Having a clear picture of your club’s current standing is essential before you can even start to thnk about the future.

Without this picture of the situation as it is Now, you can’t possibly decide where you are going in the future.

The winter months are a good time to be gathering this information, deciding on a vision for the future and developing plans for getting there.

When writing this up, think in terms of of finance, popularity, future costs and income, offers in the pipeline, projects coming up, green condition and maintenance requirements, clubhouse fabric condition and maintenance and upgrading requirements, rentals, rates, subscriptions, insurances, advertising and marketing, event hosting and event planning and membership growth and retention.

Once you have this snapshot its easy to move on to planning the future. Tomorrow we will look at that more closely.

Incredible eBook offer to help you nail this here

Performance Bowling Greens, a practical guide is the essential green maintenance manual for every bowls club.

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Now that the new season is upon us, we’ve been getting a lot of enquiries asking two basic questions:

What is the ideal maintenance program to ensure an excellent bowling green surface this year? and…

How can we reduce costs for maintenance without compromising the performance of the green?

Well, although both of these questions are fairly easy to answer, the actual solution depends a lot on what has gone before and at what stage your green is at, in terms of performance at the moment.

The pursuit of excellence on a sensible budget is very much the theme of Performance Bowling Greens.

In the book you will find a step by step blueprint in layman’s terms where John explains the reasons why most bowling greens don’t perform to the required standard, or if they do, why they don’t seem capable of perfoming consistently over the long term.

Also in the book John talks about his philosophy on high performance bowling greens, what makes them and how to achieve a tournament quality green on a reasonable budget, consistently.

John said ” I decided to write this book to detail in layman’s terms the exact formula needed for a great bowling green. A formula that is based on thorough scientific research and experience”

He went on to say: “I also wanted to alert bowling club officials and greenkeepers to the 4 major obstacles that stand in their way, the 4 obstacles that repeatedly stop them from producing the green they desire, so that hopefully they can learn to spot these and avoid them in the future.”

You can get hold of your copy of Performance Bowling Greens here.

Performance Bowling Greens, a practical guide is the essential green maintenance manual for every bowls club.

Get your copy TODAY!

bowls-central.co.uk - bowling green maintenance advice

Last year John Woodcock, MP for Barrow-in-Furness has raised a Bill in Parliament to try to prevent bowling greens from being too easily sold off to developers.

The current planning laws say that amenity areas like bowling greens should not be zoned for building development if they are being used by a significantly sized group of people.

However, John Woodcock’s Bill aims to provide the facility to tighten these laws to make sure that all reasonable steps are taken to preserve the green; only allowing sale to developers as a last resort. This would include provision to offer greens to user groups first at market rates.

You can get more details of the John Woodcock Bill here:

In a radio discussion about the bill there was also an interview with Alex Marsh, author of Sex, Bowls and Rock n Roll and as a result the discussion was dominated by talk about the image of the game.

The presenter thought the game had an image of being mainly for retired people dressed in white.

Alex Marsh disagreed and said that bowls was a game for all ages, but also said that he was attracted to the game by the image of standing around on a nice afternoon with a pint and not having to break into a sweat because he was too fat for anything more strenuous.

John Woodcock defended the game by saying that there were still upwards of 400,000 participants in the UK and that bowling was still an important feature of the British Landscape; a point built upon by Robert Long, a caller from Skipton who described how his club was currently fighting against proposals by the local council to use their green to extend a local car park.

Robert went on to describe his club as an oasis of green in a desert of concrete. Ironically the council need the extra car parking space because there are so many visitors to the town; many of whom according to Robert, end up at the club admiring the gardens and relaxing in the grounds to eat their packed lunch, many of them showing interest in the game and club while they are there.

While Robert’s club in Skipton are actively campaigning to stop the developers, there were a few contributors to the show who complained variously about the council failing to cut their green, or not looking after their club’s interests.

My point in reporting this is two-fold; firstly to make readers aware of this important discussion on national radio and of John Woodcock’s Bill in Parliament. Incidentally you can still listen to the show on the BBC iplayer here:

You can skip straight to the discussion by forwarding the time slider to 1:41 or thereabouts.

However, my main point here is that although John Woodcock’s Bill is most welcome and if successful will put in place a layer of protection for clubs in danger of closing, it won’t protect those clubs that fail to be pro-active and take action to protect their own future.

