself, the. We also have, last but not least myself, the Denny Corby experience. There's excitement, there's mystery. Also, there's magic. It's magic, mind reading, comedy, crowd work. It's a ton of fun. It's an entire evening experience, immersive show experience, from the moment people show up to the time they leave. If you want to learn more, head over to DennyCorbycom Now booking my fall and fall winter in 2025 and have a little TV appearance on the Mike Huckabee show coming up on August 3rd and 4th.
Speaker 2:
You could catch me right after that. Private Club Radio listeners, let's welcome to the show our friend President of Strategic Club Solutions, ryan Doerr. So it was really good seeing you at conference and always love when our paths cross. And when we were chatting there, we were chit-chatting about content and things and there was two kind of bits that went together and I thought the lines were great and I wanted to talk about it today and that is a little bit on. You know why boards micromanage and the balance between leadership, arrogance and confidence. I thought that was just awesome. So let's take it from there.
Speaker 1:
Sure, yeah. So you know, as, as you know, we work with a lot of different managers and boards on a variety of different things and in those interactions it's always interesting to see the people dynamics and the human dynamics between the players and the stakeholders. And one of the things that we see a lot of times is there are people that are really confident and they can hold a room and discussion, but you know, you got to back it up Right and so typically sometimes that moves into arrogance. You know, if you, as a leader, just a little bit of a heads up, if you, as a leader, all of a sudden feel like you're on top of a hill and no one's following you anymore and everybody's just standing around looking like what are you doing, that's a red flag. You've moved into that arrogance component because either you're not able to back up what you're communicating from a confidence standpoint or, you know, a lot of times sometimes you're just a jerk, right.
Speaker 1:
So I think finding that balance of being confident, you know, true leadership really requires a balance of confidence, humility, experience and really having an openness to continue to learn.
Speaker 1:
You know, I think one of the things a mentor of mine taught me long ago was you know, if you find yourself, you're always the smartest person in the room, you're never going to go anywhere, because the team then is dependent upon you to have all the answers, and so as a leader, you've really got to communicate and coach and mentor the team so that they can rise up, which then allows you to continue to rise up and then kind of the rising tide raises all ships right. So I think one of those dynamics listen, there's a lot of egos in private clubs, between board members in particular, but also with some general managers and I think that the sooner you can sort of dispel some of that ego and really build that trust and confidence with your board and the managing up process as a manager, it's really important to make sure that you find that balance. So you know you mentioned go ahead.
Speaker 2:
What is one way to find that balance? So let's just say you know you, unintentionally, are at the top of the hill, no one's around you. How do you gracefully backtrack, or is it? Or do you maybe accidentally just stumble backwards and apologize? You know what's the, what's the, what's the course of action there. If you're just like, oh man, how do I take a step back?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I think it's usually starts with having one-on-ones with your board leadership, you know, really understanding like, hey, did I miss something? You know something doesn't feel right. You know, read me in here, you know, and having a little bit of that humility to go forward and say, hey, you know what changed, something doesn't feel right, did I say something wrong? You know something along those lines and most people will respect that that you're self-aware enough to take action on that. You know, the harder thing is when you've got a board president who's in that seat that maybe doesn't have that awareness or humility, and somehow you've got to hey, let me give you a hand and step down off that mountain. Right, let's get down here and we've got to get everybody back on the same page. Let's get down here and we've got to get everybody back on the same page. But I think that's usually having that self-awareness really carries a lot.
Speaker 2:
You mentioned in one of our conversations managing up your board. What does that? Can you go into that again for me?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah. So there's a couple things when one of the biggest challenges managers have is that their board changes fairly regularly. There's a handful of clubs where they've got some long tenured boards, but a lot, of, a lot of boards are changing. Especially, presidents are changing every year, every other year, and so it's really important to make sure that you've got those relationships. And my motto is always never enter a board meeting where there's going to be a surprise, right. Never enter a board meeting unless you know the outcome of the conversations that are going to happen. And so part of managing up is sort of working the room before you get to the boardroom, right, working through the president, working through the vice president, the executive committee. You know having that strong governance in place and that if there's an issue that's up for discussion, have those conversations before the board meeting so that when you get into the board meeting, everybody's sort of read in right, it usually goes a lot better. There's sometimes still some friction and some pushback, but it goes a lot better if you've taken the time to sort of work the back channels and make sure that if there are issues, you and they have time to resolve them and work through them and if you need to follow up them with your president, to give another board member a call to kind of, you know, have that peer to peer discussion. That can often be helpful. But really that that managing up is really you as a manager being proactive, in kind of leading the board, versus waiting for the board to lead you, and that's just really important to make sure that you understand what their goals and objectives are Right and they understand, and you understand what their roles are and what your roles are. We're going to get to that here in a minute.
Speaker 1:
But really it's just that you as the leader have to manage. You know the board is our volunteers. Some of them want to lead and you know I think you had asked me you know, what do you really do when some board members just take the job too seriously? Right, we like to call them the passionate people. Right, they're just really dug in on a particular topic or or something like that. And you know we find that that boards tend to micromanage when they lose confidence in the GM or in leadership. So, as a leader, you need to constantly be using tools of communication and engagement and managing up to keep everyone accountable to those roles and illustrate what everybody's working on that aligns with the overall vision, right, if you've got a good strategic plan, you've got a good long range vision and everybody should be working toward a common goal. And really the only gaps in understanding at that point would be if somebody missed a meeting or wasn't read in on what the next milestone is for this particular project or initiative.
Speaker 1:
And so sometimes when a board member takes things too seriously, it usually depend, it usually highlights that that there's a gap, right, and so little spoiler alert, to use a Denny term we actually had just published an article with Border Magazine that's going to be published here in an upcoming issue about really board service is more about stewardship over leadership, especially in the GM COO or the GM CEO model, and it's really critical that board members today are champions for positive change. If you hire the right people really that leadership team between your general managers and your key department heads, those folks have got to. You've got to empower them to be leaders for positive change, and you as a board have to be leaders for positive change, because really a club is like any other business If you're not growing, you're dying. And not that you have to be massively growing, but you have to constantly be balancing that, maintaining tradition and transcending innovation, and so when, um, when board members want to micromanage, they feel like some of that stuff is compromised and really, if you boil it down, it boils down to it's something that they believe personally isn't happening, that they expected to happen, and so all of this boils goes back to that managing up concept and it really is a.
Speaker 1:
It's a fundamental practice that a lot of people, I think, take for granted. If you just happen to walk into your first club and you've got a good board and it just kind of works because the manager before you did a great job, but if you're walking into a mess or a hornet's nest where somebody kind of didn't do a great job, you've really got to kind of get everybody back to that grounded state, and so I think that that's really really critical to manage up. There's a couple tips to see if you are managing up or not. If you want to hear them, let me know.
Speaker 2:
Roll them out, baby.
Speaker 1:
All right. So we really see boards micromanaging when they lose confidence in leadership. However, it usually means if there is a lack of confidence in leadership, it usually means there's a gap at one of the main pillars in the structure of a successful club, and those gaps usually pop up in club governance, meaning roles and responsibilities, rules and regs, bylaws, how the organization's structured and functions. Could be a gap in the nomination process If the board is not directing the nominating committee. What gaps need to be filled each year as they go through that nominating process and using a qualifications matrix that's developed with the board and the general manager to make sure that you've got a good, strong succession plan each year with your board? Could be a gap in the board member orientation. We see a lot of clubs that still are not doing board member onboarding and orientation, and orientation should be for every board member, not just the new ones, and so if you're not onboarding people correctly, they're having to learn on the fly for their first year, and so that's disruptive to the organizational structure and effective board meetings and maybe they start running rogue on a committee that they're heading up or things like that. So that onboarding and orientation process is really important.
Speaker 1:
Could be a gap in the club's strategic plan or vision. Maybe you don't have one, or maybe it's been sitting on the shelf for a couple of years and it's not actively being managed. Could be a communication problem, just a gap in understanding. Again, you as a leader have to make sure that that's being articulated or flat out. Could just be a rogue board member, but if you have a rogue board member on the board, it's probably because one of those other things didn't happen. So you know, really those are some of the keys that we find that if things aren't going well at your club, kind of run through that checklist and say, oh well, yep, we don't have this, we don't have this or this we used to do but we haven't done. Lately, you know, maybe we need to revisit that. And that's a good way to work side by side with your board, because if you're sensing the dysfunction, they are too.
Speaker 2:
And it's just a good way to to work together through the problem. Damn, that's a. Yeah. How so? You know, I'm, I'm, I'm, mr Club Manager. I go into a brand new club and you can tell things were not in a good place prior. But you know, you're a, you're a good, strong manager. How do you take control? Like, what's the first step to taking control of that board?
Speaker 1:
Well, I think it starts meeting with the board leadership, understanding what the roles and understanding what the goals are of the board and how the club currently functions, and then doing some education with hey, here's's how best clubs are governed and here's how best clubs are run.
Speaker 1:
And sometimes it's a good idea to bring in a third party, whether it's you know somebody like us or another you know consultant out there, just to come in to provide some third party validation on on what the best clubs are doing and they can help identify what are the, what are some of those gaps with the new general manager and the board president and the board leadership and put those things in place so that it can start to head in the right direction.
