Those Are Not Your Monkeys! A summary of “The One Minute Manager Meets The Monkey”

I’ve just recently got my hands on the “One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey”, a classic of leadership and management literature, by Ken Blanchard and co-authored by William Oncken and Hal Burrows. The book, part of the One Minute Manager series, is an adaptation of William Oncken’s “Managing Management Time” seminar and namesake book, that tries to address the time management problem with which first time managers tend to struggle with.

Before jumping onto the book’s main ideas and key takeaways, I must say that, although the book was primarily written for managers, as a Staff+ engineer I found it an eye-opener. After reading the book I gained a different perspective about time management in a leadership role, how easy it is to lose control over it and what measures can help us gain control over it.

It’s important to note that the book was written in the late 1980’s, so some of the vocabulary it uses, like boss and subordinate, may be considered outdated. Manager and direct report for instance, tend to be the convention — and acceptable — in the society we live in. In this article I’m avoiding the outdated terminology present in the book.

The Monkey-On-The-Back

The book is all about the monkey-on-the–back analogy from “Managing Management Time”, referring to the problems staff members have that are taken voluntarily by their manager. These monkeys tend to stack up on the manager’s desk, leaving the manager in a position where he or she becomes a bottleneck for the team and for the company.

But why would a manager accept their team’s monkeys voluntarily you may ask? Well, it’s actually a relatively easy trap for a manager to fall into, as the following story shows.

Our manager Jane arrives at the office just to find Steve, one of her direct reports, waiting for her. Steve welcomes her with a warming “Hey Jane, we have a problem”, followed by a description of the problem Steve is struggling with, and concluded by the question “what should we do?”. Being caught off-guard, Jane has no proper context about the project Steve’s problem is from, so she also struggles with coming up with a solution, so she answers back “Let me think about it and get back to you with a plan”. While Steve goes away relieved with the expectation that his manager will be able to come up with a solution, Jane walks to her desk thinking how will she fit this problem in an already fully booked agenda.

Jane and Steve’s short story not only illustrates how a manager may, almost inadvertently, voluntarily accept a monkey from one of his or her people, it also shows how relevant the direct report’s role is in the process.
Before Jane meets Steve, the monkey has both legs on Steve’s back. But once Steve tells Jane “we have a problem”, he makes the problem also Jane’s, so one of the monkey’s legs immediately stretches from Steve’s back to Jane’s. And when Jane says she will think about it and will get back to him with a solution, that’s when the other leg of the monkey leaves Steve’s back to be only on Jane’s. So what started as Steve’s problem is now Jane’s problem. Not only that, in the process Jane placed herself in a report position to Steve, inverting their roles!

Needless to say, any manager who has the tendency to pick his or her staff’s monkeys ends up inevitably in a vicious cycle. The time that should be dedicated to the manager’s monkeys is instead spent solving others’ monkeys, leading for more and more work for the manager, and less and less work for the team. The manager becomes a bottleneck for the team, impacting its performance, which in turn results in an organisational problem.

The Solution

With a similar (more interesting and detailed) story, the author set up the stage for the crown jewel of the book — the solution that will help managers to avoid or escape from the vicious cycle of nurturing their people’s monkeys!

First, the manager needs to return the monkeys. Simply returning them though isn’t enough to ensure they will be taken care of, and it may not help with the manager’s image and reliability either. So there’s a set of rules — Oncken’s rules of Monkey Management — that will help guarantee the monkeys are properly managed.

Rule 1 — Descriptions

… a boss and a staff member shall not part company until appropriate “next moves” have been described.

The monkey is not the problem, it’s the “next move”. And clearly describing that next move is key to avoid leaving the monkey in a limbo. There are three benefits from this rule. Knowing that a proper description of what the next move should be will be one of the outcomes of a dialogue between the manager and a staff member, the staff member will likely plan and prepare better for the interaction. It also biases the situation toward action by the staff member. But the most important might be the motivation boost that comes from clearly knowing what should be the next action, and the definition of an objective.

Rule 2 — Owners

… the dialogue between boss and staff member must not end until ownership of each monkey is assigned to a person.

It’s not particularly valuable to describe the monkey — or in other words, what the next move is — if its ownership isn’t specified. Without an owner, there’s no personal responsibility and accountability.

