The Right People on the Bus

Ryan Tracy, 59club’s Managing Partner for Canada, considers the 
challenges of assembling a strong team on a club’s board. 

Ryan Tracy

59club Canada, Managing Partner

In Jim Collins’ classic book on business, Good to Great, he states that you need the right people on the bus and in the right seats before 
deciding where it’s going: “Great vision without great people is irrelevant.”

In a 2023 Club Study survey, we asked: what is a more important factor to effective club governance – board recruitment or board 
education? The answer came back as follows: 

2 out of 3 GMs think board education is more important than board recruitment.

There’s no doubting that proper board education is paramount to the success of the club, but the results left me a little unsettled. 
I can’t help but wonder if the reason why more voted for education over recruitment was because it’s the one there’s seemingly 
more influence over from a Club Manager’s perspective. After all, the GM doesn’t pick the board. And some of those gaining board seats 
will eventually be reviewing their performance!

Board recruitment is tough for many reasons, the first of which is that many are simply not interested in the job. The most “passionate” members often have an axe to grind. In light 
of this, it’s good practice to have a skills matrix to vet board candidates. I don’t believe there is an industry standard but the good ones filter experience and determine if you’ve served on a 
board before and to what capacity. Professional expertise is examined to see where technical skills may fall. It’s possible that entrepreneurs and financiers, for example, also have vision and are trustworthy but it’s difficult to know. 
This is exactly why the GM needs to be involved. They’re the best bet into any intel on board candidates. How can we find members with 
open minds, who are prepared to put the club above their own interests? 

I started with Jim Collins and will end with him as well: “First Who ... Then What. We expected that good-to-great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats—and then they figured out where to drive it. The old adage “people are your most important asset” turns out to be wrong. People are not your most important asset. The right people are.”