Speaker 1:
There's kind of a roadmap. A lot of times we see dysfunctional boards hire a new manager like we just need to get a strategic plan, need to get a strategic plan. Sometimes you might need a little bit of a bridge border tree to kind of get everybody grounded. First, make sure you're all aligned on the vision and what the roles and goals are for the club and then, once you sort of get that working and things are humming along a little bit, then it's a good time to move into that strategic plan. But sometimes people think that's just a rubber stamp solution. Sometimes there's some organizational dysfunction that needs to get resolved or sorted out first.
Speaker 2:
Now, when we were chatting before, you mentioned that things could get a little bit racy, and that's not what I thought you were going to do. No, I'm kidding. So it's not what I thought you were going to do. No, I'm kidding, that's great, could you? What is this racing matrix? Because this looks like a math problem and I was horrible in math.
Speaker 1:
What am I looking at? Yeah, so you know, I think most managers through CMAA are familiar with kind of the three column board, governance, roles and responsibility matrix and we've used that for years. I used it when I was managing clubs and we've used it with clubs that we consult with. But really it has a column for the manager, a column for the board and a column for the committees, and then down the left hand side there's the different roles and functions within the club and then under each category it, or under each role, it identifies who's kind of what's the role or responsibility for each stakeholder. I'll call it right manager, board or committee, and that that's worked really well.
Speaker 1:
But organizations have gotten more complex, especially as some clubs are moving to that CEO model, have gotten more complex, especially as some clubs are moving to that CEO model, and so now you've got a CEO and you maybe have a general manager or a club you know other key executives underneath that, cfo, things like that and so as organizations are getting larger and more complex, it goes beyond just the manager as well. It also needs to incorporate the member. They're all stakeholders in the organization and so understanding what everyone's role is in the organization, that old model just doesn't quite allow for that greater understanding, and so we've been doing some research and testing out some different tools out there that are being used in, you know, corporate America and other industries, and we came across this RACI. It stands for it's R-A-S-C-I and it stands for responsible, accountable, supportive, consulted and informed, and so you kind of take the same approach with the roles or stakeholders up on the top access, with the roles or stakeholders up on the top access, and then down the left side you would have the different functions of the organization and then you would say you know who's of the stakeholders, who's responsible, who's accountable, who's supportive, who's consultant and who's informed. And in most cases the member column is going to be informed, but they may often be consulted and they may even be responsible right for financial capital needs and things like that. So it helps.
Speaker 1:
It's just a good illustration, especially if a club has that GM CEO to a CEO. It's just good to help create greater clarity around the organizational function, and this tool is used by project managers, but it's also used by organizational change gurus, and so being able to articulate that visually helps everybody better understand and we find it creates a lot less confusion in there. So, spoiler alert new tip and tool it's out there. You can Google RACI Matrix. There's lots of different samples and examples out there and if anybody wants a copy, they can shoot me an email and I'll send you our template that we use.
Speaker 2:
And what's the best email for you, Ryan?
Speaker 1:
It's ryan at strategicclubsolutionscom.
Speaker 2:
What a good email.
Speaker 1:
It's a little too long, but we're working on it.
Speaker 2:
At least you don't have one of those like first name dot last name at walla, walla, washingtoncountrycluborg.
Speaker 1:
No, no, uh right kind of along the same lines um, we've been, we're doing a lot of, um capital projects, communications, um and so what's that? So basically a club decides, hey, we need to do a clubhouse renovation, we need to assess the members. Five million dollars um, how do we do that and how do we get support right? So we basically are running internal PR campaigns for clubs to gain support, get buy-in, educate members to sign on for the assessment.
Speaker 2:
So you are the moms and you're teaching the kids how to go ask daddy for some money.
Speaker 1:
Something like that.
Speaker 2:
Mom, I don't go ask your dad say it like this, but we want.
Speaker 1:
We want a $10 million new golf course.
Speaker 2:
Go ask daddy, but here's how you ask him right, something like that.
Speaker 1:
Um, but no, I mean again, all that's communication, confidence, trust building, uh, yeah, that sort of thing hope you all enjoyed that episode.
Speaker 2:
If you would like to learn a little bit more about ryan the racy matrix, head on over to strategic club solutionscom. That's strategicubsolutionscom. That's strategicclubsolutionscom. Ryan's also very active on LinkedIn as well. You can see him over there. If you're enjoying the content, make sure you like, share, subscribe with a friend, five stars and a comment rating on wherever you're consuming. The content means the world. That's this episode. I'm your host, denny Corby. Until next time, catch you on the flippity flip.
