Decision CardsTM

Unlocking High Performance One Decision at a Time

The Benefits

  • Better Decisions

  • Team Alignment

  • Develop Leaders

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Evolve2B Decision CardsTM are a powerful tool for improving decision-making in your organization. They are used to clarify how any group of people can work together to make the best decision for the organization. Use of the cards foster and encourage staff engagement and equal voice. Rather than telling a team that they are autonomous, Decision CardsTM can clarify what decisions they are allowed to make, where they need to seek advice, and who they need to seed advice from.

An End to Bad Decisions

If you have ever been to a meeting, you have probably experienced the business-as-usual challenges with making decisions:

  • The most senior person deciding
  • The loudest person in the room dominating
  • People agreeing so they can go home and see their families
  • Fake agreement with people saying yes but little follow-through
  • Endless meetings without decisions

Develop Leaders

We created the SHIFT314 Decision CardsTM technology to support iterative and incremental sharing of power.

Sharing too much power too soon may actually slow down or block the evolution of an organization. What we seek to do is to share the right amount of power based on what makes sense in the specific situation. It is a way to develop the leadership capability of people so that we may foster leaders at all levels. The tool creates a very natural way for a manager to start iteratively and incrementally sharing power with teams and help them grow in responsibility.

Decision CardsTM are used to clarify one question:

“Who has the Power?”

I make this decision alone. I have enough information to make an effective decision on my own.

This decision is mine to make. I will make it after seeking Advice from those impacted and those who have valuable input.

I am an equal with others and we will collectively make this decision together by mutual consent.

This is not my decision. And I have valuable advice to contribute to the decision-maker.

I will not be involved in making this decision.

Learn the
Advice Process

The Advice Process is a tool used to create high performance decisions. It works hand-in-hand with Decision CardsTM to develop leaders at all levels.

Free Online Cards

Get immediate access to the online version of Decision CardsTM for your phone so you can start unlocking better decisions on your own or with others.


Online version made by Kynan Hughes.

Technical note: Cookies must be enabled.

How to use Decision CardsTM:

  1. Identify the decisions that need to be made, explore one decision at a time.
  2. Pick a decision that needs to be made. Explain it.
  3. Everyone secretly picks a Decision CardTM, indicating their role in the decision.
  4. When everyone is ready, reveal the cards.
  5. If there is agreement about who the owners are, authority is clear.
  6. If there is disagreement, have everyone share their thinking.

Then repeat card selection. There is agreement when there is just one decider or multiple people agree that they will make decisions as equals. If people do not agree on who has the power, then the most senior person will decide, or the various parties will escalate to their management.

With your boss,
employee or co-worker:

Discuss a decision and ask who is best to make this decision? Ask them to pick a card. Share your own card. Discuss.

Education:

Hand out the cards. Ask people when they might make each type of decision. Ask them how they decide which card to use for a given decision. Explain advice process and revisit.

Coaching:

When someone is struggling with a decision or there is a conflict around a decision, hand them a card and ask them: Which one fits for them?


Learn More

Your Roadmap to
an Evolutionary
Organization

Leading Beyond Change offers 40 business patterns for unlocking high performance. Get the step-by-step guide to diagnose where you are across key dimensions of organizational functioning. And identify the tools and models needed to support rapid evolution.

Training

Decision CardsTM are one small part of the SHIFT314 Evolutionary Leadership FrameworkTM (SELF). Learning how to share power effectively is an important part of Scaling Excellence with People. Learn how to create profound change to unlock high performance.

Buy the Deck

Each Deck contains 10 sets for a total of 50 cards.

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