While having coffee after lunch at my daughter’s, I found this book she recommended as a quick fun read: “The one minute manager meets the monkey” by Ken Blanchard, William Oncken Jr and Hal Burrows. It did not take long to read and I enjoyed it and it’s managerial lessons which I will try and summarise here. I strongly recommend getting the book as it’s full of Illustrative examples yet is still an easy, quick and enjoyable read.
The book’s central theme is that if, as a Manager, you feel overloaded, you lack time for your staff, your staff can’t work because they are waiting for your decision and you have lots of projects you have not even started to work on…
… it’s simply because you have too many monkeys on your back !
Monkeys (like problems) are four-legged animals that have a tendency to jump from one person’s shoulders to someone else’s. For every monkey (or assignment), there are always two parties: one that works it and one that supervises it. Often employees come to see you with their problems. As a manager, what you must avoid at all cost is to end the discussion with “ let me think about it and I’ll get back to you”. If you act this way, then the monkey has squarely jumped from the employee’s back onto yours! Willingly or unconsciously, when people see that you are keen to attract monkeys, they channel even more your way…
As a Manager, what you don’t want to do is to swap role with your staff. The more monkeys you have on your back, the more you become overworked with no free time. You end up spending more time at work, becoming anxious and keeping your door closed to concentrate on your workload. And when you have not done what you said you would do, you become a bottle neck to your staff who patiently await your decision/action to move the problem further!
It also sends the message to your staff member that because he/she is not capable of handling this problem, you have to take care of it yourself. The more you take care of things, the more dependent they become. In the process, their self esteem and confidence is eroded.
So put the monkeys back on your people’s shoulders and suddenly you will have more time for them and more time for you to work on your own legitimate monkeys.
The authors suggests the following rules to make sure the monkeys stay where they belong: The dialog between boss and one of their people should not end until all monkeys have:
(1) Descriptions – A monkey is whatever the next move is on a project or a problem
Every subordinate should come with a thoughtful suggestion for the next move. Replace “let me think about it and I’ll get back to you” by “Think about it some more and let’s review your ideas in a couple of days”
(2) Owners – the monkey is clearly assigned to a person
Monkeys should be handled at the lowest organisational level consistent with the monkey’s welfare (so they don’t get sick and escalate to an emergency)
(3) Insurance policies – the risk should be covered
Ask staff to, most of the time, act and then advise of their action later. Only in certain dangerous/tricky situations should they ask approval before acting
(4) Monkey feeding and checkup appointments – the time and place for follow up
Proper follow-up leads to a healthier monkey. Every monkey should have a regular checkup. And always ask yourself: “Why are we doing this?” If there is no viable answer, shoot the monkey, so you are not wasting time!
The book gives you a final interesting definition: “Assigning” involves a single monkey, “delegation” involves a family of monkeys”…
I hope you enjoyed this quick and dirty summary of this book about Monkeys. It reminded me of another more recent leadership book where the Captain never gave orders or instructions but always asked his XO what he was going to do next and either agreed or asked why he was taking that decision. In this way he not only had no Monkey transfers but he built Leaders. I recommend this book, it’s a great story.