Training is the How. Culture is the Why.
Most clubs treat training as onboarding, compliance, basic tasks. Something you complete and move past. Exceptional clubs understand that training is how you build culture.
Culture is what your team believes about why they work here, how they should treat members, and what role they play in creating exceptional experiences. It shapes every decision they make and every interaction they have with members.
Training is how you make that culture real every single day.
This framework came from a recent conversation with James Cronk, who has spent 25 years working with both private clubs and public golf facilities as a consultant and founder of Golf Industry Guru. His perspective reveals something critical: private clubs often underestimate the connection between intentional training and sustainable culture because they assume members will return regardless of the experience.
Public golf cannot afford that assumption. They earn every customer, every round, every dollar. That competitive pressure forces clarity about culture and discipline around training.
Private clubs have an opportunity to learn from that mindset before complacency becomes the default.
The Complacency Risk
James’s work across both private clubs and public golf facilities reveals a fundamental difference in how they approach culture and training.
Public golf facilities operate with a fundamental reality: they must earn that customer’s visit every single time.
If the experience falters, the customer chooses a different course next weekend. If service declines, revenue disappears. If the team stops caring, the business fails.
That competitive pressure creates discipline. It forces operators to define what exceptional service looks like, train their teams to deliver it consistently, and measure whether it is working.
Private clubs operate under different conditions. Members have joined the community. They are coming back tomorrow whether the experience was exceptional or adequate.
That stability creates opportunity. Long-term relationships. Institutional knowledge. Staff who understand member preferences at a granular level.
But it also creates risk.
When a club stops earning the member experience every day, complacency can set in. Standards drift. Culture becomes whatever happens when no one is paying attention.
The members who joined because of the culture eventually realize the culture no longer exists.
What this means for club leaders:
You do not have to compete for your members the way public golf competes for customers. But you should operate as if you do.
The discipline that comes from earning the experience every day is what prevents the slow decline that leads boards to replace general managers every four years.
Defining Employee Culture Versus Service Culture
One critical distinction James makes: many clubs confuse two different things – employee culture and service culture.
Service culture is what you deliver to members. Fast pace. Exceptional food. Seamless experiences. High-touch service.
Employee culture is what you deliver to your team. Clear expectations about how managers treat people. Transparent communication about club direction. An articulated return on investment for why someone should work here.
You can have a strong service culture and a weak employee culture. Your members receive excellent experiences while your team feels undervalued, unclear about expectations, and disengaged from the mission.
That disconnect does not sustain.
What this means for club leaders:
Define your employee culture with the same rigor you define your service culture.
What is the employee value proposition? What do people learn by working here? What benefits and perks do they receive? What kind of people do they work alongside? What makes this a place worth investing their time and energy?
If you cannot answer those questions clearly, your team is answering them themselves. And their answers may not align with what you hope the culture is.
The Three Things Employees Always Want More Of
Research across industries reveals a consistent pattern that James Cronk sees validated in golf operations everywhere. When employees are surveyed about their workplace experience, most areas score well. People generally like their managers. They understand their responsibilities. They feel safe.
But three areas consistently score low: communication, training, and recognition.
- Employees want more communication about how they contribute to the club’s success and why their role matters.
- They want more training to develop skills, keep their minds engaged, and feel they are progressing in their careers.
- They want more recognition. Sometimes public, sometimes private. Just acknowledgment that their work matters and is seen.
These are not complicated requests. But they require intentionality.
What this means for club leaders:
Training addresses all three employee needs simultaneously.
When you invest in training, you communicate that employees matter enough to develop. You provide the skill-building they crave. You create opportunities to recognize growth and excellence.
Training is one of the primary tools for building culture, not something separate from it.
Why Clubs Budget for Sand But Not for People
A club will budget $50,000 for bunker sand but hesitate to invest $5,000 in training 150 employees.
The bunker sand is visible. Tangible. Members notice when bunkers look poor. The return on investment feels clear.
Training feels intangible. Harder to measure. The return on investment is less obvious.
But consider what happens when you underinvest in training.
Your beverage cart staff do not know how to upsell. Your servers do not ask members why they are dining today so they can tailor the experience. Your team does not understand what makes your club culturally distinct, so they describe it the way someone who has been oriented would describe it, not the way someone who belongs would describe it.
The cost of not training is invisibly eroding the member experience every single day.
What this means for club leaders:
Training is infrastructure. Just as you maintain your bunkers, greens, and facilities, you must maintain the knowledge and skills of the team delivering the member experience.
Technology has made training more accessible and affordable than ever. The barrier is not cost. The barrier is recognizing training as essential rather than optional.
Measuring What Matters
You cannot manage what you do not measure.
Most clubs operate without sufficient data to make informed decisions about their culture and training effectiveness.
They do not survey employees about whether they understand the club’s direction. They do not measure whether new hires can articulate the employee value proposition after onboarding. They do not track whether training correlates with improved service scores or reduced turnover.
Instead, they make decisions based on anecdotal feedback from the loudest voices.
The problem with anecdotal feedback is that it typically comes from the 10%. The members or employees who are most vocal, most influential, and often most resistant to change.
The 10% are not representative. But when you lack data, they become the default source of information.
What this means for club leaders:
James’s advice: Invest in measurement. Survey your employees about what they need more of. Track whether managers are communicating consistently. Measure whether training is closing skill gaps or simply fulfilling compliance requirements.
Data reveals whether your culture initiatives are working or whether you are solving for the 10% while the other 90% remain disengaged.
Building a Culture That Sustains
Culture and training are not one-time initiatives. They are daily requirements.
You do not perfect your service and stop. You do not build a strong culture and declare it finished.
Culture erodes the moment you stop investing in it. Training becomes outdated the moment conditions change.
The clubs that sustain exceptional cultures understand this. They treat culture-building and team development as ongoing disciplines, not projects with completion dates.
They hold monthly management meetings where every manager shares one insight they learned from training that will improve the member experience, employee experience, or financial performance.
They survey employees regularly about whether they are receiving enough communication, training, and recognition, and they act on the feedback.
They recognize that the investment in their team is what prevents the slow drift toward complacency that eventually costs general managers their jobs and boards their credibility.
Moving Forward
Training is the how. Culture is the why.
Public golf facilities earn every customer, every round, every dollar. That competitive pressure creates discipline around defining culture and training teams to deliver it.
Private clubs have stability that public facilities do not. But stability without discipline becomes complacency.
The opportunity is to borrow the mindset that comes from having to earn the experience every day while leveraging the advantages that come from long-term member relationships.
Define your employee culture as clearly as you define your service culture. Invest in training as infrastructure. Measure whether your culture initiatives are working. Build systems that sustain culture when leadership changes, boards turn over, or market conditions shift.
When you do that, you create a culture that does not erode. You create a culture that sustains.
This article draws from Episode 107 of Clubs Made Meaningful, where we explore how training builds culture and what private clubs can learn from public golf’s competitive mindset with James Cronk, Co-Founder, Guru Collective and Creator of Golf Industry Guru.
Schedule a 30-minute discovery call. We will show you how strategic clarity shapes culture and creates the conditions for lasting member value. Want more content like this? Sign up for Clubs Made Meaningful Insights: original frameworks and ideas on identity, belonging, and member experience, delivered weekly to your inbox.
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Clubs Made Meaningful
A Podcast by Sussner
