I adapted Planning Poker (as used in agile software development) to rapidly uncover where we had alignment and divergence as a management team. As a first attempt this worked well, so I’ve written this play-at-home guide – I’d love to hear how you get on with your teams.

hand of cards

Where did this come from:

We recently had a management offsite to reflect on the past year and plan for the year ahead. I’d been asked to run a short session on culture. I knew as a team there was much we agreed on around our values and approach. But I was also aware there were areas where maybe we weren’t so aligned, or where we needed to make trade-offs and our prioritisation in these situations was different.

The aim of this exercise was not to drive alignment but rather to take the first steps towards creating a shared understanding of what we agreed on, what we disagreed on and, most importantly, why we disagreed.

With a lot of content to cover, a short amount of time and a desire to only spend time where we had differences… I wondered if the Planning Poker method I’ve successfully used for years as part of software development could be repurposed for this non-developer group.

Overall feedback on the session was very positive. We spent the majority of the time discussing the parts where we have divergent opinions. We discovered some surprising areas where we all agreed. We found out some of our individual assumptions about the group were wrong. And as a bi-product of this exercise we also uncovered a number of proactive steps we wanted to take to make changes to how we work. A few more insights into our session are included at the bottom of this post.

How to play

You will need:

  • A prepared set of statements, mixing controversial and non-controversial topics

  • A set of cards, numbered 1–5, per person (handily, a standard deck of cards has four of these per pack)

Prep time: 1–2 hours

Playing time: 45 minutes – 1 hour

Preparation:

Prior to the session you will need to prepare a set of statements. The statements should be written in a way that people can either agree with or disagree with. I found it useful to split the topic I wanted to cover into a set of 2–5 statements, starting with where I thought we had alignment and then ratcheting up the controversy. I also found it useful to mix negative statements (where I was expecting everyone to disagree) with positive statements. For example, on the topic of supporting people’s external ambition I had the following statements:

We should support people in their startup ambitions, even if that means they may leave the firm We should advertise that we support people in their startup ambitions We should openly offer financial incentives for people to leave the firm and start a business

Game play:

During the session it’s best to have everyone sit in a circle so they can hide their hands, much like a game of poker. If you’ve played Planning Poker before this is run in a very similar way but the guide below assumes no prior knowledge.

There are three key roles that need to be played:

  • Chair / facilitator: this person has the responsibily for maintaining the pace of the session, balancing this against everyone being heard

  • Statement writer: the person who wrote the statements, who may be called upon to provide clarification

  • Participant: Everyone else. The important part here is that everyone is involved.

When we ran this session the chair and the statement writer were the same person (me) but it may be beneficial to have them as separate roles.

The chair will want to set some ground rules up front:

  • Everyone’s opinion is of equal weighting

  • If we agree on something, let’s move on – the time in this session is better spent on the areas where we disagree

  • This is about uncovering our values – it’s not a science, try not to be too pedantic

The general flow of the sessions follows the same pattern for each statement:

  • The chair reads out the statement

  • Invariably there will be some questions asked, or other comments – try and keep these to minimum at this stage, otherwise it will kill momentum

  • Everyone picks a card from their set corresponding to whether they completely disagree (1), somewhat disagree (2), are neutral (3), agree (4), completely agree (5). They do not reveal their card yet– this is important to avoid influencing others.

  • Once everyone is ready, the chair will call for everyone to simultaneously reveal their card.

  • If there is agreement, or broad agreement (say, all 5s bar one person voting 4), note down the score and move on to the next statement. Avoid the temptation to have a discussion at this point in time – you already all agree, so move on!

  • If there is disagreement, the chair should pick one person from each end of the scale to briefly explain their reasoning. Try and pick different people each story so everyone gets a say over the course of the session. Try and keep the debate to a minute or two.

  • Re-vote, using the same “pick then reveal” process as before.

  • You may find the debate has substantially won over the team to one side or the other. If so, great – move on. If not, note down the range of scores, agree to disagree and move on to the next statement.

At the end of the session a quick recap of the scores across all statements can be useful to allow everyone to “zoom out” and see the wider picture. As a bonus you can also record actions against the “we should do more…” type statements.

Our session:

Here’s a few more example statements from our session. Remember, these statements are there for people to agree with or disagree with — they are not what I believe to be right!

Being innovative means working late

A separate working space is important

Our community should be exclusive

We don’t socialise enough as a team

We should openly share how we, as a ventures team, have got things wrong

The value of your opinion is proportional to your grade

I have enough autonomy

Getting shit done is more important than keeping people happy

I was surprised by how mixed the responses were to statements I thought would be a slamdunk. For example, on the socialising point whilst we’re very social as a team it turns out we weren’t always great at making this inclusive. I also found it worth including the “obvious” statements that we’ve already agreed on (e.g working space) to remind people that we do agree and it’s important to maintain this position. The last statement (“getting shit done” vs keeping people happy) generated a great amount of discussion and perhaps the most insightful decision on how to move forward: we need to do both, so sometimes we’ll need to team up and one person is the bad guy and the other smooths it over later. Perhaps an obvious solution but having the whole team aligned on this and knowing that we accept you’ll sometimes need to ask someone to help you out in these sticky situations, without being judged for it, is pretty powerful.

Closing thoughts:

Culture Poker is a good example use case for Poker as a collaboration facilitation technique. Having now used it in two different contexts (agile planning, culture), I’m keen to see where else I can apply this technique to hardness the knowledge of everyone in the room.