Learning from the Links: What Systems Thinking Teaches About Golf and Management
Book Description
The June 1998 issue of Golf Digest contained the first-ever ranking of the golf handicaps of the CEOs of America's largest corporations. The magazine surveyed the 300 publicly traded corporations in the Fortune 500 and succeeded in obtaining 110 U.S. Golf Association-sanctioned handicaps. Soon afterward, The New York Times commissioned a well-known compensation expert to correlate the handicaps wi...
MoreThe June 1998 issue of Golf Digest contained the first-ever ranking of the golf handicaps of the CEOs of America's largest corporations. The magazine surveyed the 300 publicly traded corporations in the Fortune 500 and succeeded in obtaining 110 U.S. Golf Association-sanctioned handicaps. Soon afterward, The New York Times commissioned a well-known compensation expert to correlate the handicaps with the performance of the corporations. He found that over the previous three years the firms that generated the best total returns to shareholders were led by the CEOs with the lowest handicaps. The results were statistically significant, and The Times speculated as to why this was the case. Were natural leaders also natural athletes? Did time on the golf course build social skills and personal contacts that allowed golfers to make better business deals? Perhaps the CEOs spent years caddying as youths, developing golf skills and gaining exposure to business jargon early in life? And so on. These theories may have merit, but there is a deeper and more direct connection between golf and management that is readily seen by applying systems thinking to both. For golf, as a game, continually challenges us to improve the performance of a complex system (the human organism) through focused attention and the practice of well-disciplined routines. As pro golfer Tom Watson once observed, "To me, a great golfer illustrates two very precise pictures. One is proper fundamentals. The other is unencumbered motion. Without the first, it follows that the second is impossible to produce." This is why I believe that the process of a golfer trying to play and improve his game is systemically identical to that of a manager trying to control and improve the performance of an organization. Both are faced with the challenge of enhancing the performance of systems that are far too complex for them to understand in any detail - and whose details, in any event, are inaccessible in real time. Golf offers first-hand experience in the difficulties of organizational change and demonstrates the huge gap between good ideas and effective action. In short, the game gives its devotees a glimpse of the subtle relationship between discipline and freedom in complex systems. It shows how sound fundamentals, drilled into habit, can facilitate the unencumbered motion characteristic of expert performances in all kinds of complex environments, ranging from the human body to teams to communities and corporations. Golf also illustrates a basic dilemma - the futility of practice without timely, specific feedback - that also occurs in management.
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