How a Card Game Reveals the Way Your Team Actually Thinks About Strategy
Why the strategic instincts your team operates by in a fifteen-minute exercise are the same instincts shaping how you compete in the market.
Most leadership teams believe they think strategically. They have strategy documents, quarterly planning sessions, and frameworks taped to conference room walls. Then you put them in a room with half a deck of cards and a fifteen-minute timer, and within about eight minutes, you see exactly how they approach value, competition, and risk. The card game doesn't create their strategic instincts. It just reveals them. That's what makes it useful.
Full House is a team exercise I developed to surface strategic thinking in a format where no one can hide behind jargon. You deal out a stack of card halves to each team, set a timer, and watch what happens. The game itself is simple. What it exposes is not.
The Challenge
Strategy is one of those words leaders use confidently without agreeing on what it means. Ask five executives to define their company's strategy, and you'll get five different answers. Ask them how they approach a new market opportunity, and you'll hear the same abstract language about positioning, differentiation, and value. But watch them make real decisions under time pressure, and you'll see their actual operating logic, which is often something very different from what the strategy deck says.
The cost of this gap is high. Teams pursue opportunities that look attractive but don't fit. They overpay for obvious assets while ignoring undervalued ones. They fail to negotiate effectively because they haven't thought through what they actually need versus what they think looks good. They compete hard for the same high-visibility wins everyone else is chasing and miss the quieter opportunities where real margin lives. And because the pattern shows up in how they instinctively process information rather than in any single decision, it's hard to see and harder to change.
You can't fix a pattern you can't see. That's the problem Full House is built to solve.
Core Idea
Full House is a strategy exercise disguised as a card game. The mechanics are simple. You take a standard deck of playing cards, including two Jokers, cut each card in half, and mix all the halves together. You split the group into four to six teams of two or three people and give each team a random stack of card halves. The count doesn't need to be even. Playing the hand you're dealt is part of the exercise.
Teams have fifteen minutes to assemble complete cards and build scoring combinations. Points are awarded for individual high-value cards and for combinations like pairs, three of a kind, four of a kind, straights, flushes, full houses, and straight flushes. Cards can score in multiple paths simultaneously, which means the same card can count as an individual, as part of a pair, and as part of three of a kind all at once.
Here's what makes it more than a game. The instructions don't mention trading. Teams have to figure out on their own that they can trade with other teams, form alliances, give cards away, or do whatever else they can negotiate. Some teams figure this out in the first two minutes. Some don't figure it out until minute ten. Some never do. The difference in outcomes is enormous.
The scoring system contains a deliberate red herring. High-value individual cards like Jokers and Aces feel valuable because they are. But combinatorial play, where you stack multiple scoring paths on the same cards, dramatically outperforms hoarding high singles. A team that collects four Jacks scores, not just the four of a kind, but also every three of a kind and pair contained within that four of a kind, plus the individual Jack values. Most teams never see this. They spend the game fighting over Jokers and Aces while the cards sitting in their "low value" pile could have delivered far more points.
But the deeper reason this exercise works isn't the red herring or the combinatorial math. It's that strategy is always contextual. You can't develop a strategy in a vacuum. What makes a good move good depends entirely on what everyone else on the field is doing and not doing. The same card that's worthless in one hand is a cornerstone in another. The same trade that looks brilliant at minute three might be a disaster at minute ten because the landscape shifted. Good strategy is less about finding the right answer and more about reading the field, seeing what others can't, and responding faster than they can.
This is why the game format works where a worksheet or a discussion wouldn't. A worksheet lets you think about strategy in isolation. A discussion lets you talk about strategy in the abstract. A live fifteen-minute game forces you to enact strategy while the ground is moving under you. Other teams are making decisions that change what's available, what's valuable, and what's possible. You might start with the best strategy in the room and find that by minute eight, it's the wrong strategy, because what worked when everyone was hoarding no longer works when everyone is trading. Good teams adjust. Great teams anticipate. Struggling teams stick with their original plan and wonder why it stopped working.
The scoreboard at the end is an honest mirror. Either you read the field, or you didn't. Either you adapted, or you didn't. Either you saw the opportunity, or it passed you by.
Origin Story
I built this exercise because I kept seeing the same pattern in my strategy work. Leadership teams would walk into a planning session with sophisticated vocabulary and emerge three days later with a plan that looked great on paper but felt hollow. When I dug in, I often found the team had defaulted to chasing the obvious opportunities everyone in their industry was also chasing. They were competing for Aces, in other words, when the real wins were in building combinations from cards their competitors were giving away.
I wanted a way to surface these patterns without triggering the defensive reactions that arise in direct conversations about strategy. A game format felt right because it bypasses the vocabulary. You can't BS your way through a card game. Either you saw the opportunity, or you didn't. Either you built relationships across teams, or you didn't. Either you had a coherent strategy, or you were reacting.
The exercise has evolved over the years as I've run it with more teams. The scoring system has been tuned specifically to create the red herring. The trading rule is left deliberately unstated. The debrief questions have been refined to make sure the connection from the game to the team's actual market behavior lands. What looks like a simple card game is the result of a lot of iteration, and every element is there for a reason.
