Case study: Country Club of Virginia

Creating Avenues for Creativity

by Ann McDonald (editor@clubandresortbusiness.com)
April 2007
 

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At the Country Club of Virginia in Richmond, innovation is not just a buzzword, it’s a job requirement. Staff members at the club pride themselves on their ability to come up with great new ideas and are regularly awarded blue ribbons at the CMAA’s Idea Fair for their creative thinking.

The CC of Virginia first decided to participate in the CMAA?Ideas Fair as a way to celebrate the creative thinking of its staff, reports General Manager William Harris. Staff members think on a year-round basis about ways they can improve the club.

Harris keeps the staff of 400-plus motivated through an ongoing “Just an Idea” program, where employees are recognized monthly for ideas and suggestions. Ideas from this program get passed along to managers and supervisors, to either be implemented on their own or merged with other concepts for improvement.

“By year-end, we have quite a collection of new concepts,” Harris says. “And sometimes even that one great idea keeps us a half-step ahead of the competition.”

Every year, the club also holds its own Ideas Fair, where staff members compete against each other to come up with the best concepts. The winner of the club’s Idea Fair gets a week of paid vacation and a chance to present that idea at the “big show”—the CMAA Idea Fair.

If that employee then comes away from the CMAA?competition with a first-prize blue ribbon, they get another week of paid vacation, says Yvan Lampron, Executive Director of Clubhouse Operations.

Harris’ leadership is instrumental in motivating the CC?of Virginia staff to come up with fresh ideas, says Lampron. “He believes a lot in what the employees contribute to the club,” Lampron notes. “He really stimulates them to constantly come up with and present new ideas.”

The staff at the Country Club of Virginia has a real sense of pride in being one of the CMAA’s biggest participants, and of the club’s record of winning at least one blue ribbon each year.

In fact, taking home just one first prize is considered a disappointment. “[Winning just one] is a weak year for us; it makes us want to work a lot harder for the next year’s fair,” says Lampron.

Blue-Ribbon Idea: Time-Lapse Photography The Country Club of Virginia documented its year-long golf course renovation through a series of time-lapse photographs that were featured on the club’s Web site. During the golf course’s renovation—which involved moving 170,000 cubic yards of dirt, constructing a hill on the fairly flat course, adding a modern target practice area, and transforming the course from a par-69 to a par-70—a camera was secured in place high atop the clubhouse, and programmed to take a picture every two hours. Members were then able to go online to see the entire transformation in “real time.” William Harris, General Manager, says the club also made good use of the time-lapse photos at its annual meeting. “It was a nice presentation,” says Harris. “Having lived with the project every day, no one really appreciated the magnitude of the undertaking until [its development] could be seen every few hours through the photographs.”