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Who really decides? How to play delegation poker.
A few weeks ago I came across this game you can play at work and the simplicity of it is genius. The truth is I didn’t know a whole lot about it, but I do know it comes from a management 3.0 book and it’s a great activity to play with your team.
Often managers think they know who has authority for decisions and who decides what, so playing this game brings to light just how blurry authority can be, even in a tight team. Trust me, surprises will come up.
So how do you play? First, download the delegation poker cards. They look like this.
They outline the 7 levels of delegation. From 1. Tell ‘Do this because I said so” to 7. Delegate, where the manager delegates full authority over the decision. For instance, staff probably don’t need a managers permission to use the bathroom. Thats probably a 7, at least, I hope it is.
Next, get your team together, and give them all a bunch of the cards. Everyone gets all 7.
Then, you write down a list of tasks on the left hand side of a big sheet of paper that the team would decide. Things like
- Where to work?