You have to wait until the dying seconds of the show for a reader’s email that says his club has invested £70,000 in re-furbishing its facilities in order to diversify its “business” and provide accommodation for functions etc…

The overall impression for a neutral person listening in would have been:

1. Bowls has an image problem and is just for old people.
2. Bowls is a game full of whiners, who like to moan and groan but aren’t so good at taking action.

Now where have we seen or heard that before?

Its time for Action and Not Words if we are to save our clubs.

Bowling Club Survival and Turnaround is still available!

Comments Please!

Performance Bowling Greens, a practical guide is the essential green maintenance manual for every bowls club.

Get your copy TODAY!

bowls-central.co.uk - bowling green maintenance advice

This is an encouraging question that has cropped up a few times in the searches that brought new visitors to the site.

The answer is not straightforward, but if I was to advise a group on this I would suggest the following first steps:

1. Make it a community re-generation project and involve as many different groups as possible.
2. Aim to revive a derelict green that is no longer in use as this will always be a better proposition than building from scratch with regard to time, cost and post construction difficulties; see here.
3. Download the Manifesto for a Successful Bowling Club here.
4. Consider where your income will come from and how you will keep things moving ahead positively; in other words create a project or business plan. Details here.
5. Think about how you will encourage the local community to become involved, see here.
6. Involve the local council to help you tap into any free resources and help there might be for community projects.

Performance Bowling Greens, a practical guide is the essential green maintenance manual for every bowls club.

Get your copy TODAY!

bowls-central.co.uk - bowling green maintenance advice

I recently received this inspiring message from one of our Bowls Mastermind Network Members that I know will be of great interest to many of you:

Dear John

I am chairman of a Bowling Club that has risen from the ashes and I thought your other readers might like to hear how we did it!

 Four years ago we reached the dreaded October with no money (not a penny) and 30 members.

The club opened every Friday evening for a ‘social evening’……but this was frequented by half a dozen regulars for a drink and a chat ie. not very useful!

I took over as Chairman, because nobody else would, since then I have had carte blanche over club affairs.

Next to our club is the local Leisure Centre with two indoor rinks.

We started evening roll ups indoors followed by quizzes/ bingo in our club during the winter.

In the summer we have roll ups outdoors every Friday tied to a competition with the best 8 scores counting followed by the inevitable quizzes and other entertainments.

This format has lifted our turnover to some £15,000 over the last two years.

As an aside we had all our machinery stolen in that dreaded October 4 years ago due to a very insecure and neglected Machine Building.

With the insurance claim and our new found turnover we have spent some £25,000 over the last 3 years on everything the club needs.

Without warning the indoor rinks have been closed this year which threatens attendance during our winter period.

Our answer to this is to supplement our winter entertainment with professional acts every 3 weeks or so. (Single singers/comedians/magicians etc at an average cost of £150).

The extra cost of this will be offset with an entry fee of £2 or £3 per member….we expect between 40 and 50 members each Friday. We can only accommodate this number comfortably.

Currently the membership is well over 70 and still rising.

We have a much higher local profile and make use of all the local organisations to our own ends.

Finally, honest!, due to all the above our success on the green has seen 2 unprecedented years.

I feel as though I have taken your advice without knowing it which is a little spooky!!

Good Luck with the website, I will certainly stick around for the foreseeable future.

Cheers

 Name withheld by request

If anyone else has a story to share please get in touch.

Performance Bowling Greens, a practical guide is the essential green maintenance manual for every bowls club.

Get your copy TODAY!

bowls-central.co.uk - bowling green maintenance advice

Performance or Tradition?

Over the years I have come up against a lot of friction when I have proposed that a club stops top-dressing its green with sand laden top-dressing compost.

The reasons for stopping this practice are well documented on this site (recap here) so I won’t go over old ground here today.

My guess is that a lot of greens, especially in the South East of the UK will be seeing some of the performance issues related to this “tradition” coming home to roost this year. The major disruptive force in bowling green maintenance is Localised Dry Patch (LDP) and this is a perfect year for it to show up at its worst. Again, LDP is extensively discussed on the site (recap here).