With a clear description of the next move, the manager and the staff member are able to decide who should be the owner. At that moment is important to ensure the monkey is kept at the lowest organisational level possible, which in most of the cases will mean the staff member. Managers often underestimate their teams’ capabilities and believe no one else can perform the work as effectively as they can. But staff members are usually better positioned to handle the next move because they have more context about the problems they face then the manager, after all, the problems often derive from their own work. It’s also more likely for them to have more collective time and energy than the manager to handle the monkeys. Furthermore, taking responsibility adds to their development and growth. And finally, by avoiding having to nurture others’ monkeys, the manager preserves some of his or her discretionary time.

In essence, the manager should only take ownership of the monkeys that no one else is able to handle.

Rule 3 — Insurance Policies

… the dialog between boss and staff member shall not end until all monkeys have been insured.

This rule aims at balancing the freedom and authority provided to staff members to self manage their work, with the manager’s responsibility on the outcome of it. The cost of giving more freedom to people is an increased risk of mistakes to be made.

Monkeys must be insured to mitigate the risk of unaffordable mistakes (with high organisational impact) to occur. And to insure each monkey, one of the following policies should be followed:

1. Recommend, then act.

2. Act, then advise.

Which of these should be adopted depends on how autonomous and experienced the staff member is on the matter and the risk involved.
If the risk of having the staff member deciding how to act is high, then the first policy should be applied. The staff member should present a recommendation that then must be approved by the manager before proceeding any further. Such policy provides more protection to the manager, the team and the organisation, but at the cost of more of the manager’s time.
When the risk is low, meaning the manager is confident about the staff member’s capacity for handling the monkeys successfully on his or her own, then the staff member can autonomously deliberate on how to act, but not without informing the manager about it afterwards, so the manager is still informed and able to act if needed. This policy requires less of the manager’s time, but at the cost of leaving little to no room for the manager to do anything to solve the situation when a mistake is made.

Most of the time, staff members should be able to decide and opt to act, then advise. Only when the manager considers the risk is high, he or she should decide otherwise. As the book’s recommended practice says:

Hands-off management as much as possible and hands-on management as much as necessary.

Rule 4 — Feeding And Checkups

… the dialog between boss and staff member shall not end until the monkey has a checkup appointment.

The author describes the output of an organisation as the sum of a myriad of next moves, creating a direct link between the organisation’s success and the health of its monkeys. The checkups are conducted to ensure the well-being of the monkeys.

During a monkey checkup the manager may find the monkey in good health and well-fed. When that’s the case, the manager has the opportunity to give praise to the staff member that has been taking care of the monkey.
If there’s problems with the monkey though, the checkup allows the manager to take corrective action to recover the monkey’s well-being.

The ability to identify and address problems not only reduces the manager’s anxiety but also presents an opportunity to coach staff members and enhance their competencies. This, in turn, boosts the manager’s confidence in their people’s ability to handle similar problems in the future, increasing the likelihood of delegating future work to them.

Checkups should be scheduled to an appropriate date. However, if the manager notices a monkey looking sick or not well-fed, the checkup appointment should be moved up to an earlier date in order to anticipate any actions required to solve the problem while it’s still possible. Staff members must also be prone to inform their manager in time about any problems impacting monkeys’ health.

One important aspect about how monkeys’ health can deteriorate, is that it’s usually not the result of laziness or incompetence, but rather a consequence of priorities. Teams need to prioritise their work, and each member usually has more than one monkey under his/her care. To feed the highest priority monkeys, the lower priority ones end up sometimes neglected.

Delegation

Oncken’s rules dictate how the manager can transition from working others’ monkeys to assigning them. Delegation is then the next step, or as the author described, “the ultimate degree of management”.

Although the terms assign and delegate tend to be used interchangeably, they don’t share exactly the same meaning. While assign indicates the distribution of tasks or duties, delegate adds to that the transfer of authority and decision-making. How they differ is also well described by the author:

Assigning involves a single monkey; Delegation involves a family of monkeys.

While assigning monkeys, the manager still invests a good amount of time managing his or her team’s projects. But once the manager is able to delegate, the staff takes responsibility at the project level. They identify and decide the next moves and address the problems, taking manager’s time only for regular project checkups, way less frequently than monkey checkups.

A team where the manager assigns each task practices boss management. On the other hand, a team where the manager delegates whole projects practices self management, a more fulfilling and motivational way of work that allows for staff to grow their competencies. And, since with self management the team requires less of the manager’s time, that means for the manager more discretionary time available.

Going from assigning to delegate also reflects on the management effectiveness, that can be measured by the output-to-input ratio — the staff’s output resulting from the manager’s input. With delegation, the manager reduces significantly the amount of time dedicated to each monkey (input), and the staff produces more (output) because less time is spent with their manager and there’s overall more motivation and energy.

