20 minute read
Alwoodley’s Richard Weeks
The interview... RICHARD WEEKS
Alwoodley’s managing secretary tells Steve Carroll about leading the way at the renowned Leeds club where architect Dr Alister MacKenzie made his first mark on golf
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How did you get the position at Alwoodley? The opportunity came up and it was a long interview process due to Covid and lockdowns. I think the first interview was the week before the first lockdown. Everything was finalised by the end of June and I started here in September.
I’ve really enjoyed it. It is a change in the sense that I was brought up on the golf professional side and I am still learning the general management side of the job.
I’m still learning about everything it takes to run a golf club, from food and beverage through to health and safety, the staff you have, the relationship with the golf pro and the relationship with the members.
I’m the first to say I’m not overly experienced in this role, but I’m happy to learn. So far, it’s been really enjoyable. I’m just looking forward to things opening up more and more now.
Looking at your career, you’ve been at some pretty high-profile clubs and experienced both traditional and commercial environments. Do you think that’s made you a more rounded manager? Did it help secure the role at Alwoodley? I think it was advantageous when applying for this role. They were looking for someone that had a bit more commercial experience. And you’re absolutely right, those very traditional clubs in my early years as an assistant golf professional were just that. Then to be introduced to the proprietary sector, and to see how those organisations worked, was very useful and very interesting.
Moving back across to a members’ club, to bring some of what I’ve learned into this
environment, was very helpful and it will continue to be going forward as well.
Alwoodley is the original MacKenzie – where it all began for the man who designed Augusta National. It must be quite a place to come and spend your time each day… I don’t think it’s quite sunk in yet. [Until recently] I’d never seen the front doors open due to the pandemic but it is very special.
The history is quite incredible and it’s something I’d like to learn more about and discover. The club has got much better in the last five to ten years of making a bit more about its history, the person that obviously created it and what he went on to do.
It has some fantastic links with the MacKenzie Society, which is an international society and quite a small group of clubs. Some of our members are part of that and go away and play at various MacKenzie courses each year and we have got very good relationships with them.
You must never forget that – how special it is for a non-member coming here for the first time with the history involved and the members understand that also. It’s an incredibly special place.
How difficult has it been to take on a role like this during a pandemic? What kind of challenges have you faced? I started last September and we had limited access to the clubhouse. I was still living in Teesside then so made the effort to come down on a few Saturdays and meet members, which was very helpful.
Things then went slowly downhill, in the sense that we got more and more restricted with the tier system and Leeds was badly hit with that and then a lockdown.
We had to organise our AGM online in November. It was supposed to be in April, got pushed back, and we had hoped to do it in September.
We did it in November and so I got very well known as the person who was able to organise an online AGM, via Zoom, for approximately 150 members attending.
I think I met members more via Zoom, or by email, than I did in any other form. We’d closed for a month in November, opened loosely in December, which gave me another chance to meet a few members, and then there was the long lockdown.
So it has been tricky. It’s trying to look at the positive side of these things, if you can. The good side is I’ve been able to get my feet under the table, understand how things work and talk to staff and spend some time with them before everything starts to happen at once.
Food and beverage is a big part of my remit here and that’s having a bit of a rebuild so it’s quite helpful that we’re not hit with functions and large events right from the start and that we can slowly start to build it up.
Can you take the positives from that experience? You’ve had some time to embed your philosophy on members and your management philosophy with staff? I imagine now we’re into the summer it’s a busy year… I was very conscious, when starting, that a lot of long-standing staff members had done an incredibly good job for a long time.
It’s not my role to come in and change everything on day one. So it’s been spending a lot of time with the current staff, listening to them,
asking how things work, asking how they do things, and them teaching me how things work.
I think that’s been very useful and I hope I’ve done a good job with that. Now, it’s slowly been the time to start to think forward a bit.
A huge amount of it, certainly on the food and beverage side, is about starting to raise the standards.
The members very affectionately talk about trying to get the off course to match the on course, and the experience in the clubhouse to be as good as the experience on the golf course.
