Column Operations

How to Drive Change Faster

Rachel Zabonick-Chonko May 29, 2019

“When you need your company to change, like adapting to industry trends or offering new products or services, the change often doesn’t come fast enough.”

This quote was stated by Karl Koutroupas, the vice president of strategy and customer insights at Exerp, during a recent webinar on how clubs can “Drive Change Faster.”

According to Koutroupas, there are a variety of roadblocks that can prevent a club from driving change quickly, including:

IT challenges
Problems with vendors
Legal and InfoSec “roadblocks”
Several failed pilots
Other projects with higher priority slow down or stop altogether

So, what can you do as a club operator to drive change faster? Koutroupas shared four tips.

1. Form focused, small teams.

“Set up innovative teams built for speed,” he shared. These groups should be small, focused and co-located, meaning the team should be central and embedded in the market the change will impact.

2. Mature your Project Management Office (PMO).

According to Koutroupas, this involves executing the right projects, the right way, by the right people. “This will maximize value delivered and create efficiencies to increase speed to market of projects,” he said.

3. Adapt lean methodology.

The core of lean methodology involves building products or services to meet the needs of the customer. Koutroupas explained that first, you start with the customer journey to identify opportunities. Then quickly iterate on solutions to those opportunities. Build minimal viable products, test them and gather data-driven insights to assess the performance of those solutions. For anything that works, deploy the solution across your fitness chain.

4. Invest in a best-in-class member management solution (MMS).

As Koutroupas explains, characteristics of a great MMS that promotes fast change include: