Have you ever heard of Monkey Management?

Are you overloaded with work your staff or someone else should be doing, are they waiting for your thoughts, comments, go-ahead or just for you to ‘get back to them’. If so, you may have a problem with monkeys!

Monkey Management is a concept that Ken Blanchard of the “One Minute Manager” fame and William Oncken Jnr. author of “Managing Management Time” brought together in a fantastic cassette tape called “The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey.” I’m not sure if you can get it on cd or as a download, if so it is well worth a listen as it is so funny in the way William Oncken describes the monkey problems.

In a nutshell, monkeys are the next move in dealing with a problem, assignment or project. So it is about taking on someone else’s problem and handling it for them when they are quite capable of dealing with it themselves. Maybe they need a few suggestions or some coaching in how to manage their monkey and you can share your knowledge with them. What you have to ensure is that you don’t end up looking after their monkeys as well as your own. Managing monkeys is about being clear on the appropriate allocation of responsibility for the monkey or the next move.

Rules of Monkey Management

If you manage your monkeys and leave other people toØ manage their monkeys you will free up time.

Learn how to spot theØ monkey as it is about to leap on to your back and make sure it doesn’t get a good footing on to you, shift your weight and send it back to it’s rightful owner. Visualising this is very funny when someone is aiming to land you with a problem.

The discussion between you and the monkeys’ keeper needs toØ cover what they need to do to look after the monkey, so this is where coaching might come in to help them determine what is the next move, for example: prepare a proposal; canvass opinion; get some quotes; think it through;

If youØ are working within a company then remember that all monkeys must be owned and handled at the lowest organisational level consistent with their welfare.

The only way to develop responsibility in people is to give themØ responsibility.

If you are a manager then you would want to ensureØ that any the risk is covered, so depending upon their experience you would either ask your team member to recommend to you the action they intend to take and then act. Or act and then advise you of their actions.
Practice handsØ off management as much as possible and hands on management only as much as necessary.

Remember that monkeys find their way into homes, committees as well as in companies, so be alert when they get close and be assertive enough to send them back to their rightful owner.