Coaching

Coaching is a critical part of management. To delegate, a manager must practice coaching with the team.

A manager must only delegate a project when it’s on the right track and he or she is confident their people can handle the project successfully. But, in the beginning of a project, it’s often the case that neither the manager nor their people have sufficient understanding of how the project should be handled, its problems, goals, etc. Hence, delegating a project at the outset is usually not possible.

That’s where coaching comes in. When the manager and the team need a better understanding of the project, there’s a period of coaching to allow the manager to reach the level of confidence required to responsibly delegate it. That is when the manager is confident their people can succeed on their own.

During the coaching process of a project, the manager takes the control on deciding the next moves their people should make, and assigns the tasks to gather the information, resources and recommendations required to execute the project. The staff, besides being responsible to complete those tasks, also has an important role at convincing the manager about their recommendations and competence to assume control over the project.

Over time, people learn how to work together and what to expect from each other. Because of it, the coaching time spent in a project gets smaller the longer people work together. The manager knows what to expect from their people, and they know what the manager expects from them.

The Different Kinds Of Time

The last chapters of the book are dedicated to the different kinds of time a manager has and how to ensure the right balance between them. There are three kinds of organisational time that managers, and employees in general, have to deal with. How successful the manager is balancing these dictates how much of discretionary time, which is the most important kind of time, they will have available.

Boss-Imposed Time

Boss-imposed time is the time spent addressing tasks that are either assigned by our supervisors, or that are required to make them happy. To reduce boss-imposed time as much as possible, it’s important to have them happy with our work. When that’s not the case, supervisors may take some measures that will require more of our time, like extra processes or reports. How to keep supervisors happy? The author gives the following advice:

Always do what your boss wants. If you don’t like what your boss wants, change what your boss wants, but always do what your boss wants.

System-Imposed Time

This is the kind of administrative time imposed by the organisation with its systems, processes and procedures. It results from people in the organisation other than our supervisor or our staff. It materialises in the form of meetings, enquiries, forms, phone calls, etc. A manager needs to fill vacancies in their team from time to time, and for that he or she may have to send an email or fill a form to HR. One of the staff members may need new work equipment, like a laptop, and so the manager may need to send one request form for the budget department to approve and another one to the IT department to purchase the laptop.

The bigger the organisation is the slower these processes tend to be, so it can be tempting to not respect the requirements of the system and instead try some shortcuts. But conforming with the system and the people that are there to help us is important. The more those relations are fostered, the easier it becomes to have their help from peers when needed, therefore reducing the amount of system-imposed time.

Self-Imposed Time

The previous kinds of time refer to time spent on things imposed by others (like supervisors or peers). Self-imposed time is the time spent on things one decides to do. This is considered the most important kind of organisational time because it’s with it that one can make their unique contribution to the organisation.

Self-imposed time comes in two flavours. The subordinate-imposed time, which is the time a manager spends taking care of their staff’s monkeys, is the self-imposed time to avoid. The reason why it’s self-imposed is because it’s the manager who decides to pick those monkeys.
The other, more valuable, self-imposed time is discretionary time.

Discretionary Time

This is the most valuable time a manager can have. It’s the time in which the manager is able to do the most rewarding work like create, innovate, plan and organise. These activities and individual contributions are key to the organisation’s growth and success.

Despite its importance for both the individuals and the organisation, discretionary time is the first to disappear during stressful periods. And the reason is because there’s no immediate penalty to the manager when he or she neglects discretionary time. No one but the manager knows or expects the things he or she was planning to work on in that time. On the other hand, negligence or lack of action when it comes to tasks originated from a supervisor, peers or staff can make a dent to the manager’s reputation.

While it might be safe to neglect discretionary time in the short term, a manager should avoid doing it in the long term. Not only does the organisation suffer from the lack of the benefits of discretionary time, the manager may end up stuck in a situation where the only thing one can do is react to others’ problems, with no room for creation and innovation.

Conclusion

I highly recommend The One Minute Manager Meets The Monkey. Even though it’s a quick read, the book provides an objective perspective on the delegation and time management problems that are so common among managers. While managers in the workplace are the primary audience, it’s easy to transpose some of the author’s lessons and recommendations to professionals in non-managerial roles, and even to one’s personal life.

Time is the most valuable, unrecoverable resource, so it should be used wisely. And knowing what should be done by us and what should be delegated is a key aspect of successful management.