Here’s a little corporate truth bomb: the most important meeting of the week might not be on your calendar. It’s happening on the golf course, over whiskey, or in a corner booth where you weren’t invited.
Welcome to the “good old boys’ clubs.” Those exclusive, all-male tribes where deals are made, careers are boosted, and secrets are swapped like poker chips.
As Julianna Newland puts it in the book All Up in Your Bizness – Managing Your Business Crap, the boys’ club is “a form of tribalism, men helping men.” Think of it as an ancient rite of business survival: you scratch my back, I’ll make sure you get the corner office.
It’s part networking, part survivalism, part… inbreeding. (Don’t panic — the professional kind.) If you’re struggling to picture it, just rewind to high school. “All the male jocks would sit together at lunch and eat like pigs.” Now replace the varsity jackets with tailored suits, swap the cafeteria for a country club, and add a few glasses of Scotch. Voilà! Your modern corporate version.
Inside the club, the perks flow freely: insider intel, preferential promotions, golf outings that somehow count as “meetings.” The catch? If you’re not in, you’re out, which often means stalled career progress and an inbox full of “maybe next year” emails.
Here’s the twist: male bonding isn’t the villain here. Golf is fine. Long lunches are fine. Even the occasional cigar is fine. The problem starts when the boys’ club becomes the only fast lane to success. That’s when meritocracy quietly leaves the building probably because no one invited it to lunch.
The good news? These clubs aren’t as untouchable as they once were. Assertive women have started pulling up chairs at the table (or the 9th hole), sometimes reminding the boys to finish chewing before speaking. And when that happens, the whole dynamic shifts. After all, diversity, unlike golf, actually benefits everyone in the long run.
So here’s a radical suggestion, gentlemen: invite your female colleagues to the golf outing, the happy hour, or the secret Friday lunch. Who knows, as All Up in Your Bizness – Managing Your Business Crap puts it, “maybe you’ll learn a thing or two.” Like how to close a deal without accidentally building an echo chamber.
Because in today’s corporate game, the smartest move isn’t protecting the club. It’s expanding it.
Written by : PcComputerGuy
