I like to play golf, but I am not a good golfer. I like to watch golf on TV hoping that I might learn something that might help me. Mostly what I learn is that the guys who play golf on TV are so much better than me that I would have to be a much better golfer just to be able to figure out what I could learn from them.

I was watching the end of the year golf tournament from California and I actually did pick up something that I think is useful. Usually the only announcer that even remotely interests me is David Feherty, who is responsible for such great golf witticisms as “…That ball landed as softly as a butterfly with sore feet.”, but I digress. The announcer today was talking about one of the great golfers playing who “had all the shots”, but was trying them in all the wrong places.

That is to say the golfer had the capability to hit the ball 240 yards on the fly over the water to the green on a par five in two shots, but probably shouldn’t try to do that from a downhill lie, in the rough, behind a tree. Sure enough, when he tried the increased difficulty shot, he didn’t execute it, and compounded his problem. He went from trying to make an eagle, to struggling (and eventually failing) to make par.

The comment that caught my attention was that with the talent that the golfer possessed, and being so capable of executing a standard shot so spectacularly, was not to try and execute a spectacular and risky shot from a difficult position (in the rough, behind a tree) but rather to execute a good shot to put the ball back into a standard situation (the fairway) and then executing spectacularly from there.

Even for a relative hacker like me, this meant working on “course management”.

There will always be difficulties encountered in golf. There is always a risk – reward associated with how you deal with them. However, difficult situations are just that, difficult to deal with. It is always possible to make a bad situation worse. Sometimes it is better to take your short term medicine, put the ball back in play where you have a chance of “executing spectacularly” from a easier, more familiar situation and making par.

So, even with all of the golf allegories, we can look at “course management” when it comes to running our businesses. The idea here is that in many cases you may find yourself or your business in a difficult position, where the best course of action may not be to immediately “go for the green” and try to immediately recover the situation. The correct course of action may in fact be to take you and your business out of the difficulty and to put yourself back into a “normal” or “standard” situation where it may be much easier, and therefore much more probable to execute the “spectacular shot” and achieve success.

Recovery sometimes is best made as a two step process. The first step is to get out of your difficulties and back into a standard position. The second step is then to use all the talent available to you to execute that step to success.

On the other hand, when I am out on the golf course, I find it incredibly hard to remember these types of lessons. I seem to just want to hit the ball...hard. Maybe that is why I am not such a good golfer.