The most progressive companies create a culture of entrepreneurism, but at some point, standards have to be imposed. Consider the early career of Matt Galvin, president and CEO of Morningstar Golf & Hospitality, a Princeton, New Jersey-based owner-operator group.
Though he lacked any golf industry experience, Galvin was hired fresh out of grad school by American Golf Corporation in the early 1990s. “The culture of AGC was entrepreneurial, so the executive team was willing to teach all these young guys the golf business—for which I’m forever grateful,” Galvin reflects. “They had a bell in the hall that would ring whenever a new course got signed up. You were rewarded for your guerrilla marketing skills.”
Eventually, things became more corporate, simply because they had to. “We were on our way to having thousands of employees, and at that stage you can’t wing it anymore,” he says.
Galvin decided from that experience that standardized practices should be all about lowering risk and adding efficiencies, not erasing individual style at each facility. “You don’t want an interior designer 1,000 miles away picking out décor and furniture for people he’s never met,” Galvin notes. “That’s where you’ve lost all your entrepreneurial energy and gone to a cookie-cutter approach.”