07
October
2022
We talk to GCMA members about how they do their jobs and ask what advice they can share with peers like you On a typical day, what meetings do you have and who with? I have monthly board meetings with the club’s directors and we discuss various aspects of the business from capital spend through to new business and so on. I then try to sit down with the heads of each department every week, so I'll have a chat with the professionals, food and beverage, front of house and our head greenkeeper Kyran. We will discuss plans for the upcoming week, any communications that may need to go out, things that have gone well or things that perhaps haven't gone well, and any staffing issues. It is just to make sure we keep in regular contact with each other. Other meetings might be with new members, people wanting to join, prospective hospitality bookings –weddings, christenings and funerals. We have a huge hospital business here compared to the golf clubs I've been at before, so that's a new skill I'm having to learn, and meeting clients in that respect has been interesting. How much time do you spend on the phone or doing emails? How long is a piece of string?! I would say at least half my day is spent on my computer answering emails, and then a couple of hours a day on the telephone in amongst that. I'm lucky I have a part-time assistant - Lindsay – who is fantastic. I'd like to have her here full time, and hopefully that may happen one day, but she's great and deals with a lot of the bookings, and with a lot of telephone calls whilst I'm busy doing other things. What hardware or software could you not be without? Obviously our internal club software – we use ClubV1 and BRS – is vitally important, but beyond those it’s probably Sage. I'm still getting up to speed with it, but that lets me create all the invoices, run trial balances for each department, look at the accounts and ongoing costs and so on - it is fantastic. Give us a good productivity tip. Something I’ve been trying to work on lately is not being scared to say ‘No’ to somebody. I don't mean that in a negative way, but often I’ll get bombarded with tasks and information requests, and it's about not being scared to say, ‘You know what, I'll have to get back to you on that, I'm busy at this moment’. Or blocking my office door off for a couple of hours whilst I might be in a meeting or just getting things done. I’m quite keen on processes, and so the first thing I do at the start of every week is list all the tasks and everything that needs to be completed, and by when. But when I first started here, I noticed within a couple of weeks that they just weren't getting done. However,... Please LOGIN to read the full article.
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