The Art of Monkey Management

The art of monkey management is to help your staff manage their own monkeys by not actually taking them on yourself

The article “Who’s Got the Monkey?” by William Oncken Jr and Donald L. Wass (Harvard Business Review, 1974) describes a scenario where a manager takes on the unsolved problems of employees, allowing them to delegate upwards and facilitating the “monkey” to jump on to his back. This results in an increased workload for the manager and a failure to develop the potential of his staff.

Monkey management is a strategy for effective delegation which has two important benefits. The first is to do with time management and the second is to do with creating independently minded staff and managers who are able to deal with problems autonomously:

• Time Management - it is important to understand and analyse how your time is spent and to develop strategies to increase productivity and to delegate work. Tasks such as some incoming calls, emails and meetings, as well as dealing with staff’s problems are unnecessary distractions. In the latter case, monkey management can keep these distractions to a minimum and ensure managers can focus their skills on their role.
• Staff Development - another benefit of good delegation is the development of a more independent workforce. By helping staff help themselves they will learn to problem solve, creating a culture where reliance is supplanted by a more collaborative approach in which problems are shared not offloaded.

Both can have a direct impact on your business model as it develops, allowing managers to deal with their own workloads and freeing up their time to innovate and work on new projects.

The Monkey

The ‘monkey’ in the analogy refers to the next stage in any given task or problem. If one of your staff comes to you with a problem and you agree to take it on, they have effectively shifted the responsibility for their problem onto your shoulders. In other words, you now have their monkey on your back.

Although it is completely normal to help people with problems, there can be instances where managers become bogged down by other people’s monkeys, affecting their ability to perform their own duties. In addition, it can become a self-reinforcing management style which leads to more people thinking it is alright to offload their monkeys on to you.

Monkey management is a set of rules that allow managers to avoid directly taking on ownership of other people’s monkeys, by agreeing to manage them instead. It allows managers to manage their own time more effectively and focus on their own workloads by delegating responsibilities for problem solving to their staff.

The Rules of Monkey Management

• Define the Monkey - the monkey is not the whole task, it only represents the next stage in completing that task. Therefore, it is essential to work with the task owner to define what that next stage is and what is needed to accomplish it. It is also important to keep dialogue open until this has been achieved
•  Monkey Ownership - monkeys should be handled at the lowest organisational level possible to ensure more senior management time is preserved. This is about ensuring appropriate skillsets are best utilised throughout the business.
• Insure the Monkey - all monkeys must be covered by one of several ‘insurance policies’ once they leave the hands of the manager. These vary from the cautious (wait until told to act) to the more autonomous but higher risk (act and advise or act and routinely report). The higher the risk the lower the premium the manager pays in time. The key point is that the person who has the monkey must know they have it and what they have to do.

Monkey’s should be fed by appointment only

• Feed the Monkey - it is crucial that the task owner is seen by appointment only, ideally face to face and for a maximum of 15 minutes. The appointment is solely to ensure they understand the next move and there is agreed upon level of initiative to act. The date and time of the next appointment should also be agreed.

Allowing employees to bring their problems to you on their timetable increases the likelihood that the monkey will climb onto your back.

Monkey Management is a powerful technique in the art of delegation. It is important that the business leadership get to grips with it to ensure it is promoted, understood and used throughout their organisation.

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