DEVELOPER’S GUIDE
Is Your Company Ready to Innovate? BY HENRY DELOZIER, GLOBAL GOLF ADVISORS
The world’s first electric traffic signal is put into place on the corner of Euclid Avenue and East 105th Street in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1914. And, that was a game-changer. As golf course builders find a growing market for renovations and “redos”, the time is right for similarly game-changing innovation. As described by A & E Network’s History.com, when it comes to traffic signals there are several claims and counter-claims. A device installed in London in 1868 featured two semaphore arms that extended horizontally to signal “stop” and at a 45-degree angle to signal “caution.” In 1912, a Salt Lake City, Utah, police officer named Lester Wire mounted a handmade wooden box with colored red and green lights on a pole, with the wires attached to overhead trolley and light wires. In America, the inventor Garrett Morgan has been given credit for having invented the traffic signal based on his T-shaped design, patented in 1923 and later reportedly sold to General Electric. According to an article in The Motorist, published by the Cleveland Automobile Club in August 1914: “This system is, perhaps, destined to revolutionize the handling of traffic in congested city streets and should be seriously considered by traffic committees for general adoption.” It is possible to become more innovative. Jack Zenger, a contributor to Forbes magazine, wrote that there are three steps one can take to become more innovative:
3. Surround yourself with creative teammates. Where you plant yourself makes a difference. Keep the company of imaginative and innovative people who enjoy problem-solving and finding sew solutions. They will make you more innovative just by hanging out with them. A handful of changes every builder can make in the company and its people are: •
Implement widespread change. Change the locations of offices. Relocate furniture. Conduct stand-up meetings that are short, too-the-point, and over in 15 minutes. Use meetings to cover the matters that cannot be reduced to an email message. That means matters of the heart, like appreciation, gratitude, and enthusiasm. Make change your ally.
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Eliminate “can’t” and make finding new and better solutions a brand standard. Make yourself an educator who is regularly teaching customers, club leaders, and golf superintendents. To teach such capable people, one must be constantly learning and innovating.
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Flip your assumptions. At the GCBAA Summer Meeting, one builder noted that “It still comes down to the low bid.” That assumption is terrific for clients and customers and tough on the “winning” bidder. When one prices to the bottom of the market, there is a tendency to stay there.
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Be more curious. Create task teams within your company and ask them to solve certain problems that hold your company back or create competitive disadvantage for you. You’ll be amazed how creative the people around you are. Ask from the bottom of your organization up. Sometimes, it’s the guys with mud on their boots who have the best answers.
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Embrace “failing” so that you can learn from the lessons to be learned there. Thomas Edison is famous for his success and it was his many failures that informed his defining success.
1. Develop a willingness to change. Many of the most respected golf course builders have been in the business for years and have tried-and-true methods on which they rely. While effective – and even successful in many cases – the triedand-true solutions make one stale and enable competitors to out-hustle them. 2. Not settling for “good enough”. Innovation usually involves finding fresh solutions. In golf course construction, innovations for labor sourcing and efficiency will be significant competitive advantages. So, too, will be fresh solutions for irrigation system installation, drainage, and high-traffic turf wear area. Recent advances in construction and drainage of sand bunkers are an ideal example of not settling for the same old fixes.
Finding solutions to growing problems or difficulties is at the heart of innovation. It may be as simple as figuring out who should have the right-of-way. Henry DeLozier is a partner at Global Golf Advisors, the largest consulting firm in the world that specializes in golf-related businesses from offices in Dublin (Ireland), Phoenix (Arizona) and Toronto (Canada). 15