When a CEO tells me their team is "strategically aligned," I want to see them play something first. The gap between how people talk about strategy and how they actually behave under pressure is usually where the real work is.
The Setup
You need a standard 54-card deck with both Jokers, scissors, a timer, a scoreboard or flip chart, and a room with enough space for four to six teams to work separately and then move around to negotiate with each other.
Cut every card in half. The cuts don't need to be clean or symmetrical. Slight imperfections actually add texture, because teams have to match the specific halves rather than just pairing any two pieces. Mix all the halves together in a pile and deal out random stacks to each team. Teams of two to three people work best, so you need a total of eight to fifteen people to create four to six teams. Senior leadership teams are my primary audience for this, but it works for any team that regularly collaborates and makes decisions together.
If you have observers available, assign one or two people who aren't on a team to watch the room. Their job is to notice how teams communicate, how they organize internally, what strategies emerge, how cross-team interactions unfold, and any moments where the dynamic shifts. They'll contribute observations in the debrief.
Scoring System
Individual cards score as follows. Joker: 50 points. Ace: 30 points. King, Queen, and Jack: 20 points each. All other cards (2 through 10) score zero as singles.
Combinations score as follows. Pair: 20 points. Three of a kind: 30 points. Four of a kind: 50 points. Straight (five cards in sequence, any suit): 60 points. Flush (five cards of the same suit): 50 points. Full house (three of a kind plus a pair): 75 points. Straight flush (five sequential cards of the same suit): 150 points.
Cards count in every scoring path they qualify for. A single card contributes to its individual value plus every combination it's part of. If a team assembles four Jacks, they score 80 points for the four Jacks individually, 50 points for the four of a kind, and then every three-of-a-kind and pair subset contained within those four cards. Four cards contain four different three-of-a-kinds (any three of the four) and six different pairs (any two of the four). Total for four Jacks: 80 + 50 + (30 × 4) + (20 × 6) = 370 points.
This subset-counting rule is the key to the exercise. Most teams never realize it. The ones who do win decisively.
Running It
Total run time is forty to sixty minutes. Keep the setup short and protect the debrief, because that's where the learning happens.
Stage one: frame and distribute. Spend about five minutes explaining the game. Show the scoring. Explain that cards count in every path they qualify for. Emphasize the fifteen-minute timer. Do not explain trading rules, alliance rules, or anything about how teams can interact. If someone asks, tell them they can do whatever they want as long as it isn't cheating. Hand out the card halves. Start the timer.
Stage two: play. For fifteen minutes, let the room do what it does. You'll see teams huddle internally at first, trying to assemble complete cards and figure out what they have. Somewhere in the first five to eight minutes, one team will usually realize they can approach other teams. The first trade is a turning point. After that, the room transforms. Watch for the team that's playing a different game than everyone else, because there almost always is one. Resist the urge to give hints, answer strategy questions, or coach in real time. The not-knowing is the point.
Stage three: stop and score. When the timer hits zero, all trading stops immediately. Teams have a few minutes to assemble their cards and count their points across every scoring path. Walk around and help them find combinations they missed, because a team that misses their own subset scores will distort the debrief. Post the final scores where everyone can see them.
Stage four: debrief. Plan for at least twenty minutes here. This is where the exercise earns its value. Guide the conversation through the questions in the next section. The winning team often doesn't know why they won. The losing teams often think they know why they lost, but are wrong about it. Your job as a facilitator is to let the group surface what actually happened.
A note on observers: if you assigned any, bring them in during the debrief to share what they saw. They'll often notice dynamics the participants missed, especially around communication patterns and how strategies shifted over time.
Debrief Questions
The sequence matters. Start with description, move to internal dynamics, then to strategy, then to cross-team behavior, then to business application. Each question builds on the one before it.
What happened out there?
Open with description, not analysis. Let people walk through their experience of the game. What did your team try? What surprised you? When did the energy in the room shift? This question gets everyone oriented and brings quieter voices into the conversation before it gets strategic. It also reveals what different teams actually noticed, which is often very different from what they think they noticed.
How did you organize and communicate as a team?
Move to internal dynamics. Who took the lead? How did you make decisions? Did you have a strategy or were you reacting? How did roles emerge, and did they change over the course of the game? Was there disagreement, and how did you handle it? This question surfaces the team's operating patterns under pressure, which usually mirror their patterns in actual work. The team that can't organize itself in fifteen minutes with cards is rarely organizing itself well in the market either.
What was your strategy, and how did it evolve?
Now go strategic. What were you trying to accomplish? What did you think was valuable at the start of the game versus at the end? When did you realize what was actually scoring points? Did your strategy change as other teams started trading, or did you stick with what you'd planned? This question is where the red herring reveals itself and where the contextual nature of strategy becomes undeniable. Teams that hoarded high singles will often realize, out loud and in real time, that they were playing the wrong game and that they would have needed to adjust sooner to win.
How did you engage with the other teams?
