SKILLS

The Road Ahead: Developing an “Innovation Culture” at The Country Club of Virginia

The management team and staff at The Country Club of Virginia (CCV) in Richmond, Va. has always been at the forefront of implementing progressive and effective concepts to enhance club operations and member value and engagement. But 2020 brought a “new reality,” says General Manager Phil Kiester, that caused even CCV as an industry leader to realize that its usual approach of “evolving to excellence through continuous improvement” needed to give way to a faster-paced focus on innovation that “involves an entirely different mindset.” In this episode, Kiester and Ryan Bender, CCV’s Food & Beverage Director, provide insights into how the club has set out to apply the lessons learned from the pandemic to develop and sustain an “innovation culture” that can now “be incorporated into our day-to-day [operations]” as full activity resumes, Bender says, “without the natural stress and urgency” experienced during the events of the past year.