The power of Delegation

Poker Game
November 13, 2021 by
The power of Delegation
DxTalks

Sofia Olivia Reynoso de la Parra

Promoter of agility and happiness at work in technology

sofiare@yahoo.com.mx
Exclusive article for DxTalks.com


Introduction


Technology areas have become very important in recent years, is more and more visible how businesses transform thanks to technology, however, technology is created by people, through the use of systems and processes.

 

Within the work teams within technology companies, there are normally projects made up of various roles and managed by leaders, however, sometimes delegating activities seems to be a task that is not very simple, which we will review in this text it's how fun you can delegate activities to a work team and some other considerations.


Financial Technologies

 

              All businesses are important, but financial sector in recent years has changed and adopted a lot of technologies and this happened for several reasons, one was the Covid-19 pandemic, independence of reason our future is that financial technologies adoptions should increase, a research of (PWC, 2020) show us that “81% of banking CEOs are concerned about the speed of technological change, more than any other industry sector”.

 

              According with (Cardoza, 2021) “FinTech or Financial Technology is receiving a rapidly positive change. The progress in this sector is implied to continue to help financial institutions, banks, and their clients who opt for their services to decline to deal with their finances better, navigate risks, and overspending”.

 

Need for FinTech is not only been in the past and present, maybe in the future could grow more and more. Deloitte made interesting forecast: “Transactions will be touchless as automation and blockchain reach deeper into finance operations (…) the proliferation of APIs will drive data standardization, but it won’t be enough. Companies will still be struggling to clean up their data messes”.

 

Some examples was given for (Partasevitch, 2021) described three main FinTech problems increase of cybercrime, upgrades are necessary because exist outdated business management applications, it is also important to take into account the quality of cloud applications, so you can see in FinTech business will be necessary software in terms develop new applications, give maintenance, make upgrades or any change  relevant to adapt the business.

 

Everything described in previous lines could help us to make a general forecast: If FinTech will need upgrade or development software of course will be necessary stablish projects, and a project will need people and consequently a project responsible should be delegate task.

 

 

One day during a meeting about a development financial Technologies a member team said, “we want to be more independent, but don´t know how, also we don´t know situations where we should free to take decisions and in which don´t”, a manager said "oh no! I don´t have the answer”. Other day happened that another manager delegate task, but the team weren´t enough responsible to finish all task, so we could have several situations in delegation that´s why is important to review, not always the team should improve and not always the manager, sometimes both.

 

What is delegation?

 

Delegation is the assignment of authority to another person, in fact, one of the keys of management is just delegation because if you are a manager, you haven´t all knowledge and skills to do everything. The manager should encourage teams to self-organise themselves and of course to make sure that the team members trust each other, sometimes the problem is the managers don´t have enough knowledge and skills to delegate.

 

 

(Schleckser, 2014) referred an important advice in a special rule called 70 Percent Rule, he said, “You need to trust that your team members will complete the work they are responsible for, (…) So, when you are considering delegation, ask yourself the question: "Can this person do it 70 percent as well as I would?" If so, it is time to let it go!”.

 

Delegation is not easy, in fact (Atanacio, 2020) wrote that “Never underestimate the importance of delegating effectively”, he describes not only need find the right person, is necessary to be clear when you give instructions to the others and of course also is necessary to give empowerment.


Also training, coaching and monitoring are important, because even if select the right person maybe at the beginning could not be an expert, (Mathebula, B., Barnard, 2020) said “Because delegation is giving authority to the next person, the respondents agreed that attitude, aptitude and competencies are key in the process. The focus should be on people including their interests without neglecting the required skills because these can be learnt

 

Do you remember when you started your career?, in case you were the company´s owner maybe was easy, if not, people needs opportunities, in fact(LSME, 2018) refers that “As subordinates are allowed the opportunity to show their strengths and also make contributions to the work, the leader earns some respect and loyalty from the subordinates. This also helps the leader to look for more challenging tasks that can help increase their value within the institution.

 

 

Seven levels of responsibility

 

(Appelo, n.d.) creator of management 3.0, exists seven levels of responsibility and also, he creates a funny game to play with people, the name of game is delegation poker and have 7 cards, you can see in the next table:

 

Levels of responsibility

Description

7 - Delegate

I will delegate completely

6 - Inquire

I will ask, then they should be decided

5 - Advise

I will give then an adivice but he will decide

4 - Agree

We will take decisions together

3 - Consult

I will consult and then I will decide

2 - Sell

I will intent sell

1 - Tell

I will tell them

 

Easy and funny steps to apply delegation poker

 

Only is necessary a physical or electronic board, then only:

 

1.      schedule a meeting with your team

2.      Make a matrix together, in rows write a task, in columns delegation levels

 

Task/Delegation levels

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3.      Distribute 7 cards each member team

4.      Set, Ready, Go: For each task team member should show a delegation poker card

5.      Team members should discuss the results and select just one card

6.      put on board selected card

7.      Repeat process for each task

 

 

Then, what? 


Maybe first-time playing delegation poker could be hard because team members are different, depend on the company, situation, different characters, some team members could take all decisions other prefer to be quiet and only receive instructions, that´s why you need monitor the course of the game.


Delegation ability is one of the keys to obtain transform your business through financial technology, because allows a faster adaptation, if you need a permission for everything is only a stopper.

 

 

references

Appelo, J. (n.d.). Delegation Poker & Delegation Board. Retrieved May 3, 2021, from https://management30.com/practice/delegation-poker/

Atanacio, A. (2020). The Importance Of Delegating Effectively. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2020/06/15/the-importance-of-delegating-effectively/?sh=1a2db007791c

Cardoza, E. (2021). FinTech trends 2021: The ground-breaking impact in the banking industry. IBS Intelligence. https://ibsintelligence.com/ibsi-news/fintech-trends-2021-the-ground-breaking-impact-in-the-banking-industry/

Deloiite. (n.d.). NCrunch time V. Finance 2025o Title. Deloiite. Retrieved September 28, 2021, from https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/finance-transformation/articles/finance-digital-transformation-for-cfos.html

LSME. (2018). Delegation: the impact of delegation and its beneficts. London School of Management Education. https://lsme.ac.uk/blog/delegation-the-impact-of-delegation-and-its-benefits

Mathebula, B., Barnard, B. (2020). The Factors of Delegation Success: Accountability, Compliance and Work Quality. https://business.expertjournals.com/23446781-805/

Partasevitch, F. (2021). Major Challenges the Fintech Industry Faces Today and How to Overcome Them. Financemagnates. https://www.financemagnates.com/fintech/major-challenges-the-fintech-industry-faces-today-and-how-to-overcome-them/

PWC. (2020). Financial Services Technology 2020 and Beyond: Embracing disruption. PWC. https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/financial-services/assets/pdf/technology2020-and-beyond.pdf

Schleckser, J. (2014). When to Delegate? Try the 70 Percent Rule. Inc. https://www.inc.com/jim-schleckser/the-70-rule-when-to-delegate.html