Cross-team behavior is where the competitive and collaborative instincts really show. When did you first approach another team? How did you read what they were trying to do? How did you negotiate? Did you form alliances, and did they hold? Did anyone steal cards, and how did that affect the dynamic? This question almost always surfaces something uncomfortable, because teams rarely engage with competitors as thoughtfully as they think they do. The teams that read the field best tend to win, and the teams that ignored it tend to be surprised by the outcome.
How can you apply what you observed and learned here to your business and how you approach strategy in your market?
This is the bridge. The patterns that showed up in the game are the same patterns shaping how the team operates in the real market. Where are you chasing Aces when you should be building combinations? What are your competitors doing that you haven't noticed? What's shifting in your market that should be changing your strategy, and isn't? How good is your team at reading the field and adjusting, versus executing a plan that stopped being the right plan a while ago? This is where the exercise either lands or doesn't. If the facilitator rushes through it, the game stays a game. If you hold the space and let the team sit with the connection between what they just did and what they do every day, something shifts.
Common Patterns
Every group plays this game a little differently, but certain patterns show up across almost every room I've run it in. Recognizing them helps the debrief land because the team stops thinking of the exercise as random and starts to see that what happened reflects how they operate.
The hoarders. There's almost always a team that locks onto the high-value singles and builds its entire strategy around accumulating Jokers, Aces, and face cards. They negotiate hard for these cards and refuse to trade them away. They finish with a respectable score but rarely win. In the debrief, they often describe their approach as disciplined and focused. The more honest read is that they confused what looked valuable with what actually scored points. Teams that hoard in the game tend to do the same in the market, chasing the obvious opportunities everyone else is chasing.
The combinatorial team. One team usually figures out the subset-scoring math, often within the first few minutes. They'll trade away high singles for stacks of low cards that other teams are eager to unload. They tend to be quieter than the hoarders during play and confident during scoring. When they explain their reasoning in the debrief, half the room has a small epiphany. This team is a useful mirror for anyone asking where the hidden value is in their own market.
The team that competes internally. Some groups spend more energy jockeying within their team than engaging with the rest of the room. They'll argue over strategy, debate every trade, and waste time on internal disagreement. Their score suffers. In the debrief, they're often surprised to hear observers describe them as gridlocked, because from the inside, it felt like rigorous deliberation. This pattern almost always mirrors something happening in the leadership team's real work.
The team that never trades. Occasionally, a team never approaches another team during the fifteen minutes. They assemble what they can from what they were dealt and accept their position. When asked why, they often say they didn't realize trading was allowed, or they weren't sure how to start. This is a signal worth naming gently. Teams that don't engage with the competitive landscape in a game rarely engage with it well outside the game either.
The alliance that breaks. Two teams will sometimes form what looks like a partnership, agreeing to share information or trade preferentially. Almost without exception, one team eventually breaks the alliance to pursue a better position. How teams handle this says a lot about their instincts around trust, opportunism, and how they read other people's motives under pressure.
The late awakening. One of the most useful debrief moments is when a team realizes, out loud, that they understood the game wrong and only saw it clearly in the last minute or two. This is the real learning. In the market, the cost of a late awakening is much higher than in a fifteen-minute game. The question worth sitting with: where might you be having a late awakening right now about your actual business?
What makes the debrief work isn't identifying which team fits which pattern. It's letting the team see that their behavior in the game wasn't random. It was a smaller version of how they operate. The patterns that showed up in fifteen minutes with a half-deck of cards are the same patterns shaping how they make decisions about their market, their competitors, and their opportunities. Once a team sees that, the real conversation can start.
If you want to run this with your team, grab a deck of cards, find a group of eight to fifteen people, and give yourself at least an hour. If you'd rather have someone facilitate it who's run it many times and can guide the conversation where it needs to go, reach out.
ROADMAP12: Building the Strategy Your Team Can Actually Execute
When Full House reveals that a team is chasing obvious value, missing combinatorial opportunities, or failing to read the field, the fix isn't more strategy documents. It's a structured process that forces the team to define where they'll win, what they'll say no to, and how they'll execute in a shifting market. ROADMAP12 is my three-day strategy intensive for leadership teams that are ready to stop spinning on strategic questions and start operating with clarity. It's designed specifically for the kind of patterns a game like Full House surfaces. To learn more, visit below or email programs@eckfeldt.com.
ROADMAP12 Program Overview: http://www.eckfeldt.com/roadmap12
About the Author
Bruce Eckfeldt is a strategic business coach and exit planning advisor who helps founder-CEOs of growth-stage companies scale systematically and exit successfully. A former Inc. 500 CEO who built and sold his own company, he brings real-world operational experience to strategic planning and leadership development. He's a certified ScalingUp and 3HAG/Metronomics coach, Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA), an Inc. Magazine contributor, and host of the "From Angel to Exit" podcast. Bruce works with growth companies in complex industries, guiding leadership teams through growth challenges and exit preparation. Reach him at bruce@eckfeldt.com with any questions or if you want more information or to book a call with him.
