MikeS:
Here's a real example of the type of thing I mean. As most know my club just went through a restoration with Gil Hanse. Our club had certainly never done a restoration before in its 85 year history and so none of us on that committee had done one. So what did we know about how to go about it? Not that much really except some of us had seemingly become actively proud of our Ross heritage and the primary point of our mission (written) was to restore and preserve our Ross heritage as best as we could given 75 years of change and evolution (by up to 6-7 architects and numerous green committees).
And I think everyone on the committee was into that goal but when you get into the nitty gritty of all the little things the people involved are concerned about that goal does not exactly stay front and center--at least it didn't with us!
That's the first thing I learned! I went into this whole thing pretty optimistic. In the end I learned that to get some of the things you really want you have to give--and most important you have to REALLY start to know where to give and where to get and the clever ways to accomplish that. (After a time we figured out how to factor in what we came to refer to as "the fudge factor").
That whole process can get pretty political but at our club I think it was done well and in the spirit of good compromise. And I learned a lot from Gil too, basically just by watching him. The way it happened with us was he presented us with a Master Plan of what he thought was best for the restoration of the golf course. Then over the next year or so and numerous meetings the committee went through Gil's Master Plan (with him, by the way--Gil came to an amazing amount of our meetings) and some things were dropped from his Master plan or somewhat changed. Dropping restoring our old "top shot" bunkers was clearly disappointing to Gil and some of us were sort of concerned he'd get upset and walk away---again, since none of us had done this kind of thing before.
At one point the committee chairman asked me to call Gil and ask him how far his plan could be taken apart before he really would walk away. He didn't exactly answer that but he did say that he expects all clubs to change things from his original presentation and that's just the way it goes. He did say though that if the club really massively changed his restoration plan at some point he would ask the club what they were hiring him for his advice for! Master Plans ain't exactly cheap either, so Gil's point is a good one in that respect alone!
So the committee over that time completed the restoration Master Plan and started to present it to the membership and that's when the dynamics began.
Some were curious about it, some didn't mind it but didn't see why it was necessary and a fairly large and diverse contingent took real umbrage for one reason or another and fought it hard. Some fought various details of it and even a few campaigned to kill the whole thing. A couple in particular got really aggressive and ocassionally things got personal. At that point we began to work through some compromises with some of those who really were against certain things and the committee had to consider those compromises, vote on them and in a number of cases sent the plan back to Gil to redraw. That was hard because some of those compromises were a bit out of the basic logic or our mission. Trees were the primary issue in most of those early compromises.
And after that cycle we finally presented the plan to the membership to get their sense of whether this was what they wanted and were willing to pay for.
At that presentation meeting to the memberhip in September we did make some mistakes in basically how to show respect for membership opinion but the sense of it seemed to be approval so the Board of Directors going on that sense voted to approve the plan and budget it but apparently they only voted to sort of approve it. But because of that September meeting the club also decided to create what they called "forums" and they scheduled four of them through that winter for the entire membership to come and question anything at all on the master plan.
That whole "forum" process was the most educational to me. The first three of them involved going through six holes at a time in as much detail as anyone wanted and the last forum involved a practice range change (that was my idea and really ran into a pocket of harsh resistance). The first forum was fully attended and the questions were numerous but our answers and explanations were really good, really logical and one could just see the positive effect happening before our eyes.
Every point of the plan that was seriously questioned by anyone was voted on right then and there but in retrospect we (the committee) basically won almost every vote to preserve what we were presenting and I really believe we won all those votes because it didn't take even those totally uneducated members in architecture more than about one hour to start to see the logic and commonsense in this type of restoration given the way we explained it to them.
The next meeting had about half the attendence and the third one very few. Obviously they must have felt they had their say and they could understand not only what we were doing but also the logic of the architecture! The fourth forum basically involving my range idea lost and was given up on the plan! What in effect that did was to probably make the restoration of Ross's 10th hole (the fairway corridor which is our range) impossible to ever do.
At that point the Board did formally approve and budget the restoration master plan and scheduled its implimentation. To my amazement though, those few who were really opposing some things wouldn't go away and they kept campaigning against it. Unfortunately, the committee went through one last review of those things those people were most against. That's when I think I really learned what sometimes needs to happen to constructively compromise. The 10th green (one that Coore said was one of the most interesting Maxwells he'd seen) was on the chopping block and I personally waved off a design idea of my own on #15 to save the 10th green!
And then we went into implimentation and now the first and by far the most important phase is over and done (green expansions, regrassing the greens, all the bunkers restored and some reworked or added or subtracted and a new redesign on the green-end of #7 and some fairway expansons and a lot of tree removal).
The first phase was in play last year and from what I can see it's a blow away success----there really doesn't seem to be a single complaint even from those who fought us so hard for so long. Basically everyone seems to love it.
The second and much smaller phase will happen this fall (tees and more fairway expansions and probalby some more tree work) and after that I hope we'll start to impliment the "Ideal Maintenance Meld" for GMGC that should start to become apparent in 2005 and after. But that process will probably be another haul, I suspect, and it will basically all be done inside our Green Committee. Talk about education--that'll be the ultimate test! If we can do that successfully, though, I expect the membership to be even happier than they'd ever imagined.
It was a really interesting process, although it is ongoing---an education in architecture, in construction and implimentation and the details of it but mostly it was an educaiton in how to deal with a membership and how not to. A couple of my architect friends told me before we did this what it'd be like but I didn't exactly listen to them. In retrospect it's incredible how accurate they were---and the amazing thing is they didn't even know my membership. That's precisely why I think collaboration amongst clubs is so important---club to club no matter what the culture or make up doing this type of thing and taking it successfully through any membership is very similar--much more so than I every would have suspected. Basically it's a real logic---it just has to be presented correctly!
I think most every regular contributor to this website which basically concentrates on classic courses and classic architectural principles would be just excellent on a committee putting together a really good restoration master plan.
But presenting it to a membership, going through the things one needs to go through on a green committee or master plan committee---well, that's a different matter altogether. I'm afraid that much of what I read on here in that regard, particularly the critical tenor of it regarding committees and members, that some of even our best and most knowledgeable contributors on here who have never been part of this type of committee process and consequently have little understanding of it and what it takes, could be a real disaster in that regard.
I'm sorry to say that but it's what I truly believe from being on here so long, and, again, that's another good reason I think a section on here called the "Green Committee" would be a great idea and a great education---BOTH WAYS.