Clean truth about learning

Here’s an unconventional way to handle the expanding rigors of a golf course maintenance job: Use 2024 to learn how high achievers outside the industry organize and execute their jobs.

We’re not suggesting shunning colleagues. Still attend that reoccurring conference and show. When you have a chance to visit another golf course, grab a notepad and embrace the opportunity. Continue browsing industry publications and research. Especially keep reading Golf Course Industry!

As the theme of this issue suggests, the job continues to expand. More golfers. Less time to navigate around them. Cool- and warm-season facilities are utilized nearly every month. Good luck adding drainage or upgrading bunkers when hundreds of customers and members are filling “offseason” tee sheets.

Have you considered looking to other industries for help? We don’t mean labor or equipment. We mean management styles and philosophies.

Chefs are the subject of “Work Clean,” a terrific self-help book released in 2016. Writer Dan Charnas examined the work lives of successful chefs, using the kitchen concept of mise-en-place — a French phrase for “put in place” — as a relatable touchpoint for our own jobs and lives. On the surface, maintaining golf courses and preparing meals are contrasting endeavors. Superintendents endure varying weather; chefs work indoors. Mornings shape superintendents’ careers; chefs’ reputations hinge on evening performances. Acres separate superintendents and their employees; chefs physically rub elbows with co-workers.

Slice deeper, though, and commonalities emerge. Superintendents and chefs must attract reliable employees from a confounding labor pool. They then must quickly meld diverse teams to appease demanding customers with numerous spending options. The morning hustle facing superintendents closely resembles the evening rush greeting chefs. Every second matters, thus every action must be carefully plotted and extensively scrutinized.

Planning and organization represent the crux of a chef’s schooling, according to anecdotes Charnas discovered through observing and interviewing chefs. The three values of mise-en-place — preparation, process and presence — guide culinary teaching. Charnas focuses chunks of the book on those values.

If we take a candid assessment of the golf industry, preparation, process and presence are frequently overlooked and underemphasized in formal and informal turfgrass education. But they are more important than ever because superintendents and their teams are more important than ever. Maintaining the golf surge will require producing quality products as efficiently as possible. Satisfying the demand means playing from ahead. Playing from ahead means tomorrow’s preparations begin once the morning hustle concludes, similar to how chefs start the next day while juggling the tasks of the current day.

Processes must be implemented to get ahead and stay ahead. Superintendents are in positions to create and enhance processes and disperse knowledge to assistants and others on their respective teams. Processes are going to be more important as more technology and data inundate the industry. Some of the art of greenkeeping will be lost with process- and system-based thinking. The tradeoff seems fair, considering the expanded efficiency means more time for the immersive and strategic parts of the job. Perhaps operating like a successful chef will yield more personal time, a precious resource superintendents strive to obtain.

Presence is tricky for any motivated professional. Many of the highest achievers are always thinking about work, but Charnas emphasizes how successful chefs focus on “staying there” instead of “getting there.” Not every chef is successful. Charnas cites a 2005 study indicating 60 percent of restaurants fail in the first three years. Great chefs can find themselves in unappetizing positions. Tasty food won’t overcome a poor location, lousy customer service, an unmotivated team and ineffective communication.

Fortunately, golf courses boast a significantly higher success rate. Great superintendents, like great chefs, find ways to deliver, elevating the finances, utilization and reach of the businesses they represent.

The more of everything entering the industry means superintendents and their teams will be forced to deliver at higher levels in 2024 and beyond. Stay open-minded. Study the methodologies of achievers in other realms. Their systems and stories can help shrink the enormity of the job.