Managers: Get the Monkey Off Your Back! (an oldie but goodie article)

From the Marshall Memo #441

In this classic 1974 Harvard Business Review article, management consultants William Oncken, Jr. and Donald Wass use the monkey-on-the-back metaphor to discuss delegation. They start by delineating three types of work:

• Boss-imposed – A manager can’t ignore these tasks without immediate consequences.
• System-imposed – These must be accomplished, but the penalties for not doing them are less direct and swift.
• Self-imposed – Some of these are discretionary, but some are imposed by subordinates. 

The manager’s goal, say Oncken and Wass, is to minimize or eliminate subordinate-imposed work, get control of boss- and system-imposed work, and maximize discretionary time.

The big problem, however, is that subordinates have a way of giving you work. “Most managers spend much more subordinate-imposed time than they even faintly realize,” say the authors. How does this happen? A manager is walking along a corridor and encounters a subordinate. “Good morning,” says the underling. “By the way, we’ve got a problem. You see…” The manager quickly realizes two things: he knows enough to get involved, but doesn’t know enough to solve the problem on the spot. “So glad you brought this up,” he says. “I’m in a rush right now. Meanwhile, let me think about it and I’ll let you know.”

What just happened? Before this encounter, the monkey (the problem) was on the subordinate’s back. When the subordinate said, “We’ve got a problem,” the monkey was astride both backs. After the encounter, it was on the manager’s back. “Subordinate-imposed time begins the moment a monkey successfully executes a leap from the back of a subordinate to the back of his superior,” say Oncken and Wass, “and does not end until the monkey is returned to its proper owner for care and feeding. In accepting the monkey, the manager has voluntarily assumed a position subordinate to his subordinate… [T]he manager has accepted a responsibility from his subordinate, and the manager has promised him a progress report. The subordinate, to make sure the manager does not miss the point, will later stick his head in the manager’s office and cheerily query, ‘How’s it coming?’ (This is called ‘supervision.’)”

In this and countless other interactions, the monkey starts as a joint problem but quickly ends up on the manager’s back. Pretty soon the manager is overwhelmed by subordinate-imposed tasks that require follow-up, develops a reputation as a bottleneck, takes weeks to get to things, gets stressed-out, makes his family unhappy by working all weekend, and leaves subordinates spinning their wheels waiting for direction. “Worst of all,” say Oncken and Wass, “the reason the manager cannot make any of these ‘next moves’ is that his time is almost entirely eaten up in meeting his own boss-imposed and system-imposed requirements. To get control of these, he needs discretionary time that is in turn denied him when he is preoccupied with all these monkeys. The manager is caught in a vicious cycle.” 

A wise manager, say Oncken and Wass, will call each subordinate in, put the monkey on the table between them, “and figure out together how the next move might conceivably be the subordinate’s. For certain monkeys, this will take some doing. The subordinate’s next move may be so elusive that the manager may decide – just for now – merely to let the monkey sleep on the subordinate’s back overnight and have him return with it at an appointed time the next morning to continue the joint quest for a more substantive move by the subordinate. (Monkeys sleep just as soundly overnight on subordinates’ backs as on superiors.’)” But most subordinates will leave the manager’s office with monkey firmly on their backs and a deadline to produce an answer. The manager might use some of his new-found discretionary time strolling around, sticking his head into people’s offices asking, “How’s it coming?”

When the deadlines arrive and subordinates are in the manager’s office, say Oncken and Wass, he needs to explain the ground rules: “At no time while I am helping you with this or any other problem will your problem become my problem. The instant your problem becomes mine, you will no longer have a problem. I cannot help a man who hasn’t got a problem. When this meeting is over, the problem will leave this office exactly the way it came in – on your back. You may ask my help at any appointed time, and we will make a joint determination of what the next move will be and which of us will make it. In those rare instances where the next move turns out to be mine, you and I will determine it together. I will not make any move alone.” 

The point, say the authors, is to develop initiative in subordinates. They won’t take it until they have it. If the manager has all those monkeys on his back, “he can kiss his discretionary time good-bye.” Here are the five degrees of initiative that people can exercise in an organization, from the lowest to the highest:

• Wait to be told what to do.
• Ask what to do.
• Recommend, then take appropriate action.
• Act, but advise at once.
• Act on one’s own, then routinely report.

People working at the lowest levels have no control over their time. Those working at the third, fourth, and fifth levels can increasingly manage their own time. “The manager’s job, in relation to his subordinate’s initiatives, is twofold,” say Oncken and Wass. “First, to outlaw the use of initiatives 1 and 2, thus giving his subordinates no choice but to learn and master ‘Completed staff work’; then, to see that for each problem leaving his office there is an agree-upon level of initiative assigned to it, in addition to the agreed-upon time and place of the next manager-subordinate conference.” 

Oncken and Wass conclude with five hard-and-fast rules on the care and feeding of monkeys:

• “Monkeys should be fed or shot. Otherwise, they will starve to death and the manager will waste valuable time on postmortems or attempted resurrections.
• “The monkey population should be kept below the maximum number the manager has time to feed… It shouldn’t take more than 5 to 15 minutes to feed a properly prepared monkey.
• “Monkeys should be fed by appointment only. The manager should not have to be hunting down starving monkeys and feeding them on a catch-as-catch-can basis.
• “Monkeys should be fed face to face or by telephone, but never by mail… Documentation may add to the feeding process, but it cannot take the place of feeding.
• “Every monkey should have an assigned ‘next feeding time’ and ‘degree of initiative.’” These should never be vague or indefinite.

“Get control over the timing and content of what you do,” conclude Oncken and Wass. Eliminate subordinate-imposed time. Use the new-found discretionary time to see to it that subordinates take the initiative. And then get control over boss-imposed and system-imposed work. “The result of all this is that the manager will increase his leverage, which will in turn enable him to multiply, without theoretical limit, the value of each hour that he spends in managing management time.” 

“Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?” by William Oncken, Jr. and Donald Wass in Harvard Business Review, November/December 1974 (Vol. 52, #6, p. 75-80), no e-link