Go Ahead and Play — We Trust You
Seidman
A story about the “honor system” adopted by nearly 550 golf courses in Scotland caught my eye recently. Many courses have been allowing golfers to pay their green fees by dropping payment envelopes into an unmonitored box. As The New York Times story said, “The course is run on the honor system, with no attendant in sight.” The story goes on to say:
Is this a quaint Scottish custom or a shrewd business strategy? It is both. In the home of golf, honesty has proved to be the best policy for small, rural clubs that are unable to afford full-time staff.
The honesty policy seems to be working in the country that created golf. At one course, only about two percent to five percent of the 1,400 golfers who play the course each year do not pay.
While the honor system is not as common in the U.S.. — only a sprinkling of the 15,979 U.S. courses have boxes for green fees, mostly in rural areas, says the story — the policy seems to reflect the core traditions and values of golf: the qualities of honesty and integrity that have shaped golf over the years and make pariahs out of cheaters.
The Scottish honor system extends trust to the players — the best way to build and rebuild trust. I believe this sense of trust “seeps” into the topsoil of any perfectly manicured course and helps produce values-driven behavior during the game. Does this sound a bit like an idealistic golfer’s dream? A couple of real-world examples may help make this point more clear.
World-class golfer J.P. Hayes exemplified this standard of behavior last year when he disqualified himself from a qualifying tournament, which effectively stopped him from earning a full-time spot on the 2009 PGA season. After realizing that he likely played a hole with a prototype ball that he had been given by Titleist to test out — one that had not been approved for play — he confessed his mistake to tournament officials. Could he have gotten away with the mistake if he just kept quiet? He likely could have. But Hayes said that anyone else on the PGA Tour in his situation “would have done the same thing.”
Former PGA champion David Toms faced a similar predicament in 2005 while playing at the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews in Scotland, as I wrote about in my book. Toms explained to the bewildered officials that he might or might not have done something wrong: On the 17th hole of his second round, he missed a putt and then strode to the hole and tapped in the ball. The problem? The ball might have been wobbling slightly in the wind — and it is against the rules to hit a ball while it is still in motion. Because he wasn’t sure, Toms decided to disqualify himself even though officials said he could continue playing.
Companies can learn a lot from the honor system. In business, trust builds real value in the form of deep connections with others — employees, customers and investors. In an environment of trust, good things happen. If, as an employer, you trust people to do their best, people will feel empowered to take risks, eager to invent new things and ready to contribute whatever they can.
Building trust works in whatever game you play — whether you push a ball or a pen.
Last 5 posts by Dov Seidman
• Why We Can't 'Motivate' Engagement - August 19th, 2010
• The Economy: Don't Hit the Reset Button - May 19th, 2010
• Is There 'Honest Tea' on Wall Street? - May 14th, 2010
• Inspirational Shame in the Era of Behavior - April 14th, 2010
• Philosophy Is Back in Business - January 13th, 2010