Another tradition which I suppose first came about for reasons of economy, but has taken a strong hold in bowling green management is the Monday, Wednesday, Friday mowing regime. I recently posted an article about this here and in this post about green consistency we looked at the relative importance of mowing frequency on green consistency.

At all times on the site I have tried to avoid whining about the apparent lack of sense shown by club committees on these issues, but I have had some exasperating experiences where clubs blindly continue top-dressing or even return to top-dressing when the folly of this is laid out before them in a severely damaged, dried out, lifeless green.

The reason for mentioning these two issues today is so that I could demonstrate a little bit of madness to you:

• Out of 7 days, using the Mon, Wed, Fri mowing schedule the green is not at its best on Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday and is at its very worst for pace and smoothness on Sunday. Sunday is surely a big day for any club as far as bowling traffic is concerned? The main reason for the Mon, Wed, Fri mowing schedule at most clubs is: Lack of funds.
• Top-dressing is the most damaging tradition in bowling green maintenance in the UK and a typical autumn top-dressing program will involve a contractor applying 5tonnes of sandy top-dressing at a cost of around £1000 for the application.

At times like this, our American cousins have a great phrase:

“Do the math”.

Performance Bowling Greens, a practical guide is the essential green maintenance manual for every bowls club.

Get your copy TODAY!

bowls-central.co.uk - bowling green maintenance advice

This week we have been looking at growing club membership and retaining current members.

One of the most important requirements for a project of this nature to be successful is a cohesive team where every member is aware of the goals and is committed to achieving success.

To work effectively and for one common goal within the club it is very important for all involved to share the same vision. This vision should be clearly defined so that all involved understand the direction in which the club is heading.

The key to achieving this level of commitment is twofold:

1. Training of the team in the overall goals of the club; this is in addition to comprehensive and on-going training in their individual job roles.
2. Leadership; this is the vital grease that keeps the project machine running smoothly and relentlessly towards success.

Finally, there is a need to adopt a culture of continuous improvement at the club.

Continuous Improvement is the simple but highly effective process of breaking your club’s business down into all of its component parts and then breaking those down further to the smallest individual elements so that you can chart your efforts to improve each of these in small incremental steps.

There are 7 key elements to adopting a Continuous Improvement model at your club:

1. Management Commitment – the boss must believe it too!
2. Training the Team – in their roles and the overall vision.
3. Make it Visible - results get results!
4. Measure the Change – if you don’t how will you know what works?
5. Build the Team – this is a dynamic process, make sure you have the skills you need in the team at every stage.
6. Reward the Result - People perform best when rewarded.
7. Never Give Up - Tenacity is the key, the difference between a successful person and a failure is that the successful person never gives up.

Performance Bowling Greens, a practical guide is the essential green maintenance manual for every bowls club.

Get your copy TODAY!

bowls-central.co.uk - bowling green maintenance advice

As always this season has started off with many greens playing “slow”. The usual reasons apply of course; mowing heights are still above summer level, the frequency of cutting is still low in many cases due to a really slow start to growth in many areas. Many greens are also thatchy and there has been a lot of moss about as we come out of winter, due partly to the excessively wet end to last summer and more significantly to long term Localised Dry Patch problems which are inherently linked to persistent moss problems. Oh yes and of course we are all still adjusting from indoor speeds to early spring outdoor ones!

So do we just sit and wait or can we be getting on with something to improve the situation?

Happily there is plenty we can do to positively influence green speed at this time.

1. Look at our guides on Green Speed and Green Surface Consistency – you might be surprised to see what the priorities are!
2. You will see that sward composition (grass types) plays a big part in both these aspects of green management. This is in part due to the upright growth habit of the finer grasses with minimal “nap” or lateral growth. The effects of surface debris and lateral growth can be overcome and green speed and consistency improved with the introduction of regular verti-cutting; at least two operations per month.
3. Sharp Mower blades are not a luxury, they are essential to the health, speed and smoothness of your green. Having the mower re-ground in the winter is a good starting point, but it must be kept accurately set with zero contact between blade and cylinder and the front face of the bottom blade must be kept sharp all through the season. The difference in grass health will be remarkable and you will make the most efficient use of fertilisers, water and reduce disease incidence
4. Now that summer is here! we can safely bring the height down on the mower to 5 or even 4.5mm.  Mowing lower than this isn’t necessary or advisable as it can cause undue stress to your turf and irreparable damage to the crown area of grass plants.