That’s very idealist and something we’d like to work towards going forward. For me, it’s all about trying to improve the standards as much as possible and also for staff to enjoy their jobs.
From what I’ve seen here, staff have really enjoyed their roles and so it is about continuing that. We are carrying out some quite key recruitment on the food and beverage side and I want to make sure they’re the right people for the role and they actually enjoy doing it.
Being front of house, and serving the members and non-members, is an incredibly important part of
Richard Weeks Richard Weeks qualified as a PGA professional, having completed a degree at Durham University. After a spell as an assistant professional at Fulford, in York, and The Berkshire, he spent four and a half years as a teaching professional at Roehampton Club before holding roles as director of golf and then general manager at Hunley Hall. He became managing secretary at Alwoodley in September 2020.
the job here.
So it’s finding the right staff and making sure they are comfortable with responsibility. I like to give them responsibility, because I think good staff enjoy being empowered, and then letting it move forward from there.
There are staff here who have been with us for a long time: a club pro of 30 years, Julie, who performed the secretary’s role previously and has moved into a financial role, has been here 25 years.
This was never a position where you were going to come in and tear everything up and start fresh. It’s slow steps forward. That’s what came forward in the interview process. That’s what they wanted and I think it’s new to everyone.
They do embrace change here but it’s got to be done correctly and properly and through a process.
I’d like to think that what they were looking for has actually started to happen.
You obviously understand the traditions of the club, so how do you plan to move forward? It’s a really interesting question because, as you’ve said, you’ve got a club that is very traditional but is also aware of the fact they can’t stand still and they’ve got to look to the future. Our membership is very interesting in that we now have a large group that know that as well.
For a club like this, it’s about not forgetting who they are, or where they’ve come from, or how privileged the members are to actually be here and play here, but to also look forward and think ‘how can we develop things?’
‘How can we look at junior golf? Should we be doing a little bit more? Should we be encouraging juniors that maybe aren’t children
of current members to join here? And how do we go about that? Could we run a junior event once a year that local children could come and play in?’
It’s just little steps forward. It’s not changing everything. It’s looking around the golf industry and taking little bits that other clubs might be implementing and saying ‘is that right for us? Should we consider doing it?’
When you work that way, you will always hold the core of the club and you will always continue to be Alwoodley Golf Club, with its history, and you’re showing intent just to take small steps forward.
What kind of manager are you, Richard, and how do you like to operate? Do you direct? Are you consensual? Do you like to delegate or are you very hands on? I like staff to have their own responsibility and take control of situations and departments. When we look to recruit staff, we look for people that have an air about them and will want to have responsibility, will actually take that on, and enjoy having it.
The job is very broad and I can’t be in one place for too long. It just doesn’t work. For example, if we are a staff member down on food and beverage and I go down and help out, I’ll probably feel towards the end of the day that I’ve lost a bit of time somewhere else.
So I need staff that I can trust and I can work with. But at the same time, I’m pretty open and honest and they can tell me if they need more help and, if they’re working on something that’s new and they’ve not spent much time on it before, to come to me and I’ll help them with it.
I like to lead. I like to go out and meet members as much as I can.
We work upstairs so it’s very easy to get caught upstairs and the day’s gone by.
It’s nice to go out and see people that come to play golf – be it people who are just here for a day or regular members.
I like to try and do a little bit of everything. I’ll go into the pro shop once a day and check everything’s all right. I can walk over and see the greenkeeping team.
I’m not responsible for them here – the club pro and course manager report to the chair of greens and the chair of golf – but occasionally there will be times when I need to speak to them about things.
It’s incredibly important that I know I can work with them and it’s very useful to do because you learn what’s going on in the club as well.
