What are your “what ifs” for 2025?

Whether 2024 was a record revenue season or something less than expected, planning 2025 brings with it as many imaginative wishes as hopeful ideas. The fun part about future planning meetings is that they allow for throwing lots of stuff against the wall to see what just might stick. It is important, I believe, to tear off the duct tape and allow all meeting participants to inject their thoughts of the past season together with their ideas of what the club can do differently and better in the year ahead. It is important to allow for open air and open minds.

These are the meetings to allow for free, safe, and open conversation. Now is the time to bring the experience of the past year to the table while the highs and lows are still fresh, the stress factors present, still in the front of the brain. It might make sense to have meetings combining different groups and different departments, mixing people up, digging for answers or perhaps better questions. It is also good to bring many stakeholders into these sessions. Know that when you ask an hourly staff member to help with the future, you are allowing them to invest more in you and the business. That can pay off in loyalty and improved production over time.

No matter the final decisions for 2025, it is important to communicate the details to the entire organization. It is important to roll out the 2024 scorecard, the 2025 plan, and how each individual will play a part in achieving success in the year ahead. Be open, be honest. People want to know how they are doing. Although you and your team will come out of these sessions with a game plan for the new year, as the post author, I certainly would like to inject my three thoughts about the new season, bracketing them as “what ifs.” Here are my three In My Opinion thoughts:

What if you and your managers make great service job #1 for 2025? With overall customer service scores lower than a Tour Player’s handicap since COVID, building a plan for strong, purposeful hospitality can help to change the game (and the revenue stream) for 2025. Create a plan, work with each department manager to develop a daily strategy, create weekly and monthly recognitions, and use the service story in all of your communications. Making hospitality job #1 is a way to build the business and not just for the next year. It just might be your game-changer. What will the slogan be?

What if you upgraded your weakest departments? Better people can make for better business. Look at each of your department heads to see if they meet the current needs of the club. If they do, why not build a skills development plan to improve the entire leadership team during the off-season? If they do not and business is suffering, devote time searching to improve those weak departments. Business is tough, even hospitality. Some people do not meet the hopes and expectations you had when they were hired. When GE was the number one company on the planet, CEO Jack Welch had a program where he terminated the bottom 10% of the management group every year. Painful yes, but it not only improved results, it had every manager creating and working on their self-improvement program. While I am not suggesting this as your path, I am suggesting that to build a great club, your leadership team should be strong and always improving.

What if your marketing and operations teams developed a jam-packed, exciting golf calendar? Golf should be social, interactive, and of course fun. Building an amazing calendar of events for the men, the women, and the juniors can make for great conversation, participation, and growth among the entire membership. Each month should be jam-packed. Each month should look different than the month before. When you provide more and better reasons to come to the club, people will come. With the idea of bringing people together, you create an environment where people are making new friends: friends who will play golf together, eat together, and enjoy the environment more and more. From April through September (or January through May) create unique, fun events that add competition, conversation, and recognition. All with the notion of building both the present and the future.

There are dozens of “what ifs” to pick and choose from. In any one year, there can be just a few that grab the attention and focus of the people already busy in their day-to-day efforts. Be careful with the focus and the plan. Beyond these “what ifs,” the daily execution should help get you to your end goal. Like the plane that rarely stays on course, however, it is essential to keep a close eye on your compass and your execution. Make 2025 your most fun, interesting year yet through guidance and strong leadership.

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Jack Dillon has written the In My Opinion posts and other posts for Golf Inc. for fourteen years. After a long leadership career, Jack has turned to helping clubs, managers, and buyers build better service and performance. If you would like to learn more go to www.youdontknowjackd.com. You can sign up for a Zoom to talk about your club or call Jack at 407-973-6136. Jack is a consultant, speaker, and expert communicator. In a world searching for growth after COVID-19, Jack is the results-based answer. Jack lives in Orlando.