Any comments? Questions? Click on the header of any post and comment

Performance Bowling Greens, a practical guide is the essential green maintenance manual for every bowls club.

Get your copy TODAY!

bowls-central.co.uk - bowling green maintenance advice

When thinking about turning your club’s fortunes around it is easy to get sidetracked by barriers; and even easier to think that all barriers are the same.

However, if you look closely at the barriers to starting the process of recovery, there are different varieties; on a basic level some of these barriers are “problems” and some are “constraints”.

Here are a few Problems:

1. We don’t have any money to spend on marketing
2. Our facilities are a bit tired looking
3. The heating doesn’t work very well
4. Our bar license doesn’t allow for that type of business

and here are a few Constraints:

1. There is a lack of interest in bowling
2. Its winter and nobody wants to know about bowling
3. We can’t get enough junior members
4. Our bowling membership is declining year on year

Have a look over them; you will notice that you normally can’t do much about constraints, but you can usually resolve problems.

So…stop worrying about the constraints; work around them.

Start dealing with the top 3 problems which are holding you back today. Going back to our problems above:

We don’t have any money to spend on marketing

Your target market is known to you: get out and talk to them…its FREE

Our facilities are a bit tired looking

Hold a paint and barbeque afternoon next Sunday for members

The heating doesn’t work very well

Find a local engineer (member) and do a deal…or use the warmer rooms to start with.

Our bar license doesn’t allow for that type of business

Create a new category of membership for your new target markets or re-negotiate the license.

Above all get working on something…decide what the top 3 barriers (problems) are and get working on them.

Performance Bowling Greens, a practical guide is the essential green maintenance manual for every bowls club.

Get your copy TODAY!

bowls-central.co.uk - bowling green maintenance advice

Yesterday we looked at how your club might be organised in order to fulfil the expectations of its target audience and we boiled that down to a very distinct goal that any club would do well to work towards:

Deliver a little bit more than you promised!

We then went on to look at how this might be achieved consistently. We discussed how the seemingly endless task of business strategy development could be boiled down to its essence, making it a lot more tangible and do-able in the process.

Business strategy for me is about three things; three mini strategies if you like and these are people, finance and innovation.

Today, I wanted to briefly fill out these 3 bullet points to give you a clearer picture of how you can use them to your advantage and guarantee that your club members, user groups, customers or what have you, will always experience exceptional service and want to keep coming back.

1. People: make sure that everyone involved in delivering your promises knows what the promises are and how important it is that they deliver them well. Also make sure that these people have all of the support that they need to do their work well. This includes leadership, coaching, training and supporting them with the right tools and resources to do the job well. Crucially it means you must have A1 communication within the club, which means that all front line staff or volunteers must know what’s going on and preferably be involved with the formulation of plans for delivering the services you provide.
2. Finance: make sure that your financial strategy supports the delivery of your promises; you can’t deliver fillet steak on corned beef money, but if you are aware of your limitations, corned beef is fine as long as your promises reflect this; remember the goal is to always over deliver. If you are trying to deliver an upmarket experience you must do this at every step; don’t tell me that I’m getting top of the range and then deliver it poorly. If it’s upmarket I’ll expect that to be reflected in everything I see. For example, if you hand me a scruffy home made menu with brown sauce stains on it, I will expect that the kitchen, the staff, the ingredients, the hygiene and the customer care are all of the same low standard even if the text on the menu tells me otherwise.
3. Innovation: if you ever feel like your work is done, its time to hand over to someone else, because club turnaround is a journey and not a destination. A thriving club will eat up new ideas faster than you can think them up; you must keep improving what you deliver and the way in which you deliver it. Innovation in products (what you do) and processes (how you do it) is at the heart of Continuous Improvement.

And that is where we will pick it up tomorrow.

This article is an extract from my forthcoming eBook, titled: Bowling Club Membership Retention and Growth, which will be available here from 14^th November 2011 onwards.  This builds upon the concepts of the “customer” or club “user” as discussed in Bowling Club Survival and Turnaround.

Performance Bowling Greens, a practical guide is the essential green maintenance manual for every bowls club.

Get your copy TODAY!

bowls-central.co.uk - bowling green maintenance advice