Delegation Boards / Poker
One of the great Catch-22s of business management is the issue of What, How and When to delegate. On the one hand there are the managers who will often sigh they can’t delegate a task because “it’s too essential the objectives are met,” and on the other are their staff crying out they just can’t get things done because they are being micromanaged. Who is right and what to do?
As our brains are hardwired for visual information, a complex issue like this often benefits from being visualized. And this is exactly what Management 3.0 thinker Jurgen Appelo (2016) did in his book Managing for Happiness. The ideas Appelo came up with are the Delegation Boards and the game of Delegation Poker.
Delegation Boards
The Delegation Board, sometimes referred to as an Empowerment Board, is an easy to implement tool to create openness and transparency of expectations between managers and their teams. Basically, it’s either a physical board or a spreadsheet that vertically lists the key decision points of a project that a manager might (or might not) delegate to his or her team. Horizontally, the board is divided into a number of columns, each of which represents a level of delegation. In his book, Appelo identifies seven levels of delegation: Tell, Sell, Consult, Agree, Advise, Inquire and Delegate. In the header video of this post, Jurgen Appelo explains his take on these different levels of delegation.
Ideally, managers and their teams would come together at the beginning of a new project to identify the key decision areas that will be involved in the successful completion of the task. Once the decision points have been identified, the next step is to decide the level of delegation for each of these points. Although there are no right or wrong answers to this, the question is: How do you decide the appropriate level of delegation? This is where Appelo’s game of Delegation Poker comes in.
Playing Delegation Poker
In Appelo’s version of delegation poker, the game is played with teams of 3-7 members all of whom hold a set of seven cards, each card representing a specific level of delegation. At the start of a round, the players are presented with a case to discuss. An example given by Appelo is:
“You wish to involve your team in the recruitment of new staff. What level of delegation would you give them for hiring decisions concerning various job candidates?”
Each player will then privately choose the card which best reflects how far they would delegate the decision process if they were the manager. Next, at the count of three, all players simultaneously reveal their cards. The choices made will (and should) probably be different, so the next step is to have those with the highest and lowest levels of delegation motivate their choices. This should lead to a discussion during which the group will come to a consensus about the most appropriate level of delegation.
Of course, the intention of this game is not to side-line the managers, they will still ultimately decide on the levels of delegation they feel are appropriate. However, playing this game with the team might reveal misconceptions and hidden assumptions from both the perspective of the manager and the team members. It will create transparency and, therefore, lead to better end results.
How to play the hand you’re dealt
In my workshops, I use Appelo’s delegation board and the poker game as an eye-opener and a tool for discussion. (My own team is small enough to be almost exclusively managed at Level 4 “Agree”)
At a typical workshop, I would group the participants into small teams (i.e. 5 +/- 2) and present them with a fictional project like a hiring decision or an event to plan. The teams will then decide on some key decision areas regarding the project at hand. Once all the teams have come to a consensus, they’ll play delegation poker.
There are special Delegation Poker card sets available to play this game, but I’ve opted for regular playing cards to maintain the ‘feel’ of a poker game in gamble-crazed Southeast Asia. Below some of the cards I use for the game:
An addition I’ve made to Appelo’s delegation poker is the inclusion of the Queen as a Level 8 Wildcard. My idea behind this wildcard is that some decisions simply don’t fit neatly into any of the seven levels of delegation identified by Appelo, but require an alternative level of delegation. Another reason is that I’d like to encourage creative thinking amongst the participants of my workshops.
As for the success of the tools, I find that they work best at workshops I run with a diverse group of attendees. If the participants all hold similar positions in their organizations, they tend to agree too quickly and discussions fall flat. With a mixed bag of participants, however, delegation poker often turns out to be an eye-opening experience (especially for senior staff members) and the discussions tend to be as diversified as the group.
One thing I haven’t yet been able to grow to the potential I think it has, is the Queen Wildcard. The card isn’t played very often as most players (again especially senior staff members) prefer to safely stay in the comfort zone of the seven epitomised levels of delegation. But well, it’s a work in progress and I’m sure that, over time, I can get attendees to play at higher stakes.
[T]here you are.
Resources:
Appelo, J. (2016). Delegation Boards and Delegation Poker in Managing for happiness (pp. 59-76). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Appelo, J. (2011). How to Empower Teams in Management 3.0 (pp. 119-146). Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley, Pearson Education.
Roosmaalen, R. van. (2017). Doing It: Management 3.0 Experiences. (PDF) Retrieved 29 July 2017 from http://www.agilestrides.com
Appelo, J. (2017). Management 3.0 Employee Engagement Exercises. Retrieved 29 July 2017, from https://management30.com/
Appelo, J. (2015). How to Delegate Better with the 7 Delegation Levels. (video) Retrieved 28 July 2017, from Youtube: https://youtu.be/VZF-G7MCSG4
