The Post-Pandemic Conundrum
A Viewpoint on Success, Governance, and What Happens After the Surge
For years, private clubs were focused on a familiar challenge: how to attract and retain members. Governance reform became a meaningful priority across the industry. Boards worked to clarify their roles, and the General Manager / Chief Operating Officer model, championed and refined through Club Management Association of America, strengthened the distinction between oversight and execution. Professional management gained clarity. The industry was, in many respects, maturing.
Then the pandemic arrived, and clubs did not simply adapt. They recalibrated in real time. Dining rooms became markets. Teams became logistics coordinators. Leaders made daily decisions with incomplete information and compressed timelines. Members rediscovered their clubs not as optional amenities, but as essential places of connection. In many ways, the crisis accelerated operational progress that might otherwise have taken years.
When the immediate crisis subsided, a different pressure emerged. Labor markets tightened dramatically. Staffing became difficult. Wage expectations rose. At first, this was destabilizing. Over time, however, it prompted overdue reflection. Clubs began investing more intentionally in team development and compensation. Break rooms that had long been purely functional were redesigned. Team dining improved. In some cases, clubs added wellness spaces or quiet rooms for team members. For years, team areas had been overlooked. Suddenly, they became symbolic. The message shifted from efficiency to respect. Hospitality, many were reminded, begins behind the scenes.
As internal cultures were being strengthened, demand accelerated externally. Waitlists returned, and in many markets they grew longer than anyone expected. Prior to the pandemic, roughly one in five clubs operated with meaningful waitlists. Within a few years, that number had more than doubled in several regions. Initiation fees increased, sometimes steadily and sometimes dramatically. Capital projects accelerated. Financial confidence returned. For boards and leadership teams that had navigated a decade of cautious recovery, the surge felt validating.
“It’s harder to keep and A than to get one”
Yet success introduces a different kind of complexity. There is a line in the film Dangerous Minds that resonates in this moment: it is harder to keep an A than to get one. Growth through adversity demands creativity and resilience. Sustaining excellence during prosperity demands discipline. Members are paying more. Usage levels are elevated. Expectations have recalibrated upward. At the same time, financial pressure has eased in many clubs. Initiation income has strengthened capital positions. Operating performance has improved. Paradoxically, that is when governance can become most vulnerable. When urgency fades, clarity can drift.
The General Manager / COO structure was designed to create alignment. Boards set vision and policy. Management executes strategy and leads the team. During crisis, those lines often become clearer because trust and decisiveness are required. During prosperity, ambiguity can quietly reemerge. Should admissions continue at the same pace? Should initiation fees rise again? Should capital projects accelerate further? Is current demand structural or cyclical? These are reasonable questions. But how they are navigated matters. When boards move from strategic oversight into operational detail, even with good intentions, tension can surface. Managers feel it. Team members sense it. Members eventually experience it.
The post-pandemic conversation is often framed around numbers. How long is the waitlist? What are peer clubs charging? How much capital has been generated? Those metrics are relevant, but they are not the conundrum. The deeper question is whether clubs can maintain the discipline they built during adversity now that abundance has returned. Will they continue investing in team culture when labor markets normalize? Will they preserve governance clarity when financial pressure softens? Will they treat this surge as permanent or as a moment that requires stewardship?
History suggests demand eventually stabilizes. Economic cycles turn. Expectations, however, rarely retreat. The clubs that endure will not be the ones that simply rode the surge. They will be the ones that used it to strengthen alignment, culture, and long-term clarity. The pandemic forced clubs to reexamine relevance. The labor shortage forced them to reexamine how they value their team. The surge now forces them to reexamine discipline.
The question is not whether clubs are strong. Many are. The question is whether that strength is being managed with intention. Because in private clubs, as in classrooms and markets alike, it may indeed be harder to keep an A than to earn one. And the true measure of maturity is not how an organization performs under pressure, but how it governs itself when pressure temporarily disappears.
