“Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow”
This is the common mantra of the serial procrastinator.
In bowling club turnaround terms, putting off taking action until tomorrow could be critical or even terminal for your club.
So why do so many clubs avoid taking action on such obvious problems as:
- falling membership numbers
- falling income levels
- increasing costs
- poorly performing greens
- crumbling buildings
The list goes on and on.
Well, the easy answer is “we don’t have enough money to improve the facilities”
But this is a self fulfilling prophecy in many respects as the lack of action on the smallest details leads to an increasing feeling of helplessness and the club slips into a downward spiral of failure.
What can be done?
The simple answer is Anything!
Doing nothing will guarantee failure.
Even if you get it wrong, you will have made a mistake you can learn from.
So in a typical club what needs to be done?
- Reduce Costs
- Maximise Income
- Create a business Strategy that includes a strategies for Marketing your speciality to potential users/members; users/new member sources, Delivering an outstanding experience to all of your members/users and to guarantee a consistent service delivery. To do this you will need to develop strategies for Staff and volunteer management; Financial Management and Innovation -to help you stay ahead you need to continually develop new ideas to improve what you offer (products and services) and how you deliver them to customers (processes)
- Eradicate Wasteful expenditure
- Create a system for Continuous Improvement
Finally for today your club must have a group that is dedicated to pushing this plan through, regardless of the level of resistance from internal and external sources.
This group must learn to distinguish the key differences between Projects and Actions and make sure that each project is broken down into key actions that can be taken every day to move the club’s turnaround process along on a steady path.
