Golf is Like Management Because . . .

I was in a golf tournament a couple of weeks ago – first time I have golfed since last year. The weather was good, the company agreeable, and the course in excellent condition.

Now, to understand the point I am going to make (and yes, there is a point), you need to understand that I customarily golf in the low 80’s – that would be temperature, not strokes. My actual stroke count is higher – sometimes lots higher.

Well, for this tournament, it was waaaaay higher – even stratospheric if I want to be totally honest about it.

To keep from doing something which would get me on the front page of the local paper, I try to use occasions such as this to focus on what I am learning. There were two parallel thoughts that I mused on while I bumped along in the golf cart from hole to sorry hole. First was some self-talk that went like this:

“OK, Pat – so what did you expect? You haven’t had a club in your hand for 8 months, you never practice, you didn’t warm up before hitting the first hole, it’s early in the morning, and isn’t it wonderful that you don’t have to make your living doing this.” These and similar thoughts kept me from throwing my clubs.

The other stream of thought was about how similar this situation is to the task of managing. How often do we throw people into the job of management, and like a golfer who has had a set of golf lessons along the way somewhere, stick them into a real life situation and expect them to do an excellent job.

They don’t have time to practice (they’re busy playing every day); they may or may not know the course but even if they are a member of the club, the pin placement on the green is changed daily; there is no or little time to “warm-up” – they are expected to be productive from the first hole; their poor play can negatively impact the rest of the members of the foursome; their team members might give them suggestions about how to improve their play but chances are pretty good that they don’t know how to correct a bad golf swing either; and, of course, if you don’t have the right tools, it will be difficult to get the results you are looking for.
There are more similarities but I didn’t want to torture the metaphor to death.

The point is, we know how to help an athlete who wants to improve his/her golf game. We provide an excellent coach, give on-going feedback about progress, ensure that the equipment is adequate for the skill level of the person, build in much more practice (under supervision) than playing time at the beginning, work on weak areas of the game, and keep score so that the person knows that she/he is improving.

This is the theory behind management development as well, but, just as I ended up in a tournament woefully underprepared, and inadequately skilled, the realities of the workplace are that we have managers who, unfortunately, are not up to the task either.

The big difference, however, is this. In golf, I know immediately if I have hit a poor shot. (So does everyone else, but that’s another issue). As a manager, I may not receive timely feedback that lets me know what I have to correct, and the expert coaching that will tell and show me how to do it correctly.

Then I made a 10-foot putt, and a straight drive. That’s as far as I got in my golf musings – it was sufficient, I thought, to warrant writing off the cost of the tournament as a business expense. And if not the cost of the tournament, surely I could write off the new clubs I bought after the tournament, to improve my game. After all – it’s mainly about the clubs, right?

© 2008, Pitsel and Associates Ltd.