A BBC2 program “Lord Sugar Tackles Football”, exposed the failures in the English Football Premiership. In a nutshell the program argued that although the creation of the super league of top clubs had resulted in the generation of vast sums of money for football, the overall result has been to create a mountain of debt and indebtedness.

Lord Sugar’s conclusion was that something had to be done about player salaries to stop the rot and that the Premiership should allow one or two high profile clubs to go under to illustrate the dire nature of the situation to the Saturday afternoon faithful, who, after all, actually supply the vast sums of cash being dished out to the top talent.

What on earth has this got to do with your bowling club?

Well although not directly linked (unless of course a Premiership failure would free up some punters to come along to your club next Saturday!) the action required to start the turn around of the premiership’s fortunes is very much the same as that required to turnaround bowling clubs.

Now I know that there aren’t any bowlers, professional or otherwise earning £20,000 a week, but cutting costs (or at least being very aware of them) is still a component of any successful turnaround. The part contents list from our eBook Bowling Club Survival and Turnaround illustrates the process that clubs must go trough to ensure a bright future:

Step 1a. Cashflow-Instant Savings How to stop all unnecessary expenditure NOW!

Step 1b. Cashflow-part 2, Maximise Income!

STEP 2. The 10 Minute MBA Your NEW World Beating Business Strategy

Step 3. Sustainable Competitive Advantage or: Uncovering your Golden Niche

STEP 4. Promises (Marketing that works)

STEP 5. Promises Delivered. The ABC of Operations Management

STEP 6. Official Title: Eradicate Waste (Show Biz Title: 30% added Profit for No added Cost)

STEP 7. Adopting a Continuous Improvement Culture

As the program drew to a close I wasn’t waiting for Alan Sugar to come up with a spectacular new idea to fix the Premiership with. Most football fans would come to the same conclusion as he did; that the most urgent problem is to address the massive over expenditure!

And this unfortunately is the same for bowling clubs; there are no new inventions waiting around the corner to magic us back to the 1950’s and the glory days.

We must knuckle down and do the dirty jobs first. Of course in Bowling this isn’t going to result in a vast number of redundancies or massive wage reductions, but Alan Sugar’s approach illustrates what we need to start with.