Golf feels like it is at a juncture at the moment and no one knows where it might go. So do you think your appointment is beneficial for a club that wants to retain its traditional structure and history but also recognises the sport might be changing? Do you think you can put them in the
Alwoodley Known as the original MacKenzie, because it was the first course designed by Dr Alister MacKenzie – the worldfamous architect behind Royal Melbourne, Cypress Point and Augusta National, Alwoodley is one of Britain’s best inland courses. The heathland course dates back to 1907 and has been the host of many prestigious amateur events, as well as a regular venue for Open qualifying. best place for the medium term? They wouldn’t have brought me in if they didn’t want to look forward a little bit more. I will always try, if we’ve got a committee meeting and we’re going to discuss something, to find the industry’s point of view and bring it to the table.
I’m the one that can do that – be it through people I know, or things I’ve read – and they’re very open to that and they will certainly consider it. They will look outside of the club.
They’re always very interested to see what the actual golf industry is doing and then take that into account when they think about changing things here.
That’s what I always try and do and I think it is helpful for the club to have that. It helps them just carefully step forward.
And as we spoke about earlier, the traditions at this club will probably never really change to a point. But we’ve always got to keep moving forward and making little changes and trying things out.
For example, we mooted talk of a self-service bar area this year [because of Covid] where you’ll be able to get drinks and food just on an honesty system without having staff there.
Do we need to do that? No. Are we conscious that staff costs are very high at certain times of the year when there’s not many people here? Yes.
These are just small steps that we can, fortunately, take our time with and think ‘is that something that we need to be doing going forward?’
So just being forward thinking, and having me there to look outside and bring that in, is very important for the club.
Technology meets TRADITION
Innovation in IT is moving at a furious pace and, as Golf Genius explain, it can enhance the experience on the golf course as well as saving you time
Understanding and being able to assess the ever-evolving golf software landscape is an increasingly important part of the General Manager’s role. Knowing what’s happening out there and keeping up with the latest innovations can be a source of confusion. However, navigating the impact of software at golf clubs and the key players in the industry need not be scary, it’s not rocket science.
If you’re looking to change or add a new club software supplier, or just interested to understand the options available out there, here are some considerations that you should be making and general rules to follow.
Odds are, if you’re taking the time to investigate or thinking about how software can help your club, then you’re already a long way towards your goal.
Every industry in the world has either gone through or is going through these business decisions and taking on the investment in technology. Embracing software can upgrade efficiency without compromising the traditions of clubs and the traditional golf experience. Looking close to home, you can probably imagine one of your members, or even a few, that will routinely turn up with 17 ‘computers’ - a sensor on each of 14 clubs, an Apple watch, a distance measuring device, and a smartphone. Technology is and will continue to pervade every aspect of clubs, and those that embrace technology will be far better off than those that do not plan thoughtfully.
Technology today is about software; sometimes the software is ‘wrapped in hardware’ such as a smartphone or moisture sensor, and sometimes it’s a software product such as a reservation system, but it’s useful to think of all this technology as software.
Why has computer technology exploded in the past 50 years? It improves productivity, allowing management and employees to relieve themselves of relatively mundane activities and focus more on high value activities - and in a private club, that means delivering better service to members at lower cost and spending more time interacting with members.
An ecosystem is a collection of products and services that connect with each other to form a system. It’s important for General Managers to understand the ecosystem of technology and software that surrounds their daily club life, and where it can be enhanced for these benefits.
Clubs have indeed adopted technology-based solutions, but not at the same rate as other industries. For example, the way customers interact with banks and the travel industry has changed dramatically in the past 10 years. In both cases, there was a massive shift to customer self-service. Although most of us see golf as a wonderful social activity shared with friends and close to nature, it is actually a very technology intensive industry. Golf clubs and golf balls are marvels of engineering and agronomy is a science. We use computer aided design (CAD) to map out new builds and rely on cloudbased systems to manage the infrastructure around our courses.
One of the debates among software suppliers and customers has always been all-in-one software versus best-of-breed products that can be integrated into a solution. With the range and quality of many providers these days, this poses a tough question for General Managers to answer. In the early days with few suppliers, software firms had to be generalists and provide everything from tee-time software to accounting to POS to membership management to tournament management. As the industry has matured, software firms tend to focus on one or a few areas. Some seek to build the best tee-time software,
and some the best tournament management software. It becomes more and more difficult for all-inone suppliers to compete with firms that specialise and focus on delivering their core strengths to the benefit of the customers.
To help further understand the context of software’s impact on traditional golf venues, we spoke with industry veteran, Dr Michael Zisman, who can provide a view from one of the industry leaders as Co-CEO of Golf Genius Software. “Fundamentally, I’m a software professional and passionate golfer,” says Zisman. Having served on the faculty at MIT in the late 70’s, and then pursued a successful career as an entrepreneur and IBM executive, he’s seen the proliferation of technology in business and life first-hand.
“I am a member of three clubs including Merion Golf Club, which has hosted five U.S. Opens, where I have previously served on the board and as chair of the finance committee. As such, I have a very good understanding of the business model for a hugely traditional private club.”
Some clubs choose to be early adopters of technology, some are fast followers, and some are part of the broad majority that want to be on the leading edge of the second wave. There is often a conflict between technology adoption and tradition because technology adoption is about change and tradition is about keeping things the same. When considering the impacts of technology on a club, the focus should be on culture and not on tradition, as tradition is a carrier for culture, but just one aspect of it.
Tradition is a means to convey and sustain culture; the focus needs to be on culture - the set of values and beliefs that influence behaviour and create a community. Traditions change much more rapidly than culture because traditions must adapt to an ever-changing world. Protect the culture, evolve the traditions.
Most clubs are far too small to have a chief information officer or even software specialists. This function is usually outsourced to some form of local consulting firm. Like everything else, a GM can delegate authority to employees and others, but responsibility for decisions ultimately rests
with the GM. Hence, in today’s technology-intensive, softwareintensive world, the more a GM understands about technology, the better prepared he or she is to manage the specialists. This does not mean that a GM need be a technical wizard or steeped in technology, but it does imply having a good understanding of club needs and being able to ask the right questions of suppliers and consultants.
In dealing with software suppliers, it is important to place the club in a strong position that maximizes flexibility. This is particularly the case as our world moves very quickly from desktop in-house systems to “cloud-based” systems. Here are some guidelines to think about when engaging a tech supplier.
• Assure that your data is adequately protected and safely stored. • You own your data, even if it’s in the cloud. This is critically important when the time comes to change suppliers. • Be very clear on what suppliers can do with your data, particularly member personal identifiable information • Avoid vendor lock-in • Insist that your suppliers play well together • Understand that your software supplier owns its intellectual property, and you are merely using their product
Some things you should consider as you move forward with implementing software or subscribing to cloud-based software services:
• Leverage your members by forming an IT committee of your board. You probably have a lot of
expertise from members willing to help - you just need to find them • Develop a priority list of member-facing systems, backend systems and infrastructure systems • Develop a sense of how the pieces fit together • Think cloud. It is happening very, very quickly and delivers numerous benefits. It makes very little sense to own your own servers in today’s world • Educate yourself about contracting for IT products and services. Otherwise, your suppliers will have a big advantage • Help your board think through your club’s approach to member-owned technology – mobile phone and tablet use in the clubhouse, for example - by distinguishing culture from tradition. • Exploit data to better understand what is happening at your club. Using technology can give you a superior way to analyse your operations.
General managers, golf professionals and other key managers create the greatest value when they are interacting with members. Technology properly implemented and managed frees up staff from mundane and/or administrative activities so that they can focus on higher value activities. The rate of innovation in IT is increasing at a furious pace as we move forward to wearable computers and sensorbased systems. More and more of your members are those 30 somethings who are completely comfortable with technology and strongly prefer self-service systems. IT not only enhances the member experience, but it also decreases labour cost or materials cost and allows management to spend more time engaging with members. Every online reservation is a labour saving. Tournament and tee time software reduces labour in the golf shop. You may not reduce headcount, but you can redeploy headcount to memberfacing activities, and that further enhances the member experience. Properly managed, technology truly lets you have your cake and eat